Aurora Music Player 0.1.7

Aurora Music Player 0.1.7 is out.

New

• Save your edits into the file. Track Info can now write the title, artist, album, year,
  genre and cover art back into MP3, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files. If you would rather leave your
  files untouched, switch it off under Preferences ▸ Backup & Data.
• Smart playlists. Build a playlist from rules — genre, year, rating, play count, favorite
  and more — and it keeps itself up to date as your library changes.

Improved

• A quieter title bar. The top menus are gone. Preferences now sits in the sidebar next to
  Managed Libraries, and nothing was lost: playlist import and export are in Backup & Data, the
  sleep timer is in Audio, and the mini player is in Appearance.
• Notifications you can actually read. The "metadata ready — save to apply" message now stays
  above open windows, and in-app notifications can be switched off under Preferences ▸ Appearance.

Fixed

• Pausing no longer leaves the Windows taskbar progress bar stuck.
• Dragging files onto the window works again.
• Opening an audio file while the app is still starting no longer loses it.
• The Keyboard Shortcuts window puts the cursor inside it when it opens.

Downloads

• Windows installer — installs the app and registers common audio file types
• Windows portable — one executable, no install
• Linux AppImage — chmod +x it, then run
• SHA-256 checksums and release manifest

Good to know

• The Windows builds are unsigned. SmartScreen will probably mention an unknown publisher the first
  time you run one; that is expected for a free hobby project.
• The AppImage is built and tested on Linux. If your desktop refuses to run it, chmod +x the file
  first.
• The full release history is in the changelog.

Aurora Music Player 0.1.6

Aurora Music Player 0.1.6

Added

• A dedicated Duplicate Finder window, opened from Preferences ▸ Help, that scans matching title, artist, album and duration metadata. It suggests the highest-quality copy to keep, supports per-copy selection, Keep best, Select extras and Clear, removes library entries only by default, and offers an explicit permanent file-deletion option with per-file failure reporting.

• Appearance presets and quick accent swatches, plus startup-view and sidebar-width workspace preferences.

• Backup and restore for settings, playlists and the library index (Preferences ▸ Help ▸ Data); every restore snapshots the current data to backups/ first.

• Multi-select in the track list: click, Ctrl/Cmd-click and Shift-click for a range, with a bulk bar for favorite, rating, add to playlist and remove.

• A real Playlists overview with automatic-playlist cards, user playlist cards, cover mosaics, hover Play and an overflow action menu.

• Detail pages for albums, artists, genres, folders and playlists with artwork, Play/Shuffle actions, a sticky toolbar, breadcrumb back navigation and compact rows.

• Loading skeletons and determinate scan/import progress with cancellation; list, grid and detail destinations now share page headers and designed empty states.

• Batch 3 feedback and navigation: typed success/info/warning/error toasts with hover-pause and optional Undo, a cancelable sleep-timer chip, and Managed Libraries folder browsing with a deduplicated folder list.

Added

• Minimize to system tray preference in Preferences ▸ Appearance, enabled by default; turning it off lets Close exit and Minimize use the taskbar.

Changed

• Release builds now produce and verify the Windows installer, Windows portable executable and Linux AppImage, launch-test the AppImage, and publish the matching changelog with each release.

• The track list is virtualized: only rows in and near the viewport exist in the DOM. 200 rows render in 3–16 ms (was ~183 ms) and 2,000 rows in 4–18 ms; album, artist, genre and folder detail views use the same windowing.

• What's New now opens on the current release only, with a collapsed archive for every older release. About uses a compact identity card with the app mark, version, creator and AI-assistance note instead of a full-width banner.

• The title bar now has three task-based menus — Library, Playback and View — plus a direct Preferences button. Transport actions stay in the player bar, Managed Libraries stays in the sidebar, Duplicate Finder lives in Preferences ▸ Help, and Keyboard Shortcuts lives in Preferences ▸ Help and ?.

• The title bar centers the app name and insets the window controls from the right edge while keeping the menus left-aligned.

• The track list fills its width with a flexible title column and a sticky, sortable header; playing rows now use an accent bar and equalizer while selected rows use a neutral surface.

• The player bar is one transport row with SVG controls, full-width seek and time labels, a queue icon, and a working mute button.

• Preferences fills the workspace, remembers the last-used tab and adds a search field that jumps to and highlights matching settings. Seven tabs are grouped under Personalize, Playback, Library and Support, with arrow-key navigation and clearer section titles. Volume, playback speed, shuffle/repeat, equalizer access, browse layout and track-column controls now live in Preferences instead of only in menus or the player bar. The two onboarding toggles moved from Overlays into Appearance ▸ Application.

