Android Serious UI Flaw: "Now Playing Screen" Should Launch With Start Playing
#1
Hello. First of all, I would like to thank every contributor to Kodi.

I (and evidently many others before me) think that it is extremely inconvenient and confusing that no playback controls appear when starting to play a music track/playlist.

The by far most common scenario after starting playback is that the user wants to have playback controls - immediately. For example, I need to be able to stop the playback of an undesired track.
Reaching at least some playback controls by pressing the Back button is already an annoying hassle. On Android, it takes even longer to reach the fullscreen button for the "Now Playing Screen" from the library screen since I can't simply press Tab like on the PC.

I really fail to see why the "Now Playing Screen" should not launch as soon as playback is started.
And even if there is a reason, at least an option for this behavior should be provided.

Until this is being addressed, I cannot consider Kodi unfortunately, which is a shame because it provides so many great features.

Thanks for your feedback and consideration!
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#2
Press 'left'.

Image
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#3
(2020-01-17, 19:28)Hitcher Wrote: Press 'left'.
 

Yes, but as I have already mentioned in my post, it is quite a hassle to navigate to the control buttons there. It's also not possible to skip forward/backward there.
Additionally, I think most people prefer to also see the fanart screen on their instead of the tracklist on their TV - besides having immediate playback access.
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#4
'Go to playlist' is literally above the controls but maybe like videos music should have an optional 'Default select action'.
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#5
(2020-01-17, 19:41)Hitcher Wrote: 'Go to playlist' is literally above the controls but maybe like videos music should have an optional 'Default select action'.

I think you mean the fullscreen button? IIRC, when pressing the left button, the "Sort by" element is selected, forcing me to click all the way down to the playback controls.

Yes, I think it would greatly improve the experience of music playback on TV's to at least have an option available to run the "Now Playing Screen" as the default action.
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#6
Pressing up will take you to the bottom of the menu - quicker than going all the way down.
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#7
(2020-01-17, 19:50)Hitcher Wrote: Pressing up will take you to the bottom of the menu - quicker than going all the way down.
I can't confirm this right now, but I am almost certain that this didn't work with Mi Box S and its standard remote that I was using.
Anyway, it's still a hassle in my opinion even if I can skip to the end of the list. It takes at least 6 various button presses to go to the "Now Playing Screen".
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#8
Isn't this skin dependant ?   For instance, pkscouts mod of Estuary has an option to launch the full screen viz when music playback is started (equivalent of pressing tab automatically). https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=303946  Controls are immediately available by pressing the 'select' key on the remote or 'm' on a keyboard.

Other skins also auto launch that window.
Learning Linux the hard way !!
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#9
Sounds to me this is more likely a serious case of PEBKAC.
If the UI was that awful, many more people would have filed complaints.
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#10
black_eagle: I think that this is something Kodi should offer without mods. And I also don't like the look of most UI mods.

Klojum: I found many inquiries (e.g. here and here too) for this. And I think that its very hard to find any player that is not providing playback controls on the main menu.
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#11
pkscouts mod looks almost exactly the same as the stock skin, just it provides some degree of customization that stock Estuary doesn't. If you don't like it that's fine. Perhaps in that case, Kodi is not the media player for you.

Kodi core doesn't make decisions generally about which window opens when.  That is mostly down to the skin you are using, of which there are plenty to choose from and many of which offer the functionality you are looking for.
Learning Linux the hard way !!
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#12
No doubt it should be improved but most of us probably have remotes which have full playback controls so it's not something we ever find personally annoying.
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#13
(2020-01-17, 19:35)sqrt Wrote:
(2020-01-17, 19:28)Hitcher Wrote: Press 'left'.
 

Yes, but as I have already mentioned in my post, it is quite a hassle to navigate to the control buttons there. It's also not possible to skip forward/backward there.
Additionally, I think most people prefer to also see the fanart screen on their instead of the tracklist on their TV - besides having immediate playback access. 
no first thing i do is turn off fanart, I absolutely want to see tracklisting
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#14
black_eagle: I don't think that spending hours trying to find some UI mod, in order to make Kodi deliver something that virtually every players does for rational interactivity, is something that helps with Kodi's popularity.

(2020-01-17, 22:10)tkgafs Wrote: no first thing i do is turn off fanart, I absolutely want to see tracklisting 
What makes you believe that this request for TV's will necessarily take this away from you?
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#15
perhaps a little known feature, but the player controls are easily accessible by pressing CTRL-N on your keyboard

Image

it's not available by default for remote controls, but if you have a spare button on your remote, you can define it as such in a custom keymap:
<button>ActivateWindow(PlayerControls)</button>


i've seen the request to automatically switch to the visualisation (now playing) screen many times over the past years.
it might be worth to check if such an option could be added to kodi. i'm far from an expert in this area, but i'll look into it.
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