Roadmap / TODO

Near-term work after the working MVP (connect + auto-connect, now-playing with transport/volume/options, DataStore-persisted settings). Roughly ordered by priority; not a commitment.

Status legend: [ ] todo · [~] in progress · [x] done

[x] 1. Proper icons

Done. Replaced the placeholder unicode glyphs in NowPlayingScreen.kt with real Material icons (Icons.Filled.SkipPrevious/PlayArrow/Pause/SkipNext/VolumeUp, plus Repeat/Shuffle leading icons on the chips) from androidx.compose.material:material-icons-extended.

That artifact bundles thousands of vectors, so the debug APK grew ~7 MB (expected — debug can't shrink). Enabled R8 + resource shrinking on the release build type, which strips the unused icons: release APK is ~1.2 MB.
Considered material-icons-core (too small — no media icons) and bundling individual vector drawables (leaner but manual); the extended dep + R8 was the best effort/quality trade.

A dedicated settings screen where the user can view every setting and reset it.

Currently settings (host/port) are only editable by hitting Disconnect to get back to the connect form. Add a real settings route.
Include a Reset action that clears DataStore (add a clear() to SettingsRepository).
Will likely want simple navigation (Navigation-Compose, or a screen enum in PlayerViewModel/AppScreen).
Room to grow: password field, connection timeout, theme, keep-screen-on.

[ ] 3. Cast-style volume control

When the MPD server is playing, present the volume control as a "casting" style remote-volume control — the way MALP (and Google Cast) do — making it visually clear you're controlling the server's output, not the phone's.

Functionally we already send setvol to the server (MpdClient.setVolume); this is mostly a UX/affordance change: a cast icon, "Casting to " label, distinct styling for remote vs local volume.
Reference behaviour: MALP.

[ ] 4. Library browse — albums

A screen to browse all albums on the server (artists can come later).

MPD commands: list album group albumartist (or list album), and find album "<name>" to fetch an album's tracks; add to the queue with add/findadd. Extend MpdCommands + MpdClient.
Grid or list of albums → tap to view/queue tracks.

[ ] 5. Album / artist images

Pull artwork for the now-playing track and for the album browse grid.

MPD serves art over the protocol via albumart <uri> <offset> and readpicture <uri> <offset> (embedded art). MpdConnection already handles binary responses, so the transport groundwork is done — add the commands, loop over offsets to fetch the whole image, and decode.
Needs an image loader + caching. Coil (io.coil-kt) is the standard Compose choice; a custom MpdArtFetcher could feed it. Dependency → deps.json regen.

[ ] 6. BUG: idle connection drops after a few minutes → kicked to connect page

After a few minutes idling, the app surfaces "connection closed mid-response" and falls back to the connect screen. MALP does not do this.

Error origin: MpdConnection.readResponse() hits EOF and throws MpdConnectionException("connection closed mid-response"); the idle loop's catch (IOException) calls failAndClose() → MpdConnectionState.Error → UI shows the connect form.
Likely causes to investigate:
- Android Doze / WiFi power-save tearing down sockets when the screen is off or the app is backgrounded (most likely on a portable DAP/phone).
- MPD's connection_timeout (default 60s) closing a connection it considers idle — a parked idle should count as active, but the command connection sits silent; a periodic ping keepalive may be needed.
- NAT/router idle-connection reaping (less likely on LAN).
Fix direction: don't treat an idle-connection drop as a fatal error — instead auto-reconnect transparently (re-open connections, re-issue idle, resync state) and keep showing the player. Consider a keepalive ping and, for backgrounded playback control, a foreground service / partial wakelock.

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