Turn off new moving bars

[Landoman 20]

How can I turn these bars off? They appear when playing an item. Its complexly useless and distracting. 

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

20 minutes ago, Landoman said:

How can I turn these bars off? They appear when playing an item. Its complexly useless and distracting. 

I've never seen that. Where is it happening? See: How to report a problem.

[visproduction 315]

3rd party audio animation feature with your browser or a plugin?

[Happy2Play 9780]

Pretty sure it is new in beta for music or at least that is the only place I have seen it.

No options that I know of in web client you can use custom css.

button.cardImageContainer-nowplaying::after {background-image: none;}

 

Edited September 15, 2025 by Happy2Play

[Luke 42077]

What is playing?

[daldana 122]

Agree with @Happy2Play

I see them when playing music in the web client via beta server 4.9.1.31.

[Luke 42077]

Isn't this how most music apps work?

[user24 313]

These "moving bars" can be seen on Emby Windows 4.8.11.0 using the web client on Chrome.

As best as I can recall, they have always been there in all versions of 4.8, and 4.7?

They do make sense on the Now Playing screen but I think they would be a distraction for me if they were appearing elsewhere while playing music and browsing music/updating data at the same time.

[Lessaj 467]

I'm not aware of any music app that has the visualization like that "globally". I use Poweramp and it does not do that anywhere - not even when looking at the list of songs and it's a currently playing song.

[Landoman 20]

it is in emby theatre. playing movie. just started appearing a few days ago. no browser involved.

[Landoman 20]

16 hours ago, user24 said:

These "moving bars" can be seen on Emby Windows 4.8.11.0 using the web client on Chrome.

As best as I can recall, they have always been there in all versions of 4.8, and 4.7?

They do make sense on the Now Playing screen but I think they would be a distraction for me if they were appearing elsewhere while playing music and browsing music/updating data at the same time.

its happening when i play a movie and appears over the movie thumbnail  when browsing

Edited September 16, 2025 by Landoman

[Landoman 20]

deleted

Edited September 16, 2025 by Landoman
deleted

[Happy2Play 9780]

Some there are more than one area you would need this.  Web client only

div.listviewitemelement-nowplaying::after, button.cardImageContainer-nowplaying::after {background-image: none;}

 

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I actually have now seen the moving bars but it is not related to any audio file. I was testing the book (PDF) reader and I opened a book and pressed the "play" button which is required to read a PDF and I scrolled to the end of the book and exited. 

The icon for that book then showed the moving bars that continued for some time, maybe the bars would have continued. So it is not playing an audio file that makes the bars and they do not display in any relationship to sound being produced by Emby. It sees to be just an animation that is triggered by "play" on some files but is not related to actually playing audio. 

While I understand that some people might like the animation I do not. But it is intrusive and downright ugly and totally unnecessary for PDF files. 

I believe it may be a programming error but I don't like it and totally agree it should NEVER happen on a PDF file and on an audio file it should at least be able to be turned off. 

I can ignore it because I do not use Emby for audio at all and it only shows after exiting a PDF but I want it gone from my system. It just seems to stem from lazy programming and a desire to look like all the other audio programs. That desire is as misguided as the misguided attempts to make Emby look like Plex or Netflix. Just because others do it does not make it a good idea it is the "Bandwagon" syndrome at its worst.

In the long run it matters very little to me as I do not play audio through Emby but I do not think the implementation is at all what Emby needs. 

BTW: If a way is given to turn it on/off it should default to off and should be independently controlled for each library. But I still think it is best removed as it is just ugly and totally unnecessary.

Edited September 16, 2025 by Gilgamesh_48

[Landoman 20]

As above poster has said it activates on playing any file for me. 
Music file = bars using internal player
Video file = bars using external player.

closing file in external player stops the bars. 

I also agree with the above comments in that it also blocks the video thumbnail that is playing and there should be an option to turn it off. 
 

[MindBullet 93]

Please see my post for reference:
 

It's just a new beta feature

[brothom 177]

+1 I remember this in like 2014/2016 when streaming platforms started becoming mainstream. Spotify, Youtube and all the others used to have this "placeholder gif" to indicate which item was playing at the time. This used to be in playlists so users could quickly identify the current item.

Nowadays we've moved away from animations and use colour and expressive design to highlight what's active and what not. 

It's almost as if this is a very old implementation that just happened to sneak into the beta because it's almost archaic nowadays.

[Luke 42077]

It's been changed to just audio only. Thanks.

[mev 5]

Is there a way to disable the animation of the bars on audio (or remove it locally)

I can understand why it was added, however, I have a child with autism and we moved away from spotify for this reason because he can't handle the visual stimulation of the animation on screen.

Thanks in advance

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, mev said:

Is there a way to disable the animation of the bars on audio (or remove it locally)

I can understand why it was added, however, I have a child with autism and we moved away from spotify for this reason because he can't handle the visual stimulation of the animation on screen.

Thanks in advance

Question, do you have the device configured to prefer reduced animation?

If you do then we can add support for that and disable this in that situation.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

1 hour ago, mev said:

Is there a way to disable the animation of the bars on audio (or remove it locally)

I can understand why it was added, however, I have a child with autism and we moved away from spotify for this reason because he can't handle the visual stimulation of the animation on screen.

Thanks in advance

You could just turn off the screen as a temporary fix. 
Personally I do not like any visualizations at all for audio. If I am just listening to audio I need to see NOTHING. That is why I use MediaMonkey for audio rather than any app that also processes video. I believe listening to audio and watching video should be kept separate from each other. I also detest "music videos" or anything else that tries to add to the experience of listening to audio. If the music is good it does not need visuals and if it is not good then no amount of visuals will make it good. 
This is why there are multiple choices for reproducing music.

OK. If i offended anyone I apologize. Now I will go back to hiding under my rock.

[mev 5]

Quote

51 minutes ago, Luke said:

Question, do you have the device configured to prefer reduced animation?

If you do then we can add support for that and disable this in that situation.

 

Yes I do, and that would be amazing

For now I have managed to get it to not appear in the web interface 

[Luke 42077]

On 12/31/2025 at 5:05 PM, mev said:

Yes I do, and that would be amazing

For now I have managed to get it to not appear in the web interface 

OK yes we can look at doing that. Thanks.