Describe the bug
I have Now Playing widget in my touchbar with the Line 1 customization "{title} — {artist}" and, after pausing and playing the music again I get a string like " — " (different from the "Paused" string I have for my paused status).
Affected input device (e.g. MacBook Trackpad, Magic Mouse/Trackpad, Touch Bar, etc.):
Touch Bar
Device information:
- Type of Mac: Macbook Pro
- macOS version: 10.14.2
- BetterTouchTool version: 2.716
Additional information (e.g. StackTraces, related issues, screenshots, workarounds, etc.):
If I repeatedly press pause/play quickly it eventually restores.
The player I'm using is iTunes/Apple Music.
Is there any news regarding this issue? I'm starting to feel a bit of disappointment regarding the feedback given here since this bug report of mine doesn't seem to be the only one without a single response for weeks or months.
I understand that it may be difficult to reproduce some bug reports. Or, eventually, even fixing some of them. But there should be an acknowledgement that it's being worked on or, at least, that the bug report was seen by anyone, since it's a paid product.
This is my first time noticing this thread! I can at the very least confirm that this happens all the time. The now playing widget is fairly “unstable” in what song information shows up and when. Additional stability here would be appreciated if it’s something under BTT’s control.
Okay, now that I know this specifically happens after pausing and then playing again, I can't not see it. What's silly is that the album art appears if you pause the music again, and goes away when you start playing. And you also lose all song information display until you either skip to the next track or go back to the beginning of the current track.
Now that we know the specific behavior, I can imagine we can pinpoint the source of the error @Andreas_Hegenberg?
Any progress on this? It continues to be one of the most annoying bugs!
I haven't encountered this issue yet. Does it only happen with a specific player?
No, it happens in all players. This is what I get when playing a track for the first time - notice the lack of album art:
Then, when I pause:
That's correct, but the album art has mysteriously appeared now?
And then when I resume playing:
At this point the album art and the song information are gone. It is impossible to get them back without doing something that would cause the widget to refresh, like switching to a different song. But even then, if you pause again, the same thing will happen.
This issue still exists and is VERY annoying. A user on reddit just reported the issue. Can this PLEASE be fixed?
Are you using the normal now playing widget? I'm completely unable to reproduce this ;-(
Yes, this is using the native now playing widget. I didn't realize you were unable to reproduce the issue. I'm not sure why that would be. This happens on every Mac I've ever seen running BetterTouchTool, including all my coworkers' machines.
Is there a way I can help you identify what's going wrong? Some sort of logs for the now playing widget when I press pause/play or something?
Does the system notification center now playing widget show the now playing data correctly when BTT doesn't show anything?
It does. Check it out (Touch Bar is above the dock):
Weird. I just noticed you are using two now playing widgets at the same time. I could imagine that causes the problems but I can't verify as it's still working nicely with your presets on my machines.
Could you check whether it updates correctly if only one widget is active?
The issue still persists even if there is only one Now Playing widget present:
Very weird. I also haven't had similar reports although the Now Playing widget is used a lot according to my stats. Do I understand correctly, that this basically makes the now playing widget unusable for you? It never shows the correct info after pausing?
However I need to say I don't use iTunes / Music a lot. Mostly Spotify or other players, maybe it is related to iTunes/Music?
It's not unusable, just very annoying.
Your understanding is correct, all song metadata disappears after pausing. You can actually get it to fetch the track info by invoking "Previous Track". When it restarts playing the song, it gets the album art and track info. Sometimes I've done this when I'm bothered by the missing info or need to know the song.
As for if it's specific to iTunes/Music, I just did some testing... and it appears that is the case!! 
I went to pause a YouTube video and when I resumed playing the information came back correctly. I'll test with Spotify but you seem to be onto something 
Ah ok, I think I have some free Apple Music months left, so I'll do some testing there later today
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Could you check whether v3.174 (will be available in ~10 minutes) fixes/changes the weird behavior you encountered?
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I missed this somehow, but this morning I realized that things were indeed working properly @Andreas_Hegenberg.
However, I definitely experience this issue where album art and song information flashes briefly when using play/pause: The Now Playing Widget and the artwork
Only changing the song information and album art when the song actually changes, and not on play/pause, should eliminate the flashing issues described here. Can you cache the song information so it doesn't need to reload itself on play/pause?
