According to Google’s Material 3 guideline for the navigation bar component, it is recommended to have text labels underneath the icons. It is an accessibility feature to have text labels because sometimes icons can be indiscernible. Having the choice to toggle this would be great, such as (Icons only, Icons and labels, Icons with Labels only on the active destination).
Problem solved:
I have a few icons on this navigation bar and sometimes it’s hard to know which one is which.
Some destinations also use the same icon, for example Album and All Albums, so having just the icons means they are indistinguishable.
Icons look nice but unless I have muscle memory of the location of my intended destination, or know which icon is which, sometimes I have to try a few times to get to the right place.
Text is still easier to interpret, icon should be a secondary visual aid.
Brought benefits:
If users can enable text labels and be able to read it, it will help accessibility more. I don’t use screen readers but adding text might also help?
I don’t often use the home shortcuts at the top because my phone is too big to reach, so I do rely a lot on the bottom navigation bar to get to where I want. With text labels added, it will improve the bar’s usability.
I also really like the look with the labels included, but that’s just my opinion. Symfonium is the best app in its field, one reason being its customization, having this additional option would be an extra bonus.
Other application solutions:
Here is ReadYou customization option for this removed image
(I’m a new use so can’t include more than one media, but they basically have option to show Icons, Icons & Labels, Icons & Labels (active only))
Well the spec also says no less than 3 no more than 5 and yes I allows all that and more
Since this is a paid app, in the end I have a lot less support than on others apps from “nice” users who enable non compatible options then complains that it does not work.
So if I add this, I guess you’ll still be here to explain to users with 8 icons that yes 8 texts can’t fit there
I’m not good at reading tone from text, so I’ll try my best to explain myself.
You can keep the default as is. The spec is for guidance and use cases can vary, of course. But I just thought having the option to have the labels will improve the UX.
Texts can be truncated, and with more than maybe 4 or 5 items the texts will truncate and look ugly, but the default behavior should remain icon only with additional accessibility option to turn labels on. So if it looks ugly, it can be turned off. Is that what you meant by the last paragraph?
If there’s no great interest in this, that’s fine. It’s just a small thing I wanted to bring up after using it for a while.
Edit: nevermind, I understand what you mean now. I’ll stick around and try to help support, sure. Normally for these UI things I’d try and contribute if the app is open source, but since it’s not, I guess I’ll stick around to help in anyway possible!
Yes the last sentence is about all the dumb users who do not read and think about what they do then complains a lot.
On Yatse there’s an option to change the phone wallpaper to the currently active media, you can’t imagine the number of insults I get from users telling me that Yatse change the phone wallpaper without their consent …
So yes if I add options that can lead to visual issues, people will enable them and will complains, and I’m honestly really tired those days of all those dumb people.
And since people who are happy with the app usually don’t bother to leave a rating to counter those, in the end it’s negative for the app. (And it requires like 25 5 stars to counter those with the last Google algo on ratings calculation)
That’s infuriating to see ratings like that where they get angry before they try and seek support. I can’t fathom how you deal with them. You don’t deserve it!
And well, I have no antidote for moronic people. No amount of warning banner or big red text can keep them from dumpster-rating apps. It seems like one small positive change can potentially lead to a lot of harm you have to harbor.
If I can help as an individual user, let me know how. Whether or not you decide to implement this change is up to you, I’m extremely happy with Symfonium otherwise. Thanks a lot Tolriq.
I’m embarrassed that I haven’t reviewed it on GPS . Been distancing from Google’s ecosystem but I still keep it around for apps like yours. I just went ahead and left a review!
Would marking those reviews as unhelpful derank their significance on the overall rating?
By the way, I was thinking, if you were to consider implementing it, perhaps the visual issues with too much truncated text can be resolved by these few things?
Automatic turning off labels for cases like if >5 items selected or if >=2 labels truncated? I’m a power user so I would just turn the text off if it looks to cluttered. But having these checks to auto switch it off could help prevent the bar looking awful for potentially complaining people.
For some labels, shorten the text cleverly if it’s going to truncate instead? So for example, with “Compilation” one can have “Comp.” if it’s going to become “Compi…”, likewise “All Albums” → “A. Albums”, “Record labels” → “Rec. labels”. There are some tricky ones like Album Artists, and the Album/Artist Tags though.
I don’t know maybe it’s all a silly idea. I currently have Home, Search, Library and Albums so that would look okay.
I was messing around with LibreTube navbar, anymore than this, for example, would look very cluttered.
I do not think the unhelpful have any incidence on the calculation, just less risk to have it put in the helpful comment list that is shown by default.
Automatic option to show hide other options is messy and users will complains because they can’t find the option that is in the doc
For translations there’s already some short version of those for buttons, but some languages are just long .
And yes from your screenshot it’s the 5 items, Google put reasonable limits, but on that screenshots, the icons does not respect the specs (not empty to filled when selected) and the ellipsis text on one line is also forbidden in the spec
Anyway I’ll see what I can do and how many people will complain.
If I read a “review” like that it makes me want to try the thing that is being reviewed even more.
My favorite are big hard drive reviews on amazon where people think they have been scammed out of a few TBs of storange since they don’t know the difference between a tebibyte and a terabyte and only read what windows displays. Popcorn material.
Anyhow I’ve finally reviewed the app as well, which should offset in the other direction a bit.
. Been distancing from Google’s ecosystem but I still keep it around for apps like yours. I just went ahead and left a review!
