What about a play actions overhaul?

Feedback Feature Suggestions
1

There is a lot of things Roon does really well, but one thing it has been known to struggle with is… playing songs! Or more specifically - as a user how do I play that song, or add that one next or add it to queue?

Initially I adored the Roon approach to playing songs. I loved the “single click brings up the play actions menu” approach - as songs very rarely played by accident as is the case with Apple, Spotify, and everything else. I loved the ability to customise the play actions and used it to set up jukebox style remotes that would only let you queue or add next.

But with the release of ARC it seems all this is out the window… a single press now plays the song! You need to long press to bring up a menu. And the menu is totally different to Roon (regular). If you combine this with the inherent unfamiliarity of Spotify or Apple Music users trying to play songs in (regular) Roon, you’ll see what I’m getting at.

Perhaps first, we need agreement on the above - do you or others you know have trouble using Roons (extensive) play actions?

If yes I have a few suggestions:

  1. It has to be consistent… All Roon apps and remotes need to have exactly the same UI for all play actions. And all songs, albums, search results, etc ALSO need to have the same UI for play controls.

  2. It has to be intuitive… There should never be any confusion as to how to play a song. If I click it will it play now? Will it bring up a menu, will it select the song? We all need to know how its going to work. And when I say “we all” - that’s all users, people familiar and unfamiliar with Roon.

I think everything else is optional. You could go down a rabbit hole of making them customisable, having a million settings to tweak for each remote, ARC, etc. But in all honestly if you’ve nailed the user interface for this - there shouldn’t be a need to customise.

I think there is ample opportunity to put an awesome spin on this and make some really cool, unique and usable play controls.

This is the No 1 improvement for me.

2

Since you ask - I don’t and that’s the least of my Roon troubles :slight_smile:

I do see that it’s inconsistent: In ARC, I need to press the little special place (the three dot menu on the right) to bring up the options and a simple tap on the track plays the song. While it’s the opposite in regular Roon, where the little special place (the play arrow on the left) plays the song (by default at least) and a simple tap on the track brings up the menu. It’s arguable that this inconsistency is weird.

On the other hand, the use cases are opposite as well. In ARC I am on the go, possibly clumsy with my hands full and in cramped spaces, and I am more likely to just want to play instead of constructing elaborate queues, while it’s rather the opposite in regular Roon.

So the opposite behavior kind of works for me and I don’t necessarily agree that default behavior must be consistent, because the use cases aren’t necessarily consistent, either. I would hate having to fumble for the default “simple play” arrow of the regular remote when I’m out and about.

Maybe it’s just because I rarely play tracks. In the end, only configuration can maybe make everyone happy, at some cost of complexity. I’d support default action configuration in ARC at least and a more consistent left/right layout of play menu vs play arrow.

But maybe resources are better spent on unifying the apps in the future and fixing this in one go.

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