Is MMC4W for you? Check this.
You really should start here. It's the Help text.
The entire interface is intentionally tiny and simple. In its most basic mode it looks like this:
I recently added SHA256 hashes for the installer and mmc4w.py: File_Hashes.md.
Playlist Builder Mode is one of my favorite things. I've been looking forward to this for a long time.
This is such a simple way to manage my playlists! While I'm listening, if I want to add or remove the current song, just click the playlist name. Sweet!
Testing v0.9.2
"I don't rent music. I don't trust 'the cloud' to be there when I want it." - me.
I needed a tiny set of controls for a couple of different Music Player Daemon (MPD) servers here.
I could not find a Windows MPD client with an interface as small as what I wanted. So I wrote this one.
Tkinter may not be sexy, but it gets the job done. MMC4W does exactly what I need, simply and easily. Play saved playlists, search your library easily for song titles, albums, or by text in an Artist's name.
MMC4W is natively a saved-playlist player. There is also what I call "True Blue Album Mode" that plays all songs on an album sequentially, first to last. Play single titles using 'Search by Title'.
There is one fairly simple config step after running the Windows installer. Find those details in the help text.
Other than the basic controls, I also want to be able to see the album cover most of the time. The Art button toggles a small window to display embedded or folder art. The MPD server extracts it from the current song file or from a cover.jpg, .png, .tiff, or .bmp file located in the album folder and provides it. MMC4W displays it. Dead simple. That looks like this:
The black background in this pic is my desktop. The MMC4W interface is only the two small windows you see there. Notice two other things about that pic:
- The title of the song and the artist's name are shown in the text area.
- The Windows titlebar is gone.
The Mode button toggles the titlebar. While it's active, you can resize and reposition the windows. Clicking 'Mode' again saves positions and sizes.
The text area is active, switching every three seconds between song title - artist name and a line about the status of things as seen here:
You are able to edit the configuration file (mmc4w.ini) by selecting Config | Edit mmc4w.ini. It uses your system's default text editor.
The windows are intended to be placed and left alone. If you want to move them, click the 'Mode' button. The titlebars will be visible, and you can move the windows where you want them. Clicking 'Mode' again saves their position to the mmc4w.ini file in your installation folder.
I find this to be a perfectly acceptable arrangement.
MMC4W lives and breathes around two pieces of information from the server: duration and elapsed. "Duration" is the length of the current song. "Elapsed" is how much of it has already played. MMC4W minimizes communication with the server by subtracting elapsed from duration and then waiting that length of time to find out what the next song is.
There are some scenarios where the server cannot provide the duration value, like when a playlist is made up of streams instead of individual song files. MMC4W will not work because there is no duration value provided by the MPD server. This behavior can be called a design limitation. It is expected and accepted.
Again, check the help file for more details. I hope you enjoy using this as much as I do.