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Quirks

Under some very specialized circumstances, it may be necessary to 'nudge' What's Now Playing to do something particularly special in order to get the desired impact. The options under quirks allow one to do just that. In general, however, users should stick with the defaults for optimal performance.

Quirks Settings

Note: Quirks settings are located under System in the Settings menu.

File System Notification Method

By default, What's Now Playing uses operating system facilities to know when input files have changed. If What's Now Playing is running on a different host than the DJ software and What's Now Playing have been configured to read the DJ software's directory over a network mount (such as SMB) What's Now Playing may not get notified that a file has changed. Selecting the `poll` option will force the application to perform a manual file system check. The drawbacks to this method are that more CPU and disk IO is performed and being on delay to get updates. However, the software will not miss events.

NOTE: Changing this value REQUIRES a restart of the What's Now Playing software.

Song Path Substitution

This applies when What's Now Playing runs on a different machine than your DJ software, or when your music files are stored on a network drive. The DJ software reports a file path based on how it sees the drive, but What's Now Playing may see that same drive mounted at a different path. Setting these values tells What's Now Playing how to translate the DJ software's paths into ones it can actually access.

For example:

  • Starting File Path is set to /Volumes/Music/
  • Replacement File Path is set to /Macintosh HD/Music/

The DJ software says that it read /Volumes/Music/Blondie/Heart_of_Glass.mp3. What's Now Playing will instead interpret that the filename is actually /Macintosh HD/Music/Blondie/Heart_of_Glass.mp3 when reading extra tags, performing recognition, etc.

The Slash Handling setting allows you to switch the direction of all slashes in the filenames. This setting is beneficial when substituting filenames from Windows to other operating systems and vice-versa. The slash changes happen before path substitution, so keep that in mind. For example,

  • Slash Handling: \ to / is set
  • Starting File Path: Z:/av
  • Replacement File Path: /av

If the original file was Z:\av\Music\Band\Cool Song.mp3, the above settings will change that to /av/Music/Band/Cool Song.mp3. Another example:

  • Slash Handling: / to \ is set
  • Starting File Path: \av
  • Replacement File Path: Z:\av

will do the reverse, from /av/Music/Band/Cool Song.mp3 to Z:\av\Music\Band\Cool Song.mp3

NOTE: This quirk is not supported with MPRIS2.