External usb as media provider

Feature requests
1

Feature description:

I’m thinking about moving my media library to a usb drive, so I tried it with a song that’s not in my normal media provider.

I plugged the usb into my phone, went to settings->manage media providers->add media provider->local device->by folders/sdcard->add folder, made a new folder on my usb, selected it and pressed finish. I went to the home page, filters, synced local storage, and as expected it had no files. Then I ejected the usb via the android notification, added a song to it on my computer, then plugged it back into my phone, and synced in symfonium. It synced, found the new song, and when I searched in symfonium for it I found it. I was able to play the song, but, this is where I ran into problems:

  • there’s no way to add it to the offline cache. Even if I add it to a playlist and cache the playlist, it doesn’t get added
  • when I unplug the usb and attempt to sync, it generates an error
  • when I unplug the usb and try to play the song, it gets stuck in a loop attempting to start and failing

I’d like for there to be an option for folders selected by the local storage media provider to mark them as external storage, and treat those folders a bit more like cloud providers:

  • when the usb is unplugged, treat the folder as “offline”, the same way cloud media providers can go offline. Note that these folders should ignore standard auto-offline rules like wifi/cellular, because they’re only limited by whether the usb is plugged in or not
  • allow files in those folders to be copied to offline cache (permanent, via auto rules, if liked songs are automatically cached, and rolling), the way cloud provider files can
  • allow importing and creating “online-first” playlists stored on the external storage, so those playlists can be stored on the usb drive and accessed if you’re listening on a different device

Problem solved:

Allows for a large media library which wouldn’t fit on a phone to still be portable, without requiring the user to walk around with a usb drive plugged in

Brought benefits:

I’ve seen 1 TB usb c flash drives that are quite small. Having a more flexible local storage media provider that gracefully handles losing access to the files when the usb is unplugged reduces dependencies on cloud services and makes “self hosting” your music collection even more accessible. With that, I could easily keep my music library on my keys for example and save money and maintenance effort on a personal server (electricity costs, hosting costs, etc, all add up. Plus the security risks of port forwarding, on top of the fact that some isps don’t allow port forwarding in the first place, or make it difficult by only allowing you to open port 443).

Other application solutions:

 

 

Additional description and context:

I’m not the best at marketing, but it seems like once this is implemented it could open symfoniums userbase up to a whole new crowd who don’t know how (or don’t want to) to host their own music server, and don’t want to pay for google drive/etc cloud storage, and don’t have enough space on their phone. I’m sure there are subreddits and forums full of people who have big libraries but no way to make them portable, or who manually copy over a few thousand songs at a time who would switch to symfonium once they learned about this. Maybe I’m just getting too excited at the possibilities tho :slight_smile:

 

Screenshots / Mockup:

    

2

Or most of those people would just have the hard drive connected when wanting to play from it ? :slight_smile:

I’m sorry but this is extremely niche and don’t worth all the necessary changes.

3

Perhaps look into using a server back end, like navidrome or lms? You’ll be able to achieve what you’re trying to do (large music library stored off device, able to cache on device for when not connected to larger library), you’ll just use an internet connection instead of USB.

Its the use was the app was designed for and works pretty well (assuming a stable connection while downloading cache). You can even mark artists or albums as favorites on the server and have symfonium download those automatically into offline cache. Like an iPod + iTunes but way better.

4

Yeah I currently have a navidrome server set up, but I’m looking to stop using it. I originally set it up because some friends said they’d use it too, but then they never did and decided they weren’t going to. It is very nice, but for example my work wifi blocks my domain, and it would be better to just carry around my library on a tiny usb drive that fits on my keys. Then I could have my full library accessible anywhere, even out of service like when camping and road tripping, and without eating up my data limits

5

Would you be open to changing your mind if I asked around on some forums and found people interested in a feature like this?

I think the necessary changes may not be too many, but I’m obviously not familiar with the codebase and even if I had access, android projects tend to be hard to follow for me, and of course with code it’s easy to write simple looking requirements that are actually very hard to implement, and I don’t know which this is. That said, let me propose what I think you could do, based on existing features.

After the user has selected the folders they want with the saf, the main “new code” needed would be to add a toggle next to each one - is this folder external, or will it always be accessible? For always accessible ones, no changes are needed.

For external folders, the “Auto Sync” setting would always be acivated, and if symfonium is able to sync that folder, then it acts as normal.

If there is an error, not a missing file which may have been removed from the library but an actual read error (i.e. the drive isn’t accessible because it’s unplugged), then any files whose path is within that folder get treated as offline the same way any file associated with an internet library gets treated as offline under certain conditions.

For the files, any file associated with an “external” folder would have the same “more options” menu as files associated with an internet library provider

So at least in theory, the main totally unique code would be the new setting switch for saf folders, and after that it would just be reusing logic that already exists for the local storage provider (“auto sync”) and that already exists for internet libraries (the “more options” menu for tracks and the functionality it exposes, like copying files to cache). In a certain sense, this feature is simply better error handling when a folder selected under the local storage provider, as well as allowing local storage to be copied to cache

6

in fact, a simple version of this request that I’d be happy with would be to split it to a feature request and bug report:

feature request: add a setting under local storage provider to allow files to be copied to cache (maybe with a warning that this will take up a lot of space if the folders aren’t external)

bug report: symfonium doesn’t gray out media from local storage provider when the folder those media are in isn’t accessible (distinct case from when the files have been deleted, maybe android error that gets thrown is unique?). Currently in this case, the files appear accessible like nothing’s wrong, but fail to play. The state could simply be updated on sync if it returns a certain error, or if attempting to play a file fails in a certain way.

7

Anyways, sorry for so much text, thanks for your time and consideration and great app!

8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hyIjYoDFuDI 22,000 people are at least somewhat interested in this since jan 2024. If symfonium was a top result that popped up for people searching stuff along the lines of “music library usb/flash drive” it could generate some decent traffic

9

How about using a phone with micro SD card slot, put a 512GB card in it, and you can easily carry a 60k song library with you - like I do :slight_smile:

10

I wish my phone had a micro sd card slot :frowning: but I can’t justify the cost of a whole new phone just for this. I think the minimum viable change I’d want for this is just the ability to add local storage songs to various caches, everything else is just bonus (although graying out files when they’re not available would be a close second)

11

Just think of it like this: it would cost Tolriq possibly more than $500 worth of work to implement (test, support, …) this properly, without the expectation that sales will boost to compensate it (you are the first one in years to ask for this after all). You on the other side could invest (probably less than) $500 to solve the issue for yourself easily.

Just trying to give you a different perspective to understand why this feature is currently not on the roadmap. :slight_smile:

1 Like
12

Definitely, I wouldn’t hold it against tolriq for not adding this feature, I know I can come across as more demanding than I feel :slight_smile: I just do legitimately think it would add a lot of value to the app, so I’m trying to make the best case I can for it, as well as pushing for a “minimum viable change”

13

That’s understandable and works in your favor (at least on the moral side :wink:).

14

I tried out the webdav provider by running dufs in termux on my phone, and then pointing symfonium to it, and it does everything I’m asking for in this request. But termux-saf-* can’t mount a directory in a way that dufs could use, and that’s the only non-root way to access usb storage from termux :frowning:

edit: I found several other webdav and samba server apps, and while they work for accessing a local folder, none of them can access usb storage so that’s not a viable workaround

so essentially, this request is for a media provider that behaves like the webdav provider, but uses SAF instead of webdav to acces the files