Last Updated on September 1, 2020
Other Features
Besides the wide range of streaming services, what else does the player offer?
Let’s take a look at some of the other features of MellowPlayer.
There’s a good range of configuration options to customize the software.
These include:
- Rearrangement of the streaming service by dragging and dropping, as well as the ability to disable one or more of the services. However, the rearrangement didn’t save when switching streaming services.
- Customize the main toolbar content.
- Confirm application exit (on or off).
- Close MellowPlayer to the system tray.
- Turn on/off web page scrollbars.
- Automatic HiDPI scaling or apply your own scaling factor.
- Turn on/off the main tool bar.
- Native desktop notifications:
- Enable notifications.
- Display a notification when a new song starts.
- Display a notification when playback is paused.
- Display a notification when playback is resumed.
- Choice of themes.
- Keyboard shortcuts: Play/Pause, Next, Previous, Add to favorites, Restore window, Reload page, Select service, and Next service.
- Privacy – enable listening history (turned off by default).
- Configurable listening history limit. Choose from: Last month, Last week, Last year, Never, Today, or Yesterday.
- You can also define the user agent.
- Implements the DBUS MPRIS 2 interface.
- Network proxy support – this is accessed from Settings / Streaming Services.
- Extend functionality by writing your own JavaScript plugins.
- User Scripts let you customize the appearance and feel of streaming services.
- Internationalization support – there are translations for Catalan, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish.
- Cross-platform support – the software runs under Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows (although the latter doesn’t offer MPRIS2 support).
Let’s now have a look at memory usage. Given that the software uses components of an integrated web browser, I wasn’t expecting lightweight memory usage.
Here’s the memory usage of MellowPlayer after listening to a few of the services for an hour.
Woah! MellowPlayer is consuming more than 1.4GB of RAM. A real memory hog! Of course, closing some of the services (thereby reducing the number of QtWebEngineProcess processes) helps reclaim some of the memory. But even with after closing the streaming services, the software was still consuming about 800MB of RAM.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Other Features
Page 4 – Summary
Music streaming services are nothing but a ripoff! Why should I pay a monthly fee to stream music when I can pay once for the tracks I really like, and keep playing them forever? Plus the streaming services “channels” are obviously programmed by people who don’t know what songs belong on what genre or category. I can’t stand it when country music or blues or jazz gets played on a rock channel! Besides that, with streaming services, if I don’t have an internet connection, no music!
The vast majority of services supported by MellowPlayer offer free accounts. Spotify / Deezer and others are excellent.
“Why should I pay a monthly fee to stream music when I can pay once for the tracks I really like…?”
Hey, maybe streaming is not for you, but I happen to like a LOT of songs, so paying a flat fee is much cheaper than having to buy all of those songs (and the new ones that keep coming out).
Think about it like monthly-flat-fee broadband internet access versus pay-for-the-hour dialup/isnd.
Cheers!