Add option to treat internal storage media provider like webdav or samba

Feature requests
,
1

Feature description:

Essentially, add option to treat media in the internal storage provider as external. Currently, the media are all viewed as “offline cached”, but an option to treat it as external like webdav or samba would allow the use of a usb drive library, and let you cache music so the drive doesn’t need to be plugged in to listen.

Problem solved:

Allows caching music on usb otg library for playback even when the drive is unplugged. Removes dependence on unreliable webdav apps

Brought benefits:

Opens up a new way to store library and manage music

Other application solutions:

unknown

Additional description and context:

Technically a duplicate of External usb as media provider - #13 by splinter, but I think this request is much smaller in scope and thus worth opening. Sorry for the churn if I should’ve bumped that thread instead. I won’t make another ticket related to this idea, whether you implement it or not. Thanks for your time!

Screenshots / Mockup:

a workaround is to use a webdav file server app (like https://apkpure.com/http-file-server-webdav/slowscript.httpfileserver) to make the usb drive accessible via webdav or samba, and then connect to that in symfonium. This works with very small libraries, but with bigger ones the file server app starts to fail to serve the files reliably. It would be easier and less convoluted if symfonium had an option to just treat the internal storage as “external”, or in other words treat it the way it treats webdav/samba. It should probably include a warning that it’s untested like the warning when using webday/samba

2

I don’t really see the difference to the original request. Either you can solve this by having a phone with more storage (if your library is let’s say < 1TB), or you can simply set up a remote provider and put your music there, and let Symfonium offline-cache and possibly transcode from there, like it is intended to do with this app. A remote provider would cost you even less than a new phone - take a Raspi for < $50 and install either Samba or LMS or the provider of your choice.

3

This request is streamlined for only one setting of the several requested in the original. And this allows you to not buy a new phone, not need to learn how to host, and still easily have your music available everywhere, including when you don’t have access to the internet. The webdav app I mentioned is an even easier workaround than the two you mentioned, and still has some big downsides compared to simply being able to treat internal storage the way webdav is treated

4

Symfonium keeps trying to play songs on removed usb storage is also a “duplicate” of the original. My thinking was if symfonium gracefully handles failing to play media in local storage, then the next step of having a toggle to allow you to copy a song on internal storage to a cache is a much smaller ask and achieves the minimum viable product for a usb library