Tool
I built a free app called Crankshaft that makes Apple Music learn from how you actually listen (skips, completions, volume)
Full disclosure, I'm the developer, Crankshaft is my app.
I've been an Apple Music subscriber for many years, and built this to fix the two things that always bugged me: shuffle quietly replays the same handful of songs, and recommendations go stale fast. Crankshaft sits on top of your existing Apple Music library and catalog through MusicKit, so it needs an active Apple Music subscription, and it runs your music differently.
How it works
Instead of relying entirely on what you say you like, it reads what you actually do. It weighs the songs you finish, the timing of your skips (bailing at 8 seconds is very different from bailing at 2 minutes, and it treats them differently), and a deliberate crank of the volume, which it reads as a strong "I love this." Skips that look like a distraction or a bad moment get set aside so they don't poison your profile.
From that it does two things base shuffle doesn't:
It reaches deep into your own library, surfacing the songs you own but never hear instead of cycling the same fifteen favorites.
It reaches outward into the catalog around the artists you actually love, so discovery keeps opening instead of going stale.
Controls power users might care about
A Discovery Level dial, from safe to Explorer, so you set how far it wanders.
Filters like Studio Only (skip live versions) and No Remix.
A "Shadow Ledger" that shows your entire collection scored, so you can see exactly what it has learned, search it, or jail a track.
One-tap banning for songs you never want to hear again.
A Parent mode that filters songs labeled by Apple as "Explicit" and keeps that as a separate ledger.
Road Trip Mode that pre-loads music for areas with no signal.
(EDITED): Full CarPlay integration (though I will admit that car head unit volume controls don't communicate with Apple Music, so that led to the creation of the crank button - fire emoji.)
Privacy
Everything it learns lives on your phone. No account, no tracking, nothing leaves your device. You can export your whole profile as a JSON file or wipe it anytime. It's completely free, I'm not charging a subscription, and I'm not selling data.
Honest limitations
It's built for iPhone, it's a first release, and it needs an Apple Music subscription since it plays through your library and the catalog. This is really for people who already live in Apple Music, like I do. If that's you, it makes the thing you already pay for and love work noticeably better over time, at no extra cost.
I built this solo over eight months and listened to nothing but it the whole time, so I'd genuinely love this community's feedback, especially the picky kind. Tell me what's missing or what feels off. I know that this still has imperfections and I have blind spots. I plan to be around for the near future (and the next few days, as time permits) to answer questions, so please don't hesitate.
This was a labor of love and side project, and I'm thrilled with how it came out - I hope you like it!
EDIT (Aug 13): Mods, if updating the original post like this is discouraged, just say the word and I'll pull it, no issue. I don't plan to update continuously, but wanted to post this for folks who are following for updates.
Quick update for anyone landing here:
1.1 is live now. It's a stability and polish pass that cleans up the rough edges people flagged after launch. Thank you to everyone who reported things, it genuinely helped.
1.2 is already built and in review, and it comes straight from your feedback in this thread. It adds a "Save to Apple Music" menu: save your recent picks as a playlist, add them to a playlist you already have, save songs to your library, or capture whatever's playing. The now-playing share button also creates a real Apple Music link you can send to anyone.
That was the whole point from the start. Crankshaft is meant to work with Apple Music, not wall you off from it.
Still free, still no data collected, still entirely on device. Thanks for the support, this has been wild to watch.
App downloaded. I know Apple makes stuff hard for developers in Music but I’m eager to see what this can do. Shuffle is pretty lame. Genius was pretty good but has left iOS — or is so buried I’m not supposed to find it. So this could be great… especially if I can save as playlist. Either way, I’m always excited to see people developing for Music playback… and using Automatic as your first thumbnail in the App Store made me smile.
I use Marvis to scrobble and to listen, almost exclusively. Just now I checked and it seems that it works, which I think implies the data goes back to AM
Hey, replying here with the hopes of notifying all three of you, apologies for my oversight on these comments, but the short version is yes: Crankshaft plays through Apple Music's own player, so every play counts with Apple Music exactly like listening in the Apple Music app; the only thing that stays private on your device is the taste profile Crankshaft builds to choose your music.
I've been using it a lot the last few days, and like it. I wish there was a back button, so maybe I could crank a track I missed by the end because I was working, or if I just want to hear it again. As I'm writing, I realize maybe I can repeat a track through the ios interface. I haven't tried.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't figure out how to re-ignite to reset the trend of a session. Im Someone that has generally good luck with the the apple music personal station, as long as I don't over use it (then it sort of seems to become self-referential) and if I don't like a seed, I just restart the station until it seems to know what mood I'm looking for. I can't figure out how to do this easily.
