Polypody is a player for downloaded music focused on delivering a true alternative to the features of modern music platforms while adhering to the existing organization of the user's music library.

Note

As of right now, Polypody is very early in development. Some functionality or settings might be accessible only through editing config files. Some bugs or errors might cause crashes or present little or no information via the GUI. Please read the user guide or submit an issue if a problem occurs.

Getting Started

Please read the user guide for information on installing and using the application.

Philosophy

Many music players have a problem of adhering too strictly to metadata. Music is re-sorted by artist and album. Audio files without metadata often become a long list of "Unknown Track - Unknown Artist", without regard for how a user may have tried to organize those metadata-less tracks into different groups. That, to me, is a UX failure. It also imposes an idea of correct organizational structure on the music library which may not align with the user's idea of organization.

A polypody is a type of fern which is often epiphytic -- it grows harmlessly on the branches of other plants for support and access to sunlight. Similarly, Polypody aims to grow harmlessly on the branches of the user's filesystem tree, using its existing structure for organization. It also aims to remove clutter, such as informing the user certain information is "Unknown", where simply omitting the missing information would suffice.

Functionality Checklist

Audio file support

Overview of supported file formats. Completed items without sub-items can be assumed to have basic metadata functionality (in the case of MP3, via a reasonable variety of common formats). Undone items on this list are a low priority unless requested by someone with audio they'd like to listen to in those formats.

• AAC
• AIFF
• ALAC
• AU
• FLAC
• MP3
• OGG
  • Vorbis
  • non-Vorbis
• WAV
  • Basic support
  • RIFF INFO metadata
  • BWF extension

Features

The following features are planned at the very least for consideration, if not for definite implementation.

• Audio visualizer
• Lyrics
  • LRC parsing
  • Live scrolling
• Playlists
• Search by title, filename, artist, album
• Themes
  • Additional defaults
  • Custom user theming

Technical considerations

The following tasks represent a general development to-do list:

• Consider alternative audio output frameworks, such as interflow, which would more easily allow for non-Alsa Linux solutions.
• Make error-handling more robust, and error-reporting more informative user-friendly.
• Better organize the application code into separate sub-screens, rather than holding all state in the App struct.