v1.8.0-beta.2

WaveFlow 1.8.0-beta.2

Pre-release on the beta channel. If you are already on 1.8.0-beta.1 you will get this automatically. Coming from 1.7, turn on Settings → Diagnostics → Beta channel; once you are on 1.8 the switch lives under Settings → Maintenance → Updates. Stable users are unaffected.

This beta is almost entirely your doing. Twenty-seven issues closed since beta.1, and most of them came from people running it and writing down what was wrong. A few were things I would never have found alone — the mini-player showing no Canvas, the folder toggle that did nothing in a folder with no subfolders, a right-click that opened the browser's menu instead of the app's.

If beta.1 was about the audio engine, this one is about everything you touch.

🎨 Playlists

• A playlist header built from its cover. The header now takes its colour from the artwork instead of sitting on a flat surface, in a gradient that reads as part of the picture. A playlist can also keep a colour you pick yourself — the auto / manual choice is in the playlist's edit dialog, and it is remembered per playlist. (#732)
• Right-click a playlist and you get WaveFlow's menu, not the webview's. Play, shuffle, play next, add to queue, rename, change the cover, delete — with a confirmation before a delete. It works in the sidebar, on the grid, and on the pinned Liked tracks and Recently played rows. (#737)
• Shuffle play no longer turns shuffle off when it was already on.

🎤 Lyrics

• The floating lyrics window behaves. It can show a single line instead of two, it widens from either side rather than only one, and the corners resize properly. (#735)
• Word-by-word karaoke on line-synced lyrics. When a provider gives only line timings, WaveFlow can estimate where each word falls. Opt-in, and never written to your files or your database. (#716)
• A track with no lyrics stops re-searching every time you open it. One provider failing used to override the cached "nothing found", so the whole chain ran again on every single open. (#720)
• Switch off any online provider, not just one of them, and skip the online search entirely for genres you choose — instrumental and lo-fi are skipped by default. (#722, #721)
• A skipped track now says it was skipped, rather than reporting that nothing was found. (#731)

🎬 Now playing and the mini-player

• The spectrum visualizer, rebuilt. Curves instead of plain bars, twelve bass bands that no longer share six FFT bins, and bars that actually reach the top. (#699, #715)
• Canvas gets its own tall frame instead of being squeezed into the square cover, which was cutting about 44 % of the clip's height. (#694)
• The mini-player catches up: the cover slideshow runs there too, its lyrics overlay was reworked, and it now shows Canvas and animated covers. (#702, #697, #717)
• Closing the mini-player and reopening it works — it used to come back to a window that was no longer there.
• The slideshow uses your local artist images, not only what Deezer has. (#701)

👤 Artists and library

• Picking a different artist in the image picker now re-links the artist, instead of changing only the photo and leaving the biography, the fans and the similar artists pointing at the wrong person. (#692)
• The artist backdrop can be chosen, and is no longer a low-quality crop through someone's face. (#693)
• Find artists that are really several names joined by commas, and split them from there. (#719)
• Splitting an artist reaches the window you are looking at, instead of leaving the panel resolving an id that no longer exists. (#713)
• Lyrics, Canvas clips and animated covers stay next to the music they belong to. (#695)
• The track properties dialog suggests tags as you type — artists, albums and genres from your own library.

✨ Interface

• Every on/off row in Settings is a switch, not a tick box. (#738)
• The folder grid/list toggle does something in a folder with no subfolders, instead of being a pair of dead buttons. (#739)
• Back and forward return you to the library tab you were on. (#745)
• The now-playing handle stays reachable while the lyrics or the queue are open, so you can get back to the artwork without closing the panel first. (#747)
• The track information dialog opens properly from a playlist. Its backdrop covered only part of the page and the dialog sat off-centre.
• A native-looking window frame on Linux and macOS, as a choice. (#696)

⚙️ Settings that cross windows

A preference you change now reaches every window. The mini-player and the lyrics overlay are separate windows, and a setting changed in the main one never got to them — they kept the old value until you closed and reopened them. This was never about one setting; it was every preference those windows read. (#741)

Switching profiles no longer inherits the previous profile's audio settings — the visualizer, EQ, speed and crossfade of the profile you left were staying behind. (#698)

🔌 Plugins

• A plugin that cannot load is now visible. It used to fail silently: nothing at install, no state in the list, no cause in the message. It is now refused at install, shown as broken, and told to you with the reason. (#708)
• Two plugins published since beta.1 and installable from the store: Release Radar, which finds recent releases from the artists in your library, and an update to Apple Motion Artwork.

📝 Notes for testers

Everything on the beta.1 list still stands — exclusive output, native DSD (DoP) on a real DAC, and tag editing on copies of your files are all still unconfirmed on hardware I do not own. Those remain the most valuable reports you can send.

New this round, in order:

1. The playlist headers, in a light theme and in the Liquid skin. This is colour generated from your covers, so it meets artwork I have never seen. If a header ever makes its own text hard to read, that is a bug and I want the cover.
2. The right-click menu everywhere it appears — sidebar, grid, and the pinned Liked tracks / Recently played rows.
3. Cross-window settings. Open the mini-player, change a setting in the main window, and check it follows without reopening anything.
4. Estimated word-by-word karaoke, if you use lyrics. It is off by default and it is a guess — tell me where the guess is bad.
5. The floating lyrics window on Wayland, still.

What I need in a report: your OS, the exact steps, and your logs — Settings → Maintenance → Diagnostics → Copy logs puts them on your clipboard, ready to paste.

Full changelog: v1.8.0-beta.1...v1.8.0-beta.2