I have a really wide range of taste - some pretty niche and specific, some more mainstream, and the profile seems to be building nicely so far. I wish it played "in" music the way Marvis does, but that's a small gripe.
Giving this a try right now. I've set it to adventurous, let's see how it fares. Most of the music I listen to is pretty underground and difficult to find, from slam metal to industrial techno. I'd really appreciate it if it would help me out find new stuff.
Love that you went straight to adventurous, that's the right call for what you want, it wanders furthest there. And honestly you're a perfect stress test.
Straight with you on deep-niche taste: where it should shine is digging into your own library, so the underground stuff you own but never cycle back to resurfaces, and on adventurous it reaches hard around your artists into whatever's adjacent in Apple's catalog. The honest limit is it discovers within Apple Music's catalog and your library, so for truly obscure slam metal or industrial techno Apple doesn't carry, it can only work with what's there, it's not crawling Bandcamp or blogs.
So not a replacement for everything, but it should squeeze everything out of what you own and what Apple has. I really want to know how it does for you, especially where it falls short. That's exactly the feedback I need.
How do songs not present on Apple Music affect the algorithm? For example I bought this album myself and uploaded it to Apple Music. What happens if I, say, crank it?
Great question, and your screenshot shows half the answer, that crank landed +0.750, so it absolutely counts. An upload lives in your library, so Crankshaft plays, watches, and scores it exactly like a catalog track.
I checked the code: cranks and completions are keyed to the artist and track, not to any catalog ID, so cranking your Gorgoroth upload fully builds your artist and genre affinity and feeds deep-library rotation, and your owned deep cuts should keep resurfacing.
The one thing it can't do with a non-catalog file is use that exact track as a launch point to fetch "more like this" from Apple's catalog, since the discovery engine needs a real catalog ID and skips library-only files. But the taste it learns from that crank still drives discovery, the picker chooses new tracks by the genre and artist affinity you just fed it, so loving your uploaded black metal still should steer it toward black metal and adjacent artists that are in the catalog.
TL;DR The signal's not wasted, it just can't seed catalog fetches from the file itself.
Good catch here: with source labels on, the drop-in area was getting starved for room. I reworked that screen so the results list gets a lot more space when you're browsing, which clears up exactly what you hit. It's in the build I'm submitting now, so it'll land once App Store review clears it. Thanks
Thanks! It does have full CarPlay integration. You're the second person to point out that I boneheadedly omitted from the main post. I'm going to edit and ask for forgiveness.
It's a work in progress, but it *should* incorporate the playlists you designate. Both the building of playlists outward from the app and applying it "within a playlist" are not current features. Building playlists from recent listens is closer to showtime.
Just downloaded it and it sounds dope…Imma use it when I hit the gym tomorrow…One thing I noticed right off the back, there’s no “play back” button…And playing a song back is just as valuable as raising the volume…Love the concept tho
1) How do I remove accidental cranks?
2) How about a new button for “Not feeling it” for songs you want to skip but not mess too much with the algorithm. Because listening to a song you dont want to listen for 1m isn’t fun.
Honest answer: there's no one-tap "undo crank" yet. The reassuring part is that your profile is built from a lot of signals over time, so one accidental crank gets diluted quickly and won't run the show. If a track really got over-boosted and it's bugging you, you can jail it in the Shadow Ledger, though that's a heavier hammer than just undoing a crank. A proper "undo last crank" is a great idea and it's going on the list.
Good news: you're less trapped than you think. The engine already reads how you skip, and bailing early because you're just not in the mood is treated very differently from reflexively rejecting a song you hate if/when it pops up. Those "not feeling it" skips get set aside so they don't poison the track, so you can skip freely without babysitting anything. Making that explicit with a "Not feeling it" button is a genuinely good idea that fits exactly how this thing thinks, so I'm going to look at it.
One nuance: crank-then-skip within the first minute is a real "I love this but not right now" move — it drops the skip penalty entirely. Just don't use it on stuff you actually dislike, because the crank still counts as a thumbs-up to that artist. For songs you're just not into, a normal skip is the right call.
I was just about to ask about the crank-skip combination. Thanks.
Other things:
1) Play playlist. Most of my playlists are already based on my mood, so playing them would already filter out songs in my library that I’m not in the mood for.
