iTunes vs Music

Posted on
Thu Oct 10, 2019 8:22 am
jltnol offline
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Joined: Oct 15, 2013

iTunes vs Music

So just curious... from what I can tell, there is no way to use the old iOS iTunes Remote with the new Apple Desktop Music app. I'm guessing the Indigo iTunes plugin uses the same mechanism to control iTunes, which is now missing from Music... So, for the moment, no Indigo control of the new Music app, yes ?

Posted on
Thu Oct 10, 2019 1:39 pm
PME999 offline
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Joined: Jul 28, 2012

Re: iTunes vs Music

Hello
I installed Catalina in one of my mac. After setting the sharing for multimedia, the remote apps works again with Music but my Indigo Plugin doesn't. I will continue to try but I suspect there something different that don't work with the plugin.
Some other informations ?
Thanks
Patrice

Posted on
Thu Oct 10, 2019 3:21 pm
jltnol offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

Well, I'll be! Glad you were able to get this part to work. I was positive Apple was just not going to implement this in the new Music.

I know getting Indigo to work with it is going to take more work... but at least this part works.

Thanks for the tip and heads up!

Posted on
Thu Oct 10, 2019 3:32 pm
jltnol offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

Oooops.

May have spoken too soon. While I can see the library in the iOS Remote app, and can see the songs and playlist.... I can't start, stop, pause, or select which songs to play. When I click on the Now Playing pane, it says. "Not Playing" even tho its really playing..

Posted on
Mon Nov 04, 2019 3:37 pm
LSpad offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

Are there any plans to update the iTunes plugin for Catalina/Music support? I must say this caught me off guard when updating and I'm left with a load of action groups and triggers that are no longer functional!

Posted on
Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:09 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

The iTunes plugin used a reverse-engineered library for communicating with iTunes. Since iTunes no longer exists (it was replaced by the Music app which Apple ported from iOS), this plugin can't work because there is no iTunes running on Catalina. Note that the plugin will continue to work talking to iTunes on other Macs running Mojave or earlier - but since iTunes doesn't exist on Catalina...

Apple has never officially published an API for controlling iTunes from other apps or devices, and it has not yet supplied an API for controlling the new Music app (and honestly we don't think they ever will). So, bottom line is that this plugin will likely never work again since iTunes is no more.

It's possible that the 3rd party iTunes Local Control plugin could be updated to work (since I believe it used AppleScript) but it would be up to that developer to implement that support.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:15 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

Just an FYI, it's not just this plugin: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250716452

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:47 am
jltnol offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

Just a note that Apple has restored the ability of the iOS Remote App to control the new Music app in Catalina. Not sure if this has any impact on Indigo doing the same, but it seems a small step in the right direction. Its possible that the exiting iTunes plugin may work with this newest version of Catalina/Music since the pairing process seems the same, but I'm out of town and not in a position to actually check this function. Fingers Crossed it'll just work. lol

Posted on
Sun Dec 29, 2019 6:01 pm
PME999 offline
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Joined: Jul 28, 2012

Re: iTunes vs Music

Just tested today with Music, the plugin is working well again.
We only need to repeat the process of declaring a new remote device in Music
Thanks
Patrice

Posted on
Thu May 14, 2020 7:47 pm
jltnol offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

So just curious if anyone else is seeing this. I can launch the new app Music, get it working with Indigo, (usually by unchecking and rechecking the "Enable Indigo Comm...
' button, but once I Quit the Music app, I have to do the same thing all over agin.

Seems the connection doesn't 'stick'. I'm using Music on a different computer than the Indigo Server. iTunes is running on Catalina, Indigo is running on Mojavie.

Posted on
Sun May 17, 2020 5:29 pm
rgspb offline
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Location: Florida

Re: iTunes vs Music

jay (support) wrote:
It's possible that the 3rd party iTunes Local Control plugin could be updated to work (since I believe it used AppleScript) but it would be up to that developer to implement that support.


I asked the developer about this and he said he didn't have any plans to update the plugin. That's a big bummer. I may have to learn to build plugins and fix it myself!

Posted on
Tue May 19, 2020 9:57 pm
jltnol offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

if you are looking into building a plugin, may I suggest instead of iTunes you look at Swinsian.com. This is what iTunes was back when it was actually useful. It does have some remote control built in, and the developer might be willing to add more. It doesn't have everything that iTunes has, but is soooo much easier to use.

Posted on
Wed Jun 03, 2020 7:48 am
Symphonitron offline
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Joined: Jun 02, 2020

Re: iTunes vs Music

jltnol wrote:
So just curious if anyone else is seeing this. I can launch the new app Music, get it working with Indigo, (usually by unchecking and rechecking the "Enable Indigo Comm...
' button, but once I Quit the Music app, I have to do the same thing all over agin.

Seems the connection doesn't 'stick'. I'm using Music on a different computer than the Indigo Server. iTunes is running on Catalina, Indigo is running on Mojavie.


Yes this is happening consistently with me, although I have both Indigo and Music both on Catalina. I had set it up so that a tabletop Insteon button toggles on / off music play (as a test), but as soon as I quit the Music app the state of my iTunes Server device becomes "Unavailable" and it stays way forever, even if I relaunch, reboot, etc. The connection only stays if I keep the Music app open constantly, which unfortunately makes the entire plugin useless at this point.

Posted on
Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:47 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: iTunes vs Music

I hardly think the plugin is useless as it still works when the Music app is running... :wink:

In the next maintenance release of Indigo (no timeframe yet), we've modified the plugin to react to the changed behavior of the Music app (vs iTunes). We can't fix the underlying issue (the Music app behaves somewhat differently than iTunes), but I think we can tweak it to better handle retries from failures.

As we stated previously, we're using a reverse engineered library to do this communication since Apple never published an official API for controlling iTunes. We don't know how long this will continue to work, and when it breaks there most likely won't be any way to fix it (it's 7+ years old and hasn't been updated). Just a bit of a warning that the future of this plugin is somewhat in doubt.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Wed Jun 03, 2020 10:15 pm
jltnol offline
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Joined: Oct 15, 2013

Re: iTunes vs Music

I hardly think the plugin is useless as it still works when the Music app is running... :wink:


Useless was a bad choice of words. I actually use both the standard iTunes plugin as well as the iTunes Local plugin. My favorite feature of the latter is the ability to have indigo play a playlist, and ramp up (or down) the volume.

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