I’m a premium user of your Primo device, and I really enjoy using it! I’ve been using it daily for the past year, and during this time, I’ve come across some annoyances that I hope you will consider addressing to enhance the user experience. While I’m not a developer, I wanted to share these requests, recognizing that you receive many feature requests regularly.
Improved Navigation:
The one thing that have taken me the longest time to get used to (and some times I still get it wrong), is the navigation. The Home (house) button doesn’t take you back to the start; you need to press ‘x’ for that purpose. Additionally, the ‘physical’ back button doesn’t function as expected in a browser or on a phone.
It would be helpful if the volume control were always visible rather than hidden behind the speaker icon.
The placement of the close ‘x’ changes from right to left when navigating music sources and pushing ‘the three horisontal lines’, which can be confusing. Consistency in this regard would streamline the user experience.
The unofficial Android app VolumioControl offers a more straightforward and standard navigation approach that could serve as inspiration, at least from my point of view.
Official App Enhancements:
Faster startup times for the official app would be greatly appreciated. Additionally, having an option to select a default Volumio device would be convenient.
Local Music View:
A feature to display recently added albums in a local music view would be a valuable addition.
Replaygain:
I can see it has been requested before, but an option to enable replaygain would be appreciated.
Artist and Album Name Clickable in ‘Now Playing’:
It would be convenient if clicking on the artist’s name in the ‘now playing’ view could take you directly to the artist’s or albums page.
Making local special letters interchangeable with each other and standard characters in search (e.g., ü, ø, ö, í) would greatly improve the search experience, reducing the need to remember specific character variations for artists’ names. E.g. Björk, Bjørk and Bjork should all give you the correct result.
Folders in Webradio Favorites:
For users with numerous webradio favorites, the ability to organize them into folders would enhance navigation.
I hope you will consider these suggestions. Nonetheless thank you for a great product!
I suggest that, for a really great music library, streaming and playing experience, you try Roon. It’s not cheap but it transforms your experience and works seamlessly with Volumio. I’m watching Volumio develop but the focus is not on library managment or slick UI. The Primo is a great peice of kit for the money, and it also allows me to switch between Roon for my Flacs and Spotify for discovering new music.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m actually quite happy with Volumio, and at this point, I don’t think a Roon subscription would make sense for me.
With that said, I believe Volumio has the opportunity to create a product that can distinguish itself from many others (there are a lot of big HiFi manufacturers that are producing mediocre or outright bad apps and UI user experiences). This would be achievable if they made some adjustments, and here, navigation and logic are the one thing that would make the biggest difference, at least for me
Edit: The following picture shows what I think with ‘navigation and logic’. So much is happening here, and it’s not obvious for the user (at least not me) what happens when you click the ‘x’, the house, the ‘four lines’ or the ‘back arrow’ etc.
Some nice suggestions there, I agree with most of those and have also wondered/asked about replaygain however have never really noticed big volume differences in my system. The navigation improvements, now playing, and default device would be nice. As would go to album/artist. Too be honest it is pretty easy to use tidal connect anyway. At least the main program works well.
I’ve also been interested in roon for a long time but seems too expensive. Looking at some threads people still aren’t 100% happy with that either (the ai doesn’t seem as good as the tidal ai). Room arc would be worthwhile so you can access your music library offline, away from your local network - I’ve asked a few times but don’t think volumio has this feature?
If I understand your ‘Roon-wish’ correctly, I think you can. If you are a premium user, you can listen to your music away from home through myvolumio.org. It’s not always super snappy, but it works.
Great comments! Have you tried BlueOS on a Node? I mean, a really great UI is out there, doubtful it’s copyrighted to the point where Volumio developers can’t wake up and smell the coffee. Other companies are now competing with BlueOS on Ui. Current Apple Apps score reflects a significant need to improve.
I agree. There are lots of issues with the layout that are unnecessarily complicated or confusing. I have a RPi setup, but quickly decided that since most of my music listening is through Tidal, I would stick with the Tidal Connect since in that, you at least can use the volume buttons on your phone to adjust volume.
