Player bar and queue

This page covers the player bar at the bottom of the window, the seek bar (slider or waveform), and the play queue in all its forms: side panel, drawer and the Now Playing page. It also explains the queue tools, the difference between songs you queued and songs a DJ added, how the queue is restored, saving it to your server and the sleep timer.

The player bar

The bar has three columns. On the left are the cover and the song information, in the middle the transport buttons and the seek bar, on the right the extra buttons and the volume. When the window is 768 px wide or narrower, Listen switches to a compact bar with a smaller set of buttons.

Left: song information

• Click the cover to open the full-screen player. The small arrow on the cover moves the cover into the sidebar and back.
• The title is a link to the Now Playing page. Artists and album are links to their pages.
• The ⋮ button next to the title opens the song menu. A right-click on the song information opens the same menu.
• While a DJ transition runs, the third line reads “Mixing into …”. While the AI DJ talks, its name and its line are shown instead of the song.
• While an internet radio station plays, the station name and the current stream title are shown.

Middle: transport buttons

From left to right:

On a narrow bar, Listen first hides the skip buttons, then Stop and “Shuffle all songs”. A radio station keeps only Stop and Play.

The skip buttons, their durations and the button size are set in Settings → General → Player bar (Show skip buttons, Skip backward duration, Skip forward duration, Player bar button size).

Seek bar and times

The seek bar sits under the buttons. Click or drag to seek; the time on the left follows the drag and the seek happens when you release. The time on the right is the song length. Click it to show the time left (for example -2:31) instead; the setting Show remaining time does the same.

Seeking while a DJ transition is running cancels that transition.

Waveform seek bar

By default the seek bar is a plain slider. To show the loudness curve of the song instead:

1. Open Settings → General → Player bar.
2. Set Playerbar slider to Waveform.

The played part of the waveform is drawn in your accent colour. A click or drag seeks, as with the slider. These extra rows appear once you choose the waveform:

Listen calculates the waveform from the song’s audio, so it has to read the whole song once. For a song on a server this means an extra download, which is why the setting warns against the waveform on slow or metered connections. The result is cached, so a song is analysed only once. The loading delay postpones the calculation after a song change; raise it if you hear stutter when songs change.

Until the waveform is ready, and for songs without usable audio input, the plain slider is shown. A YouTube Music song gets a waveform only when a local copy of its audio already exists; the waveform never causes extra requests to YouTube.

Right: buttons, rating and volume

The right-hand buttons can be reordered and hidden in Settings → General → Player bar → Right-hand buttons. The available buttons are:

• Sleep timer (see below).
• Player config, shown as Player options: output device, playback speed and pitch. See Sound.
• Visualizer and Lyrics: open the matching tab of the full-screen player.
• Favorite: the heart. It is hidden when Show favourites is off in Settings → General → Lists.
• Queue: shows or hides the queue panel (or drawer).
• Volume: mute button and slider.

Some buttons appear on their own when they apply: the Show video / Show song switch for YouTube Music songs (Music videos) and the cast button when speakers or TVs were found (Casting).

Ratings. When the song’s server supports ratings (Navidrome and other OpenSubsonic servers; never YouTube Music) and Show ratings is on, five stars appear above the buttons. Click a star to rate the playing song; click the same star again to clear the rating. The hotkeys “Rate 0 stars” to “Rate 5 stars” do the same.

Volume. Click the speaker to mute. Scroll the mouse wheel over the slider to change the volume by the Volume wheel step (5 by default). The slider width is Volume slider width. A right-click on the speaker opens the list of audio output devices. While you cast to a device, the volume control sets the device’s volume.

Open on click. If you switch on Player bar opens full-screen player, a click on an empty part of the bar opens the full-screen player.

The queue

The queue is the list of songs that play next. It can hold songs from several servers at once.

Where the queue is shown

Each place shows a header with the number of songs and the total time, a button naming the current play mode (a click moves to the next mode), and the queue itself.

Queue settings are in Settings → Playback → Queue:

Settings → Playback → Player sidebar panels controls what the right-hand sidebar holds. Besides the queue it can show a lyrics panel, a visualizer strip, or both combined in one panel, and you can set the Panel order. Drag the dividers between the panels to resize them. The queue panel itself can be switched off as long as another panel stays on.

Working with the queue

• Play a song: double-click it, or use the play button that replaces the number when you hover a row.
• Reorder: drag rows up or down. Drag songs, albums or playlists from any list and drop them between the rows (or on the empty area under the last row) to insert them. You can also drop onto an empty queue to fill it.
• Select: Ctrl+click toggles a row, Shift+click selects a range. See Lists, selection and menus for the details.
• Remove: select rows and press Delete or Backspace. The playing song stays.
• Search: the field in the toolbar filters the queue by title, artist, album or genre.
• Right-click (or the row menu) offers Remove from queue, Move to top, Move to next, Move to bottom, Shuffle selected and Order for smooth mixing. The last one reorders everything after the playing song so that each song flows into the next (see Order for smooth mixing). The Up Next block is ordered within itself and still plays first; DJ bridge songs in that part are dropped, because they were chosen for their old neighbours.

Songs that were analysed for the DJ features show their tempo and key after the artist (“Artist · 124 BPM · 8A”).

Queue tools

The toolbar above the queue has these buttons:

In a narrow queue the buttons fold into a … menu, from the least to the most important one.

Queued songs and DJ songs

The queue distinguishes three kinds of songs:

1. The rest of the queue: the songs of the album, playlist or list you started.
2. Up Next: songs you added with Play next (they go to the top of the block) or Add to queue (they go to the end of the block). They play right after the current song, ahead of everything else. With Up next queue on, the block gets “Up Next” and “Queue” label rows; with it off, such songs carry a Queued tag until they play.
3. DJ songs: songs the Auto-DJ or the AI DJ appended at the end. They carry an Auto or AI tag (a DJ bridge carries Bridge). Leaving the Auto-DJ mode does not remove songs it already added; delete them like any other song.

Why this song? Hold the pointer over the tag of a DJ song to see why it was picked. The Auto-DJ names one reason: a favourite you have not played for two months or more, “Similar to” the song its similar songs came from, “New to you”, or “Random pick from your library”. The AI DJ writes its own short note for every song of its set (at most 80 characters, in the DJ’s language, for example that the song keeps the key and lifts the tempo); a bridge says which two songs it links. Songs you added yourself have no reason. The reason of the playing song is also shown under the album in the full-screen player.

Dragging a row into the Up Next block adds it to the block; dragging it elsewhere takes it out. A marker row “AI DJ break” shows where the AI DJ will speak.

Player filters

Settings → Playback → Player filters keeps unwanted songs out of the queue. Press Add rule, then choose a field (title, artist, genre, year, play count, rating and others), an operator (for example contains, is, starts with, matches regex) and a value. A song that matches an active rule is left out when you play or queue it, and Listen says how many were kept out. Songs the Auto-DJ and AI DJ add are not filtered by these rules (use Snooze or Not interested for that, below). Each rule has an on/off switch.

Snooze, Not interested and Hide in this playlist

The menu of a song (in a list, in the queue and in the player bar) has three entries that keep it out of what Listen picks for you:

• Snooze 30 days: for 30 days the Auto-DJ, the AI DJ, song, album and artist radio, DJ bridges and the mixes (Daylist, Heavy rotation, Rediscover, All-time favourites) leave the song out. Then it comes back by itself.
• Not interested: the same, for good. For a YouTube Music song it also sends a dislike to YouTube Music, so its own suggestions learn from it (switch this off in Settings → Advanced → Hidden songs → Dislike on YouTube Music).
• Hide in this playlist (only in a playlist): the song is left out when you play that playlist; other playlists, albums and the DJs are not affected. Show in this playlist takes it back.

Every version of a song counts (the single, the album track, the music video). A song you pick yourself always plays, even when it is snoozed, not wanted or hidden; double-clicking a hidden song in its playlist plays it. Upcoming songs a DJ already queued go from the queue when you snooze or reject them; the song playing now plays on.

Settings → Advanced → Hidden songs lists every snoozed (with the days left), not wanted and hidden song with an Undo button.

With Merge with other devices on (Settings → Advanced → Listening history), the hidden songs go to your listen-server right after each change and with every history merge, so the phone and your other computers leave the same songs out. When two devices change the same song, the later change wins. This needs listen-server 0.6.0 or newer.

Queue restore

With Save play queue on, Listen writes the queue and the position of the playing song to disk every few seconds and when you quit. At the next start the queue is back, the playing song is selected and the position is remembered, but nothing plays by itself. Press Play to continue where you stopped. Shuffle and repeat are restored as well.

Saving the queue to your server

Navidrome and other OpenSubsonic servers can store one play queue per user, so that another app can continue where you stopped. The two buttons appear in the queue toolbar when the server you are browsing supports this.

• Save queue to server sends the songs of that server (songs from other servers are left out), the playing song and the position. A message tells you how many songs were saved.
• Restore queue from server replaces your queue with the saved one. Nothing starts playing; the first Play resumes at the saved position. If Confirm queue changes is on, Listen asks before replacing.

To save automatically, switch on Autosave play queue to server in Settings → Playback → Queue and set Autosave every (1 to 20 track changes; default 1).

Sleep timer

The Sleep timer button (a clock icon) in the player bar opens a small panel:

• End of song pauses at the end of the playing song.
• End of album pauses once the album of the playing song is over. If you start another song yourself, the timer follows that song’s album. It is not available while Shuffle is on.
• The grid starts a timer of 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 120, 180 or 240 minutes.
• Custom takes hours, minutes and seconds (up to 23 h 59 min 59 s).

While a timed timer runs, the remaining time is shown on the button. The countdown only runs while music plays, so pausing does not use up your time. When the timer ends, playback pauses and Listen shows a short message. Cancel in the panel turns it off. The sleep timer is not kept when you quit Listen.