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Airclone v0.22.0
Airclone v0.22.0 — the remote can run the player now
If you use Airclone on a Google TV or Android TV, this one is for you. Music and
video played fine; the remote just could not do much about either. Now it can.
What a remote can do during playback
Press anything and the controls appear, sized for a television rather than a
phone. Then:
- Left and right skip backward and forward through a film — 10 seconds, and
faster if you keep pressing, so getting across a two-hour film does not mean
sixty presses. - OK pauses, and brings the controls back when they have faded.
- Back clears the controls off the screen, and leaves the player next time.
- Your remote's own buttons work — play/pause, rewind, fast-forward, and
next/previous track — wherever you happen to be on the screen.
The controls fade out while a film plays, so the picture is the picture. They do
not fade while it is paused, because a paused film with nothing on screen is
a film you cannot restart.
Music got a screen built for a television
Previous and next have been there since v0.8.0, but on a TV they were two small
icons in a card built for a mouse, and the only way to reach them was to press
the arrow keys until something highlighted. That is not a reasonable thing to ask
of anyone sitting across a room.
The audio player on a television is now a full screen: large artwork, the track
name at a size you can read from a sofa, and a row of controls you can actually
aim at — with play/pause already selected the moment it opens, so OK works
straight away.
Skipping tracks moves between tracks
Next and previous now move to the next file of the same kind. A folder of
songs almost always has a cover.jpg in it, and often a .cue as well; until
now, "next track" could drop you onto the picture halfway through an album. On a
phone that was a shrug — you swipe again. On a television those two buttons are
the only way through the folder, so it made an album unplayable end to end.
Videos behave the same way: the next episode, not the subtitle file sitting next
to it.
Notes
- The transport buttons work everywhere, not only on a television — a
keyboard's media keys and a Bluetooth remote paired to a phone are the same
buttons, so they are honoured on every platform. Everything else in this
release is TV-only, and no phone, tablet or desktop layout changes. - A live stream has nothing to seek within, so on one the player says Live
rather than offering a progress bar that cannot move. - Windows builds are signed (Azure Artifact Signing, OV-class — SmartScreen
may still warn until the certificate builds reputation). macOS builds are
signed and notarized with a Developer ID. - This release was verified by its test suite, not on a physical television.
The behaviour is covered by tests that were each confirmed to fail without the
fix, and the remote's transport keys were measured reaching the app on an
Android TV emulator — but nobody here has a set to try it on. If something is
off on yours, please say so; the last three TV problems were all found this
way.