Feature description:
I’m a heavy music listener with a large personal library stored on my home NAS.
I mainly use Symfonium as a client for a Navidrome server running on my NAS, plus some local files stored on my Android device.
My typical use case is:
- Browsing and listening to a large number of tracks across many albums and artists
- Managing playlists and “best of” selections
- Often listening on mobile, in short time windows (commute, breaks, etc.)
What I need is not a specific technical solution, but the ability to very quickly “sample” many tracks without having to listen to each song in full or manually seek and skip all the time.
Problem solved:
Right now, if I want to quickly check or compare a lot of songs (for example, to decide which ones to add to a playlist or to rank them), I have to:
- Start a track
- Listen for a while
- Manually seek to a different part if I want to hear the “interesting” section
- Manually skip to the next track
- Repeat this over and over
This is slow and tiring when you have a big library.
The problem is:
I cannot efficiently “preview” many songs in a short time.
There is no mode where Symfonium automatically plays only a short part of each track and then moves on, like a digest or sample mode. I need a way to quickly hear a bit of each track without constant manual interaction.
Brought benefits:
A short-clip / digest style playback mode would benefit not only my very specific use case, but many users with larger libraries:
-
Faster music discovery
Users can explore albums, artists, or genres much more quickly by hearing only short segments of each track. -
Easier playlist curation
When creating “best of”, workout, driving, or mood playlists, it becomes much easier to compare songs and decide what fits, without listening to full tracks. -
Works well with local / NAS collections
People who self-host (Navidrome, Jellyfin, etc.) often have huge libraries. A digest-style preview mode helps them manage and enjoy their collections more efficiently, similar to how streaming services offer short “Samples” clips. -
Better for mobile / limited time
On mobile, or when you only have a few minutes, being able to quickly sample many tracks is much more practical than full-track playback.
In short, this feature would make Symfonium more powerful as a library exploration and curation tool, not just a player for full-track listening.
Other application solutions:
YouTube Music has a feature called “Samples” where you can quickly preview short clips of many songs by scrolling through them.
This feature works very well for fast music discovery because you can hear just the important or catchy part of a track without playing the full song.
However, this solution does not perfectly fit my needs because:
- It only works inside YouTube Music (not for local/NAS libraries)
- The clips are chosen by Google and cannot be customized
- You cannot apply this feature to your own playlists, albums, or smart filters
So while the idea of short previews is exactly what I want, I need a version that works on my own music library (Navidrome/Jellyfin/local files) and gives more control over which part of each track is played.
Additional description and context:
My library is very large (thousands of tracks), stored on a NAS and accessed via Navidrome through Symfonium.
When I want to create playlists or rediscover old music, a full-track playback workflow is too slow.
A digest mode would let me:
- Quickly hear a few seconds of each track
- Compare many songs back to back
- Decide which ones belong in a playlist much faster
- Explore albums or artists without spending a long time on each track
Even a simple option like:
“Play each track for X seconds, then automatically skip to the next”
would dramatically improve the speed of browsing large libraries.
An optional advanced version might allow:
- Starting the preview at a custom timestamp (e.g., start at 00:30 and play 15 seconds)
- Applying the mode to playlists, albums, filters, or entire libraries
- Quickly toggling digest-mode on/off during playback
Screenshots / Mockup: