This update was a lot of work. Please consider supporting me on Patreon
This version introduces the option to show the cover image from your media player in your status, update installation directly within the app, including automatic cryptographic verification and automatic installation whenever a new version is available, a revamped tray menu which is better organized and more user-friendly, controls over which external services are used to get additional song metadata and more. Read below for details.
Added the option to use the album cover image directly from the media player. You will now always have a cover image in your status, if your media player supplies one.
- Media players like foobar2000 and MusicBee, which play local files, like MP3 and FLAC, will show the cover image that is embedded in the music file or detected otherwise by your media player.
- How does this work? A small version of the cover image (100x100, less than 50KB) is temporarily uploaded to our own service and stored only for the duration that the Discord status is visible. This has minimal impact on your internet bandwidth. For more information read the documentation and the privacy notice.
- The code that powers this feature is open-source! See https://github.com/ungive/loon.
- Why? Some media players do not report the name of the album the song is from. Because of this it is impossible to tell which album cover image is the correct one and sometimes the Discord status would show the wrong image (or no image at all). With this update the status will always show the correct cover image. Additionally Music Presence does not rely on an external service like the TIDAL API anymore to have a cover image in the status.
- If this feature is disabled or an error is encountered, then Music Presence falls back to the old behaviour and works exactly like previous versions by using an appropriate API service to get a cover image (given that these are enabled in the settings).
- Music Presence only contacts our service when its enabled in the settings, when the Discord status is enabled and music is actively playing and being shared in your Discord status. When you stop listening, Music Presence disconnects after a short idle timeout.
- The application logs show exactly when Music Presence connects to the proxy, when it disconnects and when a cover image is uploaded.
The application now installs updates automatically. A number of checks are made before an update is actually installed, including but not limited to cryptographically strong authentication of the source.
- For information about the security of the updater read the documentation.
- This feature is enabled by default, but can be disabled in the settings.
- Updates are downloaded from the GitHub release page, just like you would to manually update.
- The following checks are made before any downloaded update is installed:
- The integrity of the downloaded update's content is verified with a SHA256 checksum.
- The authenticity of the downloaded update's content is verified with an Ed25519 cryptographic signature.
- The update is only installed when the version is newer than the currently running version. This check is also authenticated with the same cryptographic signature.
- The source code of the updater component is open-source (too)! See https://github.com/ungive/libupdate.
- The update installation does not require elevated administator privileges.
- Why? There are a lot of features planned, which is why automatic updates were introduced. Automatic updates allow me to make more frequent and smaller releases which can be adopted much more quickly than before. This feature also saves the manual download step that was necessary before and verifies the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded update, so you do not have to do it manually.
- Downloaded updates are only applied and executed on program startup. Whenever an update is installed, you are required to manually restart the application or wait until you run Music Presence the next time.
- If you disable automatic updates, any downloaded updates will be deleted immediately. So in case an update was installed automatically, but you don't want it to be executed, you can simply disable the feature and remain using the currently installed version.
- Because of the introduction of this update,
each release now also has a
sha256sum.txtandsha256sum.txt.sigfile, which contain the SHA256 checksum and the Ed25519 signature respectively. If you want to, you can use these files to verify your download yourself, by following the steps here. - This feature is currently only available to Windows users, but Mac users will get automatic updates in the future too.
- When automatic updates are enabled and a new version is launched, you will see a popup with the latest changes, so you won't miss out on what was added in the latest update.
- You can also open the changelog popup from the settings window, if you ever think you missed something.
- When a new version is available and automatic updates are disabled, the application shows a popup window with the changelog of the newest version and a button to install the update. This can be disabled in the settings.
- The application now shows a popup with the latest changelog whenever you start a new version. This can be disabled in the settings, but I recommend you leave it on, so you don't miss out on what was added in the latest update. This popup is not shown if you launch Music Presence for the very first time.
- When clicking a checkbox, the tray menu is not closed anymore. That way it should be easier to change multiple settings in one go instead of having to reopen the menu every time after changing a setting.
- Separated settings into two new submenus "Appearance" and "Settings". "Appearance" contains all settings in regard to what your Discord presence looks like. "Settings" contains all other settings.
- Added controls for which external services are enabled and used. You can now enable or disable the use of the TIDAL API and MusicBrainz API. These services are used to get cover images, additional artists and other song metadata that might be missing. If other services are added in the future, controls for them will appear here. If an API for a specific streaming service is enabled, it will generally only be used when its respective media player is playing music.
- Appearance settings for "Playing" and "Listening to" are retained when switching between them. You can now switch to one without losing your settings for the other. Before "Playing" and "Listening to" were reset to the default settings, whenever you switched between them. This has been fixed.
- Media without an artist is not skipped anymore. You can now share songs from e.g. MP3 files that aren't properly tagged. Previously media without an artist was skipped by Music Presence.
- Showing the album name on the third line in the Discord status, when using the "Playing" type, the title and artist are shown on a single line and showing the album name is enabled in the settings.
- The autostart path is updated when the application starts. Previously, if you launched Music Presence from a different install location, autostart would appear disabled for that installation until enabled manually. This fixes that.
- Moved the update information banner to the bottom of the tray menu, so it's not in the way, but still clearly visible.
- Now saving a backup of the settings file if it contains syntax errors, such that editing it does not cause it to be completely reset, in case any syntax errors are introduced by the user.
- Removed the setting to enable or disable Discord invite notifications, as that notification is only shown once per installation anyway.
- Long title and/or artist names are shortened in the tray menu, so that the menu does not get overly wide. Hovering over the song information shows the entire title and artist.
- The Windows installer does not require elevated privileges anymore.
- Renamed the setting "Show the song title and artist on separate lines" to "Show the song title and artist on a single line".
- Fixed Discord RPC and TIDAL API errors when song or artist names are too long.
- Fixed an issue with UTF-16 characters in filesystem paths, where configuration and log files would not be saved correctly or at all. Fixes #34.
- The
--launchparameter oflauncher.exeon Windows now behaves the same way as the--launch-if-closedparameter, only launching the application if it is not running already. - Added a
--local-launchparameter tolauncher.exeon Windows, which applies any updates that have been downloaded to%LOCALAPPDATA%\Music Presenceand starts the latest version. To clarify,--launchonly launches the executable that is in the same directory as the launcher, while--local-launchlaunches any installation in the local app data directory.
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- Added the option to use the "Listening" activity type instead of "Playing". This option is disabled by default and must be enabled explicitly. The listening activity type does not show any playback duration though, due to Discord seemingly ignoring the timestamp fields at this time. The text on the large image is also put on the last line, so when using the "on" prefix the text that pops up when hovering over the album image will contain "on" as well. Closes #29.
- Showing all artists for songs from TIDAL, not just the main artist.
- Added the option to enable/disable the "by" prefix for the artist name.
- Added the option to enable/disable an "on" prefix for the album name.
- Added the option to enable/disable the album name.
- Added the option to enable/disable the playback duration.
- Improvements and bug fixes
- Logging the version of Music Presence on program startup.
- Renamed the setting
Show the name of the player after "Playing"toShow the name of the player instead of "Music".
- Added the option to show the name of the media player you are using after "Playing", so e.g. "Playing TIDAL" or "Playing Amazon Music" as an alternative to "Playing Music". Visit the settings to enable this feature!
- Added the option to start Music Presence at login on Windows.
When you're updating or installing Music Presence for the first time,
the application will be registered to start at login automatically,
you do not have to enable this yourself
- You can disable autostart in the settings menu of the application or by opening the task manager and disabling the entry for Music Presence under the "Autostart" tab
- Autostart on Mac will be added in a future update
- Added a launcher executable
launcher.exeon Windows which aids with the following:- Starting Music Presence multiple times will make sure it's only running once (if started with the Start Menu shortcut or directly with the launcher executable)
- The uninstaller makes use of the launcher to close all running instances of Music Presence before proceeding to uninstall the old version and then installing the new version (solves #24)
- The launcher executable takes the following command line arguments:
--launch-if-closed: Launches Music Presence if it's not running--launch: Simply launches Music Presence, without any checks--close-all: Closes all instances of Music Presence. The launcher exits once all instances of Music Presence have terminated.- No arguments: Behaves the same as with
--launch-if-closedonly. - You can start the launcher with multiple arguments
and each of them will be evaluated in the order they were used.