• The mini player is a compact 360×200 card capped at 520×280, with an integrated drag header and window controls plus the current SVG transport, seek, timestamps, shuffle, repeat, favorite, volume and overflow controls.

• The visualizer is a framed Aurora stage between the title bar and player bar, with an idle state, a themed mode picker grouped by Spectrum, Waveform, Motion and Atmosphere, and fullscreen control. Each mode now remembers its own color mode. Windowed mode uses the player-bar track identity and leaves transport and seek there; fullscreen shows the glass now-playing card, transport and progress HUD. The 18 renderers include new Pulse Grid, Lissajous and Audio Rain modes, all using the active color palette and aggregate FFT bands so narrow frequencies do not leave blank bars. F11 or the fullscreen button toggles edge-to-edge mode.

• Queue and lyrics panels have counts, loading/empty/error feedback, drag-to-reorder, play-next, click-to-seek lyrics and lyric font controls.

• The player-bar sidebar button now opens and closes the right panel and returns to the tab you last used, Queue or Lyrics; that choice is saved across restarts.

• The queue is virtualized for long queues, dialogs trap Tab focus, the mini player has an overflow menu, and visualizer mode is saved. Preferences gained compact Libraries rows and a Data snapshot browser with read-only preview and restore.

• Batch 2 polish: retryable error states, a shared control kit, Libraries overflow actions, Track Info loading/empty/error handling, explicit queue drag handles, visualizer artwork, mini-player metadata persistence while controls auto-hide, and light-theme surface fixes.

• Batch 3 foundations: shared color/type/spacing/radius/elevation tokens, accent-derived surfaces, a light-mode transport, a visible focus ring, labelled dialogs, nav/row/sort ARIA, reduced-motion scrolling, and compact layouts down to 320 px.

Fixed

• The Keyboard Shortcuts footer Close button now closes the dialog; every data-close action shares the same close handler instead of only header ✕ buttons.
• The main header now uses the same themed surface as the sidebar and player instead of showing the aurora body through it.
• The mini player no longer opens at 420×720, grow beyond 520×280 or use the old Unicode control glyphs; its title bar and window controls now live inside the card, and the window/tray fallback loads build/icon.ico instead of a missing legacy logo path.
• Playlists search now filters playlist names and updates the header count; detail pages hide the library search instead of showing a field that cannot affect their fixed contents.
• Fixed the detached column strip losing its row layout, album grid rows stretching to fill the viewport, and Preferences not opening from its shared command helper.
• Playlists now uses the main header for its title, saved-track count and New Playlist action instead of repeating a second page title; tablet layouts keep Duration visible, and mini/visualizer modes hide the column strip.
• Recently Added is now only a built-in automatic playlist; the duplicate sidebar tab and its unused day-window preference were removed.
• The column strip now sits in its own sub-header above the list scroller, so it spans the full window and the scrollbar starts below it; the title column header no longer disappears in narrow layouts.
• Track-list column headers now own sorting (click or Enter/Space, click again to reverse), drag-to-reorder and width resizing; the separate Sort and direction buttons were removed from the main header, while the strip keeps the flush header surface.
• Collection counts and the Add music action now live in the main header for All Tracks, Albums, Artists and Genres; the separate title/count/action row was removed, leaving more room for content.
• Grid page headers now span the full content row, removing the dead space and stretched first card in Albums, Artists and Genres.
• The sidebar banner was removed; the Aurora banner now appears only in the first-run Welcome overlay. About and What’s New use compact brand marks instead. Sidebar navigation spacing was tightened.
• Managed Libraries deduplicates folder paths case-insensitively on load and save, preserving scan settings and track counts.
• The redundant Folders sidebar item was removed; folder tracks open from a Managed Libraries row.
• What's New now opens above Preferences. Esc dismisses the top layer first, and the in-app release notes include 0.1.6.
• The queue/lyrics side panel had a 4 px gap above the player bar; it now meets the player exactly.
• Native alert/confirm/prompt dialogs were replaced with themed dialogs that resolve on Esc, backdrop, × and action buttons.
• Shift-click ranges in the album, artist, genre and folder detail views used the last main-list order, so a short range could select unrelated tracks.
• Bulk favorite now refreshes the heart icons immediately instead of waiting for the next render.
• Playback scrolls the currently playing row into view again when it sits outside the virtualized window.
• Global shortcuts no longer fire behind an open dialog or while a button/row has focus, so Space and Enter activate the focused control only once.

Downloads

• Windows installer
• Windows portable
• Linux AppImage
• Full changelog
• All release assets

Builds are unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may warn.