Cs: Music Player 4+

I’ve been using Cesium for years now at this point, and overall it’s so much better than Apple’s Music app; kudos to the developer. However...

I’m not a huge fan of the update. It feels like it’s moving in the direction of Apple’s Music app, in terms of some UX choices, which is the reason I switched to Cesium in the first place. The new UI looks great, but now it forces you to either see all songs in a list or only the albums. You can switch between all songs and albums, but I’d rather have both without needing to go into settings every time I want to listen differently. It also now shows iCloud items that haven’t been downloaded, by default, though there is at least an option to turn it off. Personally, I would rather the default be off, some it’s not on my device for a reason.

Some other issues I have is that the time remaining in a song disappears once the song is far enough along. I care more about how much is left than how much I’ve listened to. I don’t know why the time elapsed doesn’t just remain at the left end of the bar. The update also seems to have removed the ability to swipe and tap “play next/later,” which is so much faster than having to long press on a song, and you can’t see the “jump-to” alphabet until you’ve started scrolling.

I’ve been using this music player for a few years now. The #1 reason I bought the app in the first place was because the album art filled the entire width of my phone. Apples music app used to do that too, but when they changed it a few iOS versions ago, I was annoyed. I like my album art to be as big as possible. And since they are always a square picture, having it full the entire width is the only way to maximize the viewing size of it. Now with Cesium, that IS the reason I bought the app in the first place, because the developer brought back that UI element and it filled the entire width.

With the recent updates, however, I notice that there is how a border around my album art, effectively make it smaller. My phone is already small compared to the large Pro Max phones.... If the dev would simply change it to again fill the entire width of the phone, I would change my rating to 5 stars.

*edit* After using this app for a few more days, I have come to really enjoy it. The interface is cleaner than the old version, and it seems to run extremely stably. Despite my comments above about the album art, after these few days, I now find that I don’t mind it as is. It’s very aesthetic with the way the background changes color based on album artwork colors. Very nice update after all.

I’ve been a long time user of Cs Music Player (or Cesium as it used to be called). I’m not so old but it seems I’m a dinosaur when it comes to the way I like to listen to music since I’m a firm believer in OWNING music, having a music library that somehow reflects my own progressing tastes. Apple used to love music lovers and used to provide some very nice hardware and software to cater to guys and gals like me. Now these times are gone and streaming took over. Anyway.
I really would like to like Cs and I lindner do since it allows me to listen to my synced iTunes library in a meaningful way. A huge library needs the right tools to handle it and Cs still does that. So thanks for that. However, I don’t like the direction the app is heading with constantly changing and seemingly erratic UI choices that try to reinvent the wheel. That’s really not necessary because if Cs was just a copy of what Apple’s iTunes app used to be a few years ago, everything would be just fine. But for some unknown reason Mike seems to take pleasure in deconstructing well-proven features which is really a shame since the USP of Cs is really simple: an app that allows you to easily navigate your (huge) music collection and so helps you to enjoy it.
Please, Mike, don’t try to improve things that are just fine the way they are.

Personal wish: please bring (back) the shuffle by album feature. Thanks.