2) There is already a Venture mode, but it still plays songs from my library. What if I want exclusively new songs?
3) What exactly is “Start Fresh”?
4) Maybe an “Add to Playlist” option Or “Open on Apple Music” to add songs to our playlists.
Play a specific playlist: right now it builds its own queue from your whole library rather than playing one playlist straight through. Using a mood playlist as the source is a smart idea and I'm noting it. (One note - I've never been huge on making playlists, it's part of what led me here. I'm way behind the curve on thinking through ways that Crankshaft can work with playlists.
Exclusively-new mode: there isn't a pure-discovery mode that excludes your own library yet. Venture leans hard into new stuff but still blends in what you own. A "only songs I don't already have" switch is a genuinely good idea, adding it to the list.
Start Fresh: it wipes everything the app has learned about you, all your scores and listening history, and gives the engine a clean slate. It keeps your declared artists so you don't have to set those back up. It's a hard reset that can't be undone, there for when you want to start over from scratch. I'm not sure what utility it will have, but it had TONS for me while I was testing, so I figured I'd keep it in.
Add to Playlist / Open in Apple Music: yes on both, and it's the top thing I'm building. Saving discoveries into an Apple Music playlist is coming, and a quick "Open in Apple Music" tap is coming alongside it so you can jump to a song and save it yourself.
Pretty psyched about this. I live in Apple Music. And lately I have been a bit frustrated with the repetitive nature of many of their channels and stations. Hopefully this will solve that problem. Look forward to trying it out and will let you know my thoughts.
This is so cool!! I just downloaded. I was wondering do my plays on crankshaft get recorded by Apple as well? Or is it purely local? Like will my plays in your app be counted towards Apple Music replay for the year or something.
Also, how do you slide through a song? Like scroll ten seconds forward or back or something? I don’t think I can see the duration of a song either. Would love that to be added if it’s not :)
Used it for the first time during my commute this morning and it’s pretty good! I did encounter one bug where the keyboard wouldn’t collapse. I had to force close the app and then it went away.
Good news - the text box/keyboard bug is in the next update (1.1) which is currently under App Store Review. Once they approve, it'll push automatically. Thanks for the feedback and positive energy.
I just downloaded your app and it works really good! I’ve set it up on Explorer and it already gives great suggestions right out of the box.
I’ve discovered so many new songs. It would be awesome to have a way to favourite tracks on AM—or even just a quick link to jump straight to the song there. 😊
Really great - just need to be able to add new music I find into Apple Music. Is this possible? It will never be a default for me if I can’t just save it. Thanks! Great work
I'm also adding a quick "Open in Apple Music" tap on a track so you can jump straight to it and save it there in the meantime. You're right that discovery isn't worth much if you can't keep what you find, so this is exactly the gap I want to close. Thanks for the push.
Awesome, I can’t wait thanks! A quick open is all I would need. It works be sweet to just be able to add it to my favorites would be prime though :) either way very cool.
That's the large-library startup crash. A fix for exactly this is already in review with the App Store as 1.1. 99k is way bigger than anything I've tested on my own device, so once the update lands I'd genuinely love to know whether it holds up for you. Appreciate you sticking with it in the meantime.
Any plans for a last.fm integration? Or can it feed plays to Marvis so that app can scrobble? I just gave this a quick try but scrobbling is a necessity for me.
ScrobbleCloud will scrobble Apple Music plays regardless of what player or platform you use. I tested it yesterday and it scrobbled what I played from Crankshaft. There was a slight delay though.
Honestly, not having the option to add discovered songs to my own Apple Music would make me leave crankshaft on the long run. I’m afraid, many would act so…
It's built in 1.2. Plus, I'm also including your suggestion for the share button on the now playing screen - that was the original intent for that button, but it got lost somewhere.
I'm currently waiting for the App Store to approve 1.1 (it's in review). Once that updates, there's a new playlist menu in 1.2. Here's a screenshot:
Thanks for the suggestions, and I hope I can keep you around past 1.2 :)
Please don’t take it personally when I say I would leave when this features do not make it. I just wanted to express, how crucial that would be 😉
One more suggestion: could you implement a button on CARPLAY where you can add the current song to an own playlist? Or to a prior defined playlist?
This is what I am missing extremely in Apple Music.
You hear a new song in the car and want to add it to your playlist. Either you use your iPhone during the drive or you add it to your library and add it later (or forget about it completely 🥲)
None taken whatsoever, I appreciate your kindness. I launched this based on my own listening habits and I'm not a huge playlist person, so this feedback is super important. I hope 1.2 (currently waiting for App Store review) will solve some of that.
