Category: Playbar

Linked Apple Music – I do not recommend. Use local files

Apple Music has become increasingly hostile to Apple Music library files. What I mean is audio files you create and want to store in Apple Music. Even the interface to manually manage songs is grayed out and doesn’t show you your files that are stored locally in the Finder. In addition, unrealBook only supports locally stored audio files in the iTunes/iPad/iPod library. It always only supported local files, but at some point Apple did or did not support linked cloud files. On iOS12 it certainly doesn’t. On iOS15 it seems like it actually does supported cloud based songs.

For this reason, (years ago) I implemented direct linking of supported audio files (mp3, mp4, wav, aif etc) in the unrealBook documents folder. It’s easy to use. Simply Airdrop, dropbox, open in…. any audio file to unrealBook and it will be imported. After that, use the CD Menu->Music Controller ->link audio file button or CD->menu->play audio file->then + button or create a transmogrify play button and use the use file button to link the audio file.

This is way more reliable, has none of the problems of linked Apple Music and is not subject to any iOS changes to Apple Music.

In short, don’t use Apple Music for linked audio files in unrealBook if you can.

Playbar

Linked audio files in the documents folder can use the Playbar. This is a quick and fast way to control your music. You can turn on the Playbar in the Settings->Global-Functions.

IMPORTANT! The playbar only works with mp3 and audio files that have been added to the unrealBook documents folder. NOT the iTunes library. I do not recommend using the iTunes library anymore. To add audio files to the unrealBook documents folder, add them like any other PDF. Whatever way you got the PDF into unrealBook is the same for audio files. You can use Airdrop, dropbox, box, email, direct drag and drop with browser using the web interface. Just add the audio files to your unrealBook documents folder like any other PDF and you will be able to link and use the playbar.

Here is how to link audio files

Once the Playbar is turned on, files that have audio attached using the Play Audio File + button or through the Music Controller Link Audio File command will show a slightly darker gray area on the bottom of the screen. You can control playback by tapping and swiping in this area. For example, a single tap will start and stop playback. A double-tap will start from the beginning. List below are the supported taps and swipes.


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