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Troubleshooting

Software is made by imperfect humans and thus tends to reflect that reality. Here are some tips and tricks to help you out.

Also check the current Bug List to see if any known problems apply to your situation, or join the Discord to get help from the community.

General Tips

  • Start What's Now Playing first in your stack, before your DJ software and OBS. By the time OBS is up, both What's Now Playing and your DJ software will have finished their housekeeping tasks.
  • Shut down What's Now Playing between sessions. Because it lives in the menu bar or system tray it is easy to forget it is running.
  • Letting the app run when the computer goes to sleep has been shown to cause problems. Restart the app after waking from sleep if things seem stuck.

Tracks Not Updating

  • Confirm your DJ software is set as the Source under Core Settings → Source.
  • Make sure your DJ software is actually playing. Most inputs only detect tracks that are actively playing, not just loaded.
  • Try increasing the Write Delay under Core Settings → General if updates appear too early in your mix.
  • Some DJ software behaves differently depending on whether a hardware controller is connected. If tracks are not being detected, try with and without your controller attached to narrow down the cause.
  • What's Now Playing tries to honor your crossfader position. If the fader is cut to one side, the track on the other deck may not be reported. Make sure the fader is in a position that reflects the track you expect to see.
  • Check the logs (see below) for any errors related to your input plugin.

OBS Display Not Updating

  • Refresh the Browser source in OBS (right-click → Refresh).
  • Confirm the Webserver is enabled and running on the correct port under Output & Display → Webserver.
  • Make sure the Browser source URL matches your configured port (default: 8899).

Timing and Stream Delay

  • There is inherent delay between when your computer plays a track and when it appears on-stream. Different devices receive content at different times. Apple TV viewers, for example, may see track info up to a minute after you started playing it.
  • Kick and Twitch use different CDN locations worldwide, so you may need different announce delays per service under their respective settings.
  • You do not need to be streaming to participate in Twitch chat. This means you can run What's Now Playing and test chat announcements without going live, which is useful for dialing in timing.

Configuration Problems

  • If settings appear corrupted or lost, restore from a backup:
  • Open Core Settings → General → Import Configuration
  • Select a JSON file from Documents/WhatsNowPlaying/configbackup/ (created automatically before each upgrade) or a manual export you made previously
  • If the app fails to start after an upgrade, check the logs for errors before reinstalling.

Finding the Logs

Logs are written to Documents/WhatsNowPlaying/logs/. If you are reporting a bug, including the relevant log file will help enormously. The logging level can be adjusted under Core Settings → General → Logging Level.