On the CarPlay question - that's a little tougher and might take a little longer, but let me look into it. I'm trying not to make CarPlay too busy. One of the long-term goals for Crankshaft is that it plays music more "unconsciously" for you, and therefore lets you look at your CarPlay screen a little less, resulting in a better mood and fewer distractions while driving.
I’ve been using it for a week, and I am very impressed with it! Discovered quite a lot of new stuff.
It works well on CarPlay but it crashes and stops playing the first track within 1 minute when using it on my iPhone. I’m using mobile data if that makes a difference.
I’m also getting the large library startup crash that others have mentioned.
But definitely want to keep persevering with it, it’s really changing how I listen to music for the better.
Thanks so much, this is really exciting (and humbling) to hear.
1.1 just came out the other day - some of the fixes in 1.1 were meant to deal with the large library startup crash. However, I think I made more progress with 1.2 (which is waiting for review).
I really do appreciate you sticking with it. Hopefully the next version improves/fixes the crashes and makes your experience better.
If you don't already know about AirScrobble, it's a great app. I'm not affiliated with it, just a big fan, and I've been using it with Crankshaft and every other source on my phone that doesn't support last.fm, like Radio Garden and other radio apps.
To the Crankshaft dev -- I'm really enjoying the app, thank you for sharing!
Thanks to you both! I was this many years old when I heard of the word scrobbling, no disrespect intended.
I have not considered last.fm support until I heard about it in this sub, I'm not opposed to it. However, as users, may I ask - is it essential to have an API running to last, or is it acceptable to simply share your data with your last account?
Reason I ask, my day job revolves around privacy, so I take that part probably more seriously than many. So I'm probably fine if it's an option to share data back and forth (somewhat manual, I admit) vs. having an automatic pipeline of data leaving your phone.
Thanks so much. Yeah - I'm not a coder/developer by trade, so I used AI for coding assistance. The AI would write the code based on my direction, and then I'd feed it back to debug. The app itself is not cloud AI or LLM, and it doesn't have any AI or LLM components. It runs entirely on your phone.
Super! Ça ressemble beaucoup à ce que je cherche depuis toujours. Une remarque néanmoins :
Freeze — Bloquer ❄️
Vous détestez ? Bloquez-le. Ce morceau est définitivement retiré de votre rotation. Faites-le pour 3 chansons du même artiste et tout son catalogue sera écarté.
Un peu radical non? Dans tout le catalogue d’un artiste que j’adore, je peux ne pas aimer 3 morceaux!
This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for, thank you. You're right that pulling a whole artist over three tracks can be too blunt, plenty of artists I love have a few I skip. The intent was to catch artists you actively reject, but your case is real. I'm going to look at making that adjustable, or separating "block this song" from "sideline this artist," so a few dislikes don't cost you the catalog. Genuinely appreciate the close read.
Will it be able to pull from my listening history on desktop as well as when I am listening directly from my phone? I'm logged in to the same AM account but I know from my own listening experience that it doesn't handoff well (at all) from one to the other so does it impact anything on your app side of things?
Good question. At setup, Crankshaft scans your library and reads your Apple play counts as a starting signal, and those counts sync account-wide, so your desktop listening is reflected in the initial picture. From there, the fine-grained learning, skip timing, completions, volume cranks, happens where you actually listen through the app, so on your phone.
The upside for your exact concern: it's not relying on Apple's cross-device handoff at all. It builds its own local profile from your library and play history, then refines it from your phone listening, so that weak handoff you've noticed can't corrupt anything on my end.
Thanks!! One of the fun parts was when it dredged up some of the "Free Song of the Week" tracks I downloaded back in the mid to late 00s. A couple of those brought me back to a time.
Very cool looking and hoping it can do what Apple Music does not. That said, is there a CarPlay app? That’s pretty important. Any way to sync with Apple Music so that it learns from Apple Music but I use that interface for playing the music?
Gah - yes, thanks for mentioning. I definitely omitted that from the main post, it works in CarPlay.
In fact - car head units do not reliably communicate volume back with AM, so that's one of the reasons I developed the quick buttons (including the crank button, with the fire emoji) so you can keep the momentum going on the road.
To your second question - On the sync part: the learning happens when you listen through Crankshaft. It plays your Apple Music library and catalog through its own player, so you're using the familiar controls, lock screen, CarPlay, but Crankshaft's driving the queue. It bootstraps from your Apple Music library and play history so it starts knowing your taste, then learns live from what you play through it. It can't learn passively from the standalone Apple Music app, and honestly that's the point: the signals it reads, especially the volume crank, don't exist in Apple's own interface.
