Feature description
There is currently a discrepancy in how metadata is displayed between the internal
Symfonium player and external Android interfaces (Notification Player and Android Auto).
When a hyphen “-” is used in an artist or song name, the Android system controllers
appear to automatically inject spaces before and after the character. For example, the
artist “BUCK-TICK” is displayed correctly in-app, but appears as “BUCK - TICK” on the
lock screen and in Android Auto.
Problem solved
I would like to request a way to ensure that the raw metadata string is preserved when
passed to the MediaSession API.
This could be achieved via:
A: An option to “Force Raw Metadata” to external controllers.
B: An internal formatting override that prevents the Android OS from treating hyphens
as delimiters.
Brought benefits
For many artists, specific punctuation is part of their official name or branding.
Thebautomatic addition of spaces makes the library look inconsistent and breaks the visual
integrity of the metadata that Symfonium otherwise handles perfectly.
Device type
Phone
Screenshots / Mockup
I searched existing feature requests
on
Just as reference for anyone reading this thread, this may be a device-specific issue. I can’t test Android Auto but my app notification does not have this issue (on an Android 13 device).
As you can see, “10-FEET” has no added spaces in the notification. The artist name (and all other info) is displayed exactly as it is in my tags.
This is probably the font the device use there. I have no control and send the proper raw strings.
That makes sense, and I appreciate the clarification!
It seems like Android is being a little ‘too helpful’ and auto-formatting that specific character in the system font.
I noticed an interesting quirk: it happens with ‘BUCK-TICK’ (where the hyphen is between letters), but names like ‘10-FEET’ (hyphen next to a number) display perfectly without the extra spaces. It definitely seems like a system-level logic issue with how Android UI handles delimiters.
Since it’s an OS quirk, would you ever consider adding an optional toggle to ‘Sanitize metadata’ for MediaSession? It could just swap standard hyphens for non-breaking ones (U+2010) when sending to the OS, which would ‘trick’ the system font into keeping the name together.
I know it’s a niche request, but it would be a great QoL feature for keeping things visually consistent across Symfonium and android auto.
No I won’t as it would break external scrobblers.
Mine doesn’t even do it with the name you’re using
