It’s been 5 months since I promised an new blog post on Hummingbird “next week”, and yet here we are: the first post about Hummingbird in a little over a year. A lot has happened since then (if you can believe it), so here’s a quick update.

Hummingbird 0.2

Hummingbird 0.2 just released! You can read about this in the announcement post, so I won’t go too in depth here, but it’s a rather large update for 3 months of work. It’s got support for 4 more languages (making it, AFAIK, the second GPUI app ever to be available in more than one language), an improved library, and a lot of performance improvements. Check it out!

Discord

Hummingbird’s got a Discord server now! We’ve already been discussing the latest changes and plans for the future there, so if you’d like to come join us, please do so!

Website

Obviously (you’re on it right now), Hummingbird’s got a new website! It’s very clearly rushed - I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I’d like, but it’s here, and it works. From now on, all Hummingbird-related blog posts and announcements will be posted here, instead of my personal blog. It’s also got a dedicated changelog page, which should be easier to read than the GH release logs.

I hope to refine the website more during the development cycle for 0.3. Speaking of which:

Hummingbird 0.3

0.2 was focused on rounding out the very basic features of a music player - the bare minimum, so to speak. 0.3 will be focused more on adding features that make Hummingbird actually good as a daily-driver music player. This includes improving search, adding lyric support, and - arguably most importantly - improving the experience for power users with a big library.

One of the big headlining features for 0.3 is a new two-column layout, that shows navigation on the left and content on the right. This is already implemented in the master branch and available in unstable builds. Here’s a screenshot:

You’ll notice that the sidebar is collapsed - this can be done in the standard single-view layout as well.

There’s also a few more features available in the unstable builds right now, including improved search that allows you to search for tracks and artists as well as albums, and improved context menus that are more consistent throughout the application.

I’m looking for feedback on all of these changes. If you’ve got some, feel free to hop on our Discord and let me know.

Slowing Down

I’ve been working crunch-time for the last 3 months on Hummingbird because, among other reasons, I use it every day as my primary music player. This has had a very noticable impact on my mental health (especially since I’ve been doing this while being a full-time student), and as such, starting at the end of the week, I’m going to try to work on Hummingbird a little less than I have been recently.

That’s not to say that I’m not still passionate about the work, or that I don’t plan to work on it often, but things have been pretty rough recently and I’m happy with the state Hummingbird’s in right now, so it just won’t be as frequent as it has been recently.

Work

I’m graduating from ASU in a month or so (around the start of May), so I’ve started looking for work. If you’re looking to hire someone who is passionate about developing user-first applications and services, please let me know! My email is listed on my GitHub profile - I won’t link it here to prevent spam.

Thanks

Thanks to all my patrons on Patreon. In no particular order:

• Ro
• Claire Sorrel
• Mikayla Maki
• Naomi Hikaru
• aloraxic

Thank you for supporting me and my work!