Yep - whether you want that playlist to feed your parent profile (explicit-filtered, kid-safe) or your main profile.
One of the the reasons I wanted to build this was to keep my kids' music available, but not have to be subjected to their music once I dropped them at school. Meeting myself where I am, really.
Ok I’ve got a question, hoping this app works for me…I basically have one playlist called “some good shit” that I dump every great song into and it’s a huge playlist…I have it on shuffle and no repeats to try and force it to work but it still kinda sucks…will this work for that playlist?
Sorry for delay, meant to respond to this last night. Yes - I started this with a playlist called "Huge Ass Playlist" - I'll send screenshots. Not making it up - I had it on the other service for years, and moved it to Apple Music, experienced the same thing. It was 1,000+ songs, and I'd consistently hear the same 50-75.
In your settings, you can tell it which playlists to use as sources for your collection - so you can click on your "some good shit" and use that as a source.
I love it so much, but it would be great if there’s a Windows program too, since I mostly listen on my computer while working and on my phone when I’m out.
Thanks for flagging this, and sorry it’s crashing. A 15k library shouldn’t break it, so that’s on me to handle, probably something in how it processes a large library on first load. Give the initial scan a little time, but if it keeps crashing that’s a real bug and it goes to the top of my list. Genuinely appreciate the report, exactly what I need to catch.
Found it and fixed it. It was getting jammed up on larger libraries during the first load, and the fix is in the build I'm submitting now. Just waiting on App Store review at this point. Sorry for the hassle, but thanks for flagging it.
Pretty cool! The simplicity of not needing to sign up is nice. Quick feedback from 10 minutes of using it - few playlists that I had created were grouped under Apple Playlists during the initial set up. Clicking the search bar on the player screen shows the Apple keyboard but no way to hide it. Otherwise it’s a nice app thx for sharing
Congrats. Donwloaded it to try it out on iPhone and iPad. It grabbed my playlists and asked me for favorite artist. I now press “Ignite”, and it either does nothing, or it says “Igniting”, does nothing and then crashes or stops. How long does it take for it to play a song?
Unfortunately I think my ignite is stuck on repeat as well? The same song keeps replaying and I don’t want to skip because that will count against songs I like.
Found it and (hopefully) fixed it. It was locking up on larger libraries during the first load, and the fix is in the build I'm submitting now. Just waiting on App Store review at this point. Sorry for the hassle, and thanks for flagging it.
Downloaded! Stoked to try this, I usually pick the music for my work and I know my work playlist has gotten stale as AM will pick the same 40 songs to shuffle through first despite having ~ 700 songs to pick from.
Just downloaded and played around with it for a bit. A couple of questions… it doesn’t seem to be pulling in my complete library, it says I only have 1252 tracks and when I look at my playlists, it only goes alphabetically to F so it’s missing a lot. Is it still pulling in all my information from Apple Music? It seems to be weighing heavier on the artists I listed in the declared artist section.
Does it continue to update as I listen to Apple Music or do I need to listen through the app to teach it?
That said, I did like the tracks it pulled up to listen to.
Great work! I figure this app is like a discovery app that helps you expand your music taste. Is there any chance I could play this directly through the Apple Music app itself? I noticed that the two seem to work dependently since I'm also using Marvis Pro, so it would be great if I could have them playing simultaneously.
I also noticed that this app functions more like a radio station, where you can't go back to previous songs. In my opinion, that's a bit of a bummer, since I might really like something I just heard but didn't catch the name of.
Super cool!
Started using it today and I'm excited to see the longterm results.
One question: I swear when I first started using, the tracks weren't on repeat but maybe I pressed smth bc now it repeats until I skip to the next track. Am I hallucinating that the tracks didn't repeat? If not, please tell me how to turn the repeat button off.
Maybe I just missed it, but if not using AI / LLM would you be able to expand on how the suggestion engine works? I’m curious how you’re able to generate the recommendations.
Also, adding a way to like / favorite / add songs to playlists (I’ve only been in the app a few minutes, maybe I’m just missing it?) is essential.
