App version: x.y.z (state whether from Google Play/F-Droid/Custom built APK)
3.3.2 from Google Play
Problem you may be having, or feature you want:
Queue listing on the home page (“Continue listening” section) shows the podcast episode that is playing followed by episodes that do not reflect the order of episodes in my queue.
I understand the current methodology is to push partly-played episodes to the top of the list, but that order is not useful to me since episodes previously began playing for any of a number of reasons.
Suggested solution:
Change Queue display on home page to reflect actual queue order rather than showing partly-played episodes first.
Optionally also reword “Continue listening” to something more indicative of this being the queue, even something redundant like the current description of the Downloads section as “Manage downloads”.
I use the Queue screen after I download episodes and then switch to the Home screen. That’s why it’s confusing to see the queue items listed in the “wrong” order on the Home screen. If I forget and trust the queue as shown on the Home screen I’m surprised when the next episode played is not the next episode shown.
We can’t just display the queue from the top because that would break things for users who play the queue from the middle. An option could be to show the queue starting from the episode that was most recently played.
That usage case would not have occurred to me (deliberately starting from somewhere other than the top of the queue). I do understand how displaying the queue from the top could be problematic in that case.
Showing the queue “starting from the episode that was most recently played” would work fine with either that or the more obvious (at least to me) usage case of playing from the top of the queue.
Not in my case. I often have a couple of podcasts that I use as a filler which I keep at the end of the queue as they can be listened to in small bites. I would not want to them to be played next before other podcasts I have queued up for a dedicated, uninterrupted single listening session.
I agree that it’s a good thing to finish episodes you already started.
That’s why I’m puzzled at the current display, which only gives the illusion that the already-started episodes will play next. That is exactly why I suggested not showing anything other than the actual queue order here, since the current state results in episodes playing in a different order than expected.
My current usage model:
From the Inbox: Download what I want to hear
From the Queue: Move items in the order I want to hear them
From the Home Page: Ignore the Continuing Listening section because it does not represent what will play next. (I could remove it from the home page, but I’m hoping it will eventually represent the actual next-in-queue information.)
I never would have thought of playing the queue from the middle, but after y’all mentioned it I started doing it myself sometimes. I realized it’s sometimes convenient to leave newer episodes at the bottom of the queue and play them from there.
