Newpipe: Let an in-app way to access background player controls

[B0pol]

Describe the feature you want

I'd like to have an in-app access to background player control.
I've thought about placing it in the three dots menu (where open in browser and settings stand), tell us if you've found a better place, or even create a pull request

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it

On TV there is no way to access notifications. They may popup on the screen if you are on the launcher, but that's it. And there is also no way to access background player controls within the app.

Additional context

Here is the screenshot of background player controls

On my tv, the only way to control is to use play / pause / next / previous button, but that's really basic (i.e. I can't see the duration, change speed…) and that may not be the case for everyone.

This line is the notification click listener to open controls, it will surely help.

If i've understood, it will close #3324

How will you/everyone benefit from this feature?

Better accessibility for people not having an (easy) access to notifications. It's unusable right now from NewPipe.

[opusforlife2]

One possible solution: #2477

[Stypox]

2477 is the best option in my opinion, as it doesn't involve adding extra buttons here and there, and also makes queues more accrssible and customizable

[opusforlife2]

Thinking it over, one big problem I see with #2477 is that to access the background player tab, the user would have to lose their entire backstack. So there is a trade-off between accessing the player from the notification versus from the home page tab.

One possible solution to losing backstack is that #3156 is modified so that tapping the home button from the drawer _adds_ to the backstack instead of clearing it. This way, the user could access the home page tabs freely without worrying about losing their backstack.

But I'm thinking of a better alternate solution: Let the unified player PR land. It already has the code in place for a minimised player at the bottom which can be pulled up to show the video details fragment. This could instead be modified to show up minimised when the background playback button is tapped. Pulling this up should then let the user easily access the background player and their queue. This behaviour will also be intuitive to most users as music apps do things similarly.

[opusforlife2]

But I'm thinking of a better alternate solution: Let the unified player PR land. It already has the code in place for a minimised player at the bottom which can be pulled up to show the video details fragment. This could instead be modified to show up minimised when the background playback button is tapped. Pulling this up should then let the user easily access the background player and their queue. This behaviour will also be intuitive to most users as music apps do things similarly.

Eh? Eh?

[mitosagi]

Currently, if you long press on the minimized unified player, the channel page will appear, but I think it would be better if you could access the player controls in this way instead.

[Stypox]

@mitosagi the notification is the chosen way to access the play queue. Hiding unintuitive shortcuts under long press is not a good idea imo. It would be better to instead provide a queue main page tab.

[Madis0]

With the unified player release, I think this is no longer needed (as there is no separate "background player")

[B0pol]

No, it's still needed. How are you going to control queue? How are you going to control the video in background?

[MD77MD]

i think the easiest way is to have newPipe play youtube background videos the same way it handles soundcloud tracks. when opening a SoundCloud track, you get the hole player experience including double tap to skip, progress bar ..etc. for switching back to video is easy as well, as we can have the background playback to be a dynamic button. that is to switch between background playback mode and video playback mode as follow:

1. taping background playback button will switch player to audio mode + the button will change to the video mode new icon ( new icon can have play button shape)
2. taping on video playback button will switch player to video mode + the button will change back to background icon

i guess my idea is close to what @opusforlife2 was trying to pitch but with more details.

p.s: we can even in the feature, have special buttons for the background player like 15s backward\forward buttons