Yes ... another Recently Added plugin

Plugins
1

Hi all,

I’ve been working on a small Volumio music-service plugin called Recently Added and wanted to share it here in case it is useful to anyone else. @Zhapox just provided his prototype, which looks slick.

This is still a prototype, not an official Volumio Store plugin, so please treat it as experimental.

The plugin adds a new browse source called Recently Added. Under that source you get three views:

  • Recently Added Albums
  • Albums by Artist
  • Albums by Title

The main purpose is to make it easier to browse newly added albums from local or NAS music folders. It scans configured folder paths directly from the filesystem, rather than relying on MPD’s “added” metadata. Albums are sorted using folder modified time, newest first.

The plugin currently supports mixed folder layouts, for example you might have your folder structured like this:

Root / Album / Tracks
Root / Artist / Album / Tracks
Root / Genre / Artist / Album / Tracks

There are settings for:

Music folder paths
Maximum albums shown
Maximum folder depth
Excluded folder names

A few notes about how it works:

Browse → Recently Added → Recently Added Albums → Album → Track list

Playback is intentionally started from the track level. The higher levels are browse-only. This is because track-level playback gives the most reliable Now Playing metadata and album art behaviour.

FLAC track ordering can use embedded metadata through metaflac, especially DISCNUMBER, TRACKNUMBER and TITLE. If that is not available, it falls back to filename-based ordering.

I’ll attach:

Again, this is a proof of concept rather than a polished official plugin. It has been built and tested around my own Volumio/NAS setup, so feedback from other folder structures and installations would be very welcome.

In particular, I’d be interested to know:

Does it install cleanly?
Does it detect your album folders correctly?
Do the settings behave as expected?
Does track-level playback show correct metadata and album art?
Are there folder layouts it does not handle well?

Thanks, and I hope it is useful to someone.

1 Like
2

Quick update: I’ve moved this from the original Volumio 3 prototype zip to a cleaned-up Volumio 4 / Bookworm-ready GitHub repo.

GitHub:

Main changes since the v17 zip:

  • Updated package metadata for Volumio 4 / Bookworm.
  • Removed path defaults and replaced them with generic examples.
  • Removed the persistent album cache.
  • Replaced the old Base64 folder-path album URIs with short in-memory album IDs, so browse URIs no longer expose full local/NAS paths.
  • Kept the same browse structure:
    • Recently Added Albums
    • Albums by Artist
    • Albums by Title
  • Kept playback intentionally track-level only, because that still gives the most reliable Now Playing metadata and album art behaviour.
  • Kept bounded recursive scanning, max depth, excluded folders, mixed folder layout support, simple multi-disc handling, and FLAC track sorting via metaflac.

Simple Volumio 4 install from GitHub:

ssh volumio@volumio4.local

Then on the Volumio box:

cd /home/volumio
git clone https://github.com/jhscann/volumio-recently-added.git recentlyadded
cd /home/volumio/recentlyadded
npm install --production --no-audit --no-fund
volumio plugin install
volumio vrestart

After restart, enable the plugin if needed, then configure the scan paths in the plugin settings.

Still experimental, and I’d especially welcome feedback from Volumio 4 users on install behaviour, folder detection, and whether the browse-only album rows behave consistently in the newer UI.

3

Hi,

A great add-on (IMHO).

Just installed it without any fuss. 5*

Minor issues:

  • album cover does not show.
  • Would it be possible to have play directly on the folder (not having to go “insede” the folder? Something like this (example on slayer album):
    image
    image1546×416 92 KB
4

Hi @pjorgenunes - I will try to fix that :slight_smile:

5

Or “add to queue” from the album folder