Atrium — a native tvOS app for your Emby server

[Grumpy1 50]

3 hours ago, vdatanet said:

One thing from 1.8 that's easy to miss, because it ships switched off: there's a new look for the home screen, and you have to turn it on — Settings ▸ Home ▸ Enhanced home.

With it on, the header stays put and only the row strip below it scrolls. The background goes full screen and follows the focus: move down onto a row and the header becomes whatever card you're on — its name and details — with that card's artwork behind it. The strip shows just the focused row and pins it to the top, so the row title is always visible and you never get half of the next one creeping in. For an episode, the header is what tells you which one is waiting: series name on top, the episode below it, and the synopsis. Same idea for an album — artist on top, album underneath.

If it isn't for you, turn it off and you get the old home back exactly as it was: the featured title inside the scroll, every row on screen, and captions under the cards. Nothing else changes, so it costs you one toggle to try it.

I'd genuinely like to know which one you end up leaving on. That one isn't a bug I can find from here — it's a taste question, and the only people who can answer it are the ones looking at that screen every day.

I do leave it on ( was going to request something like this ) .

about the enhanced home , is it possible to have it pick random order from the lists ? right now it always shows the same 5 since i don't always get to the movies right away

 

[vdatanet 1704]

1 hour ago, Grumpy1 said:

I do leave it on ( was going to request something like this ) .

about the enhanced home , is it possible to have it pick random order from the lists ? right now it always shows the same 5 since i don't always get to the movies right away

 

Yes — and it's worth saying why it's the same five, because what's missing isn't really the shuffle, it's that the rule picking them never varies.

Those five slots are chosen once, when the app opens, and always the same way: first whatever you're part-way through, then the newest unwatched item from each of your libraries, one each, then an unwatched favourite. Nothing in that changes until you either watch something or add something to the server. So your case — not getting to the movies right away — is exactly the one where it can sit on the same five for days. That's a fair thing to complain about.

The good news is the pot is already on the device. Since 1.8 each library's row is loaded 128 items deep instead of 16, so taking one of those at random rather than the newest costs nothing extra: no new request, same data already in memory, just a different item off the same list. If you're curious how big that pot is on your server, Settings ▸ Home ▸ What's In It already shows an "eligible" count next to each source — that's the number a random pick would be drawing from.

Two rules I'd keep. Only items with a proper wide backdrop can go up there: a poster stretched across 1920 looks bad enough that I'd rather show one slot fewer, so "random" means random among those, not random across the whole library. And it should keep skipping what you've already watched, same as it does now.

One thing I'd not do is reshuffle while you're looking at it. That header is rebuilt every time you come back to Home from a title, so a naive random pick would put a different film at the top every single time you back out of something — and there's already been a bug reported on this thread about that screen not sitting still. The draw wants to happen once per launch: different every time you open the app, steady while you're inside it. That's the version I'd build.

It fits in the section that's already there, next to What's In It and Rotation. No date and no version number from me, as usual — but this one is cheap and I know exactly where it goes.

And thanks for the other half of your message. You're the first person to tell me they left the new home switched on, and that's the one question I genuinely can't answer from here.

[vdatanet 1704]

@Grumpy1

Both halves of your message turned into something, so here's the report.

The random pick is built. It's a switch in Settings ▸ Home, next to What's In It and Rotation, and it behaves the way I said it would: the draw happens once, when the app opens. A new five every launch, and it holds still while you're in there — back out of a title and the header is where you left it. Flipping the switch re-draws as well, so if you don't like the five you got, off and on hands you another set.

What it deliberately doesn't change: the first slot is still whatever you're part-way through, it still skips what you've already watched, and it still only draws titles that have a proper wide backdrop. And it draws from the whole row, not the first handful of it.

Your message also found a second thing, which you never reported. Going through that screen to answer you, I noticed my rows were in a fixed order — continue, libraries, recently added — no matter what the account was set to. Your server stores that order per user, and the app had simply never asked for it. It does now: put your libraries above continue watching and that's what you get, on the old home and the enhanced one alike.

Two limits on that, both on purpose. It's the order only — which rows exist is still the app's call, so an account with every section set to "none" doesn't open into a blank screen. And Live TV and recordings aren't rows here, they're tiles inside My Libraries, so those two can't be moved on their own.

One measured note for anyone else building against this, since it cost me a probe to find: that section list only comes back if you ask for it under the client name "emby". Ask under any other name and you get a 200 with an empty payload — which is a memorable way to conclude that a user has configured nothing.

No date and no version number from me. I'll say here when it's out.