For instance, to restart Music Presence you can use
launcher.exe --close-all --launch
- Media players
- Added Windows Media Player on Windows (disabled by default)
- The reason why it is disabled by default is that users might not expect media from the Windows Media Player to show up in their status, if they mainly use it to watch video files
- Added more application identifiers for Apple Music on Windows
- Added Windows Media Player on Windows (disabled by default)
- Improvements and bug fixes
- Added "by" prefix to artist name when title and artist are shown on separate lines, so that it's clear which one resembles the artist
- Using the album artist on Windows, if it is available and the media player does not report any artist. Mitigates an issue with Apple Music on Windows (see #20)
- Added product, copyright and version information to the main Windows executable
- Added
--versioncommand line flag to print the current version- Also closing the application if it's called with any other command line arguments
- In light of the new autolaunch feature on Windows
and the possibilty that many users have added Music Presence to
shell:startup, the main executable will exit if it detects that it's already running. Otherwise the application might be launched twice with the new update - Changed the Windows app icon back to the same one as the tray icon
- Disabled requests to music APIs while Discord wasn't even connected
- Fixed presence updates sometimes being wrongfully cancelled
- Features
- Added option to show title and artist on separate lines
- Improvements and bug fixes
- Fixed a problem with multiple instances of the same media player, where songs from those two instances would continuously conflict and cause the media observer to detect "changes" even though there are none
- Fixed never clearing presence when it's queued for clearing too frequently (the presence is always cleared after a short delay), which happened a lot with the previous bug
- Only clearing the presence once and not again, if it's already cleared
- Clearing the presence when a Discord RPC error occurs
- Fixed a bug with text in the presence that is only one character long, which would cause a Discord error and break the presence
- Other
- Changed my username on GitHub to "ungive" which is reflected in the application
- Added release for Mac OS (required version is 11.0 or newer)
- Added some necessary limits and delays to presence updates:
- An enforced hard limit of 5 presence updates per 20 seconds (as required by Discord): https://discord.com/developers/docs/topics/gateway-events#activity-object-example-activity-with-rich-presence
- A configurable limit of 2 updates per 5000 milliseconds (see #14). For information on how to customize this limit see here. If you play around with it, please let me know in the linked issue which values work best for you. Thank you!
- Any update that falls outside of the allowed range is delayed until a point in time where this limit would not be violated. If many updates are delayed in a row, only the latest one will be shown in the Discord presence.
- Other improvements and bug fixes:
- Added a banner and button to the tray menu to inform the user when a new version is available
- Removed repeated Presence updates in cases where the media didn't change at all
- Fixed a bug where songs that were being played on repeat did not reset their playback position back to 0:00
- Settings are not saved when the application is closed anymore, so that the user can edit the settings file while Music Presence is opened and restart the application without the changes being deleted
- Media player support:
- Added more application identifiers for TIDAL on Windows
- Added MusicBee, Deezer and Apple Music on Windows
- Improvements and bug fixes:
- Fixed out of sync playback positions or the remaining time showing "0:00".
- Fixed a bug where sometimes media wouldn't show in the status for some media players (#7)
- Improved detection of when the Discord presence should be updated, so it's updated only as frequently as needed.
- Improved caching of music API requests to reduce the number of requests that are made
- Improved Music API error handling and logging
- Improved handling of erroneous playback position data from some media players
- Fixed an issue where media with a duration of 0 seconds would be stuck at "0:00 left"
- Reduced the number of similar or less meaningful messages in the logs
- Fixed crash when there is a new version on GitHub
- Added a Windows ZIP archive release, for those who want it
- Complete rewrite of the software, featuring substantial changes, including:
- Media playback is detected for all media players, not just TIDAL, which allows the user to use the software with a broader range of players and which makes the software more universal.
- Uses actual system APIs instead of reading and parsing a window title, which makes the software a lot more reliable and future-proof.
- Fine-grained control over which media is shared with Discord, by providing explicit controls on a per application basis.
- New task menu layout with improved controls.
- Shows an icon in the Discord status to indicate which application or streaming service is playing the media.
- Whenever support for a new media player is added, the user does not need to install a new version. All necessary information about new media players is updated whenever the software is started.
- For media players other than TIDAL the MusicBrainz API is used.
- The Discord status now show the exact playback position in real time.
- The Discord status for TIDAL contains a button that allows others to open the song in a browser for various popular streaming services.
- While all media on the system is detected,
only a set of whitelisted players is shared with Discord for the moment.
The rationale behind this is outlined in this issue.
Users can easily suggest the addition of a new player by:
- Opening an appropriate issue here
- Clicking on "My media player is not detected" in the tray menu.
- Now includes a detailed privacy policy that outlines:
- Which data is collected by the software.
- Which online services the data is sent to.
- How the user can control their data.
- To read the entire privacy policy, see PRIVACY.md.
- Released under the name "Music Presence", without using the Discord brand name.
- Licensed under different terms, since the software has been rewritten from the ground up. See LICENSE.md for details.
- Currently only works on Windows, but support for Mac and Linux is underway.
- Future plans are outlined in ROADMAP.md.
- If you would like to fund the project, see FUNDING.md.
- Showing "Playing Music" in the status by default now, instead of "Playing TIDAL".
- Fixed version numbers, which caused permanent "new version available notifications", even though there is no new version available.
- When a new version is available, show its version number in the notification.
- Updated the Discord Game SDK to version 3.2.1 (from version 2).
- Allow the use of a custom Discord application ID.
- Only show the Discord status while a song is playing and at no other time.
- Changes to the appearance of the Discord status.
- These changes were initially part of a pull request:
purpl3F0x/TIDAL-Discord-Rich-Presence-UNOFFICIAL#100