v1.7.0

[kushalpandya]

Internet Radio, Crossfade & ReplayGain, AirPlay 2, redesigned Library and Discover, custom playlist artworks, and up to 4x lower CPU usage

Important

This is the last release to support macOS 14 (Sonoma) and Intel Macs.
v1.7.x will continue to receive point fixes on macOS 14 and Intel when necessary, but the next major release will require macOS 15 or later and Apple Silicon.

Features

• Add support for Internet Radio with manual HLS stations, popular stations from radio-browser.info, and station collections (Add support for Internet Radio #352, fixes Feature Request: Add online radio streaming #100)
• Add AirPlay 2 support to play music on compatible devices (Add AirPlay 2 support #363, fixes Feature Request: Airplay support #112)
• Add Crossfade between tracks, configurable in Settings > General > Playback (Add Crossfade support between tracks #347, fixes Feature Request: Option to allow crossfade transition between tracks #266)
• Add ReplayGain volume normalization with gain source and preamp selection (Add ReplayGain support with source and preamp selection #348, fixes Feature Request: Add support for ReplayGain #102)
• Redesign Discover with Featured, Recently Played, and Most Loved & Played sections (Redesign Discover to include multiple sections of recommendations #350)
• Redesign Library tab into a 3-column layout, and allow pinning any entity type to the Home sidebar (Redesign Library tab & update entity artwork generation #356)
• Add support for using a custom local or online image as artwork for artists and playlists (Use custom local or online artwork image for artists & playlists #359)
• Add support for negative operators (is not, does not contain, does not start with, does not end with) and regular expressions in Smart Playlists (Add support for negative operators & regex in Smart Playlists #358)
• Group tracks by album when viewed under Artist, Album Artist, and Composer, with per-group sorting and play controls (Group tracks by album when viewed under artist types #371, fixes Feature Request: split the Library's artist view by albums #90, Feature Request: allow grouping artists by artist-album #95, Feature Request: See albums for a given Artist #99)
• Add disc number sections for tracks within multi-disc albums (Add disc # sections for tracks within albums #369, fixes Feature Request: Split albums by discs #120)
• Show the full list of supported audio formats in a grouped popover, reachable from Settings > Library (Show supported audio formats in a grouped popover #346, fixes Feature Request: We kindly request support for the playback of DTS music files #211)
• Add Mini Player action to the menubar dropdown (Add Mini Player action in menubar dropdown #365)
• Revamp the onboarding experience for new users (Revamp new user onboarding experience & improve app launch speed #353)

Enhancements

• Remove SFBAudioEngine and make CrescendoKit the default (and only) media engine for playback and metadata extraction (Remove SFBAudioEngine & use CrescendoKit as default media engine #343)
  • Note: this drops playback support for the MOD, IT, S3M, and XM tracker formats, and adds a large number of new formats in return. See the updated list in the README or the in-app formats popover.
  • Thanks to Stephen Booth for building and maintaining SFBAudioEngine all these years.
• Reduce CPU usage during playback by up to 4 times, idle to ~0% CPU when nothing is playing, and automatically engage macOS App Nap when eligible (Reduce app CPU usage by up to 4 times #364, fixes Feature Request: App Nap support #274)
• Speed up app launch by rewriting state management and restoration (Revamp new user onboarding experience & improve app launch speed #353)
• Adapt playback queue management and Now Playing publishing to Crescendo APIs (Adapt playback queue management to use Crescendo APIs #344)
• Add Years to the Discover carousels alongside albums, artists, genres, and playlists (Add years to Discover carousels #373)
• Allow toggling off Internet Radio and artist info refreshing, and make artist info fetching fail-safe (Allow for toggling Internet Radio & artist info refreshing #366)
• Give Genre, Year, Decade, and Folder entities their own distinct procedural artwork, and animate dominant artwork colours on first load (Redesign Library tab & update entity artwork generation #356)
• Harden database integrity against invalid album years, make track and orphan cleanup atomic and scalable, and clear dangling pins and entities (Consolidate release database migrations and harden schema #372)
• Hide scrollbars in the lyrics view for a cleaner, more immersive look (Hide scrollbars in lyrics view #340) (Thanks @akkva!)

Fixes

• Fix the track Go-to menu incorrectly splitting artist names containing separators like & or / (Fix track Go-to menu to show artists' names correctly #338, fixes Bug: Artists with an ampersand (&) in the name gets split into separate artists in the go to menu #337)
• Fix tracks occasionally showing incorrect artwork (Fix tracks occasionally showing incorrect artwork #368, fixes Bug: Wrong album cover #357)
• Fix bilingual lyrics highlighting for lines sharing the same timestamp (Fix bilingual lyrics highlighting in LRC parser #342) (Thanks @akkva!)
• Prevent the track details sidebar from shrinking past a minimum width while resizing (Prevent track details sidebar from shrinking past certain limit #367, fixes Bug: Right sidebar can be shrunk too narrow and then can't be dragged back #355)
• Fix a regression where advancing tracks could behave incorrectly, plus assorted UI polish across the app (Redesign Library tab & update entity artwork generation #356, Prepare for v1.7.0 release #374)

Others

• Consolidate all post-v1.6.1 database migrations into a single migration for a clean schema ledger (Consolidate release database migrations and harden schema #372)
• Add a preflight check for missing API keys when building the installer (Add preflight check for missing API keys #334)
• Isolate debug builds with a distinct app icon and debug configuration for --dev installers (Update build configuration to isolate debug builds #341)
• Run release checks on pull requests in CI (Allow for toggling Internet Radio & artist info refreshing #366)
• Replace .aspectRatio(contentMode: .fill) with .scaledToFill() to clear SwiftLint violations (Use scaledToFill instead of aspectRatio modifier #362)
• Update Sparkle to 2.9.6, refresh the README and Acknowledgements, and bump the build version (Prepare for v1.7.0 release #374)

Full Changelog: v1.6.1...v1.7.0

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This discussion was created from the release v1.7.0.

[kushalpandya]

I want to add more context on the decision behind this release being the last one for macOS 14 and Intel both.

Why drop macOS 14?

I've been relying on VMs to test dev builds against older macOS versions, and with macOS Golden Gate coming up soon, supporting 2 previous releases along with current release will help ease up testing burden for me given that I work on this project solo.

Also, various SwiftUI widgets are very unreliable in terms of behaviour and performance on older macOS versions, so with the features I have planned for future of this app, backporting those while also maintaining the polish and performance of the app would not be feasible for me.

Why drop Intel?

I don't have an Intel mac with me any more, so I've been relying on some of my friends who have Intel macs to test my dev builds, which is not convenient.

Also, Apple is sunsetting Rosetta 2 support on macOS, which means building universal binaries on Apple Silicon that continue to work on Intel too will be increasingly difficult in future. If you cannot move to Apple Silicon, you can continue to use Petrichor v1.7, and if it misses the features you want, I'd encourage looking at alternatives (or move to Apple Silicon to continue receiving updates to the app).