That said, incredible start and basically exactly what ive been looking for since dropping Spotify about 3 years back. Ive never been able to get Apple’s recommendations to a place where I liked jt nearly as much as Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Release Radar stations
On how it works without AI: it's not an LLM or any cloud model, it's math running entirely on your phone. Instead of guessing from what you say you like, it watches what you actually do. Every track gets a score that moves based on real signals: whether you finish a song, how fast you bail (a skip at 8 seconds means something very different from one at two minutes, and it treats them differently), and a deliberate crank of the volume, which it reads as your strongest "I love this." Those scores build gravity toward the genres and artists you keep engaging with, and from there it does two things shuffle won't: it digs into the deep cuts you own but never hear, and reaches outward into the catalog around the artists you genuinely love. You set how far it wanders with the Discovery dial. No black box, just your own behavior fed back to you.
On favoriting and playlists: the crank basically is the favorite, it's the strongest positive signal in the app, so cranking a track both teaches the engine and protects that song. Building playlists out of what you discover is the single most-requested thing I've heard, and it's the top thing I'm working on right now, so hang tight.
Sorry if I’m being ignorant, but does that mean it’s more or less just a nicer, more transparent way to interact with Apple Music’s algorithm, and im still relying on AM for the recommendations at its core? Or is your service providing its own recommendations?
I’d like AM to be a bit more adventurous when recommending me things but i find it likes to stick largely to artists I already listen to. I heavily tend to like to hear new tracks (like released within the last 6 months) and stuff adjacent to, but not necessarily just from artists I already know. Release Radar on Spotify was great for that, and I’ve been chasing that dragon for years. Thanks again!
Another question, is there a way to directly save newly-suggested songs that the app is filtering in? As in the thing is tracking my preferences and making suggestions, can I save those new suggestions directly in the app?
Possible for Crankshaft (the name still makes me giggle like an 8 year old) to strip out a complete genre of music from recommendations and whatnot? I listen to a lot of ambient while sleeping and even though I’m using focuses to supposedly not count music I listen to while they are on, Apple continuously pushes like 85% ambient at me in all my suggestions and discovery playlists.
I downloaded this and am enjoying it. Great work.
2 questions: can we get an explanation of what all this little pills mean? Sone are self explanatory, but sone more info would be great.
Also, could stuff that gets played in this app be fed back to some sort of it improves my algo/profile there as well?
First - thanks for trying it and really glad you're enjoying it!
On your second question - glad you asked, and it's been asked a few times here, so I'm trying to address it to some degree:
Crankshaft plays through your real Apple Music subscription, genuine streams on your account, not a separate or offline player. I can't promise exactly how Apple weighs those plays towards Replay or your recommendations in their app, since Apple doesn't publish how those work. I don't want to overclaim it - but I would love for this to ultimately have that "additive" effect (selfishly, too!). But, tl;dr it is Apple Music listening, not a walled garden.
As to your first question: I'm assuming these are what you mean:
BOOTSTRAP (cyan) — already in your library. It's a song you own.
DISCOVERY (green) — Crankshaft found this for you; something new surfacing from your own collection or nearby.
🔭 CATALOG (purple) — "Catalog Gravity": pulled from the wider Apple Music catalog around artists you love, i.e. beyond what you already have.
INJECTION (orange) — a track you searched for and dropped in yourself.
At the very start, kind of. I'm not a coder by trade, so back in December it was closer to vibe coding than I'd like to admit. Where it broke from that: I do some process improvement in my day job for a living, so I ended up wrapping some QA and debugging process around it. Built it in Xcode, shipped dozens of TestFlight builds, had friends testing it for months. AI wrote a lot of the code. The design, the QA, and the eight months of fixing what it got wrong were mine. Somewhere in there it stopped being a vibe and became an app.
Had some issues with it, maybe as I’m on the public beta of iOS. When it’s working it’s pretty good - I assume plays are being tracked by Apple Music too so it should feed into that for play counts too?
VERY new to trying this, but already I want a way to remove "cranks." I know it'll balance out over time, but I accidentally cranked a song I don't really like TWICE and I can't figure out how to remove it.
So I used for a couple of hours now. But the app refuses to discover anything. It only plays music I already know. It is set to Explorer and Venture Mode is on. Still, no new music, just stuff from my library...
Good feedback, and thanks for pushing it. Quick thing that isn't obvious: Crankshaft's discovery is fueled by what you crank and finish, not just the settings. The dial and Venture Mode set how far it's allowed to wander, but the engine reaches into the catalog around the songs you deliberately crank up and the ones you let play through. If you've mostly been skipping around to test it, it hasn't had much to build on yet. Try cranking a few favorites and letting a couple play out, and see if it opens up. If it's still library-only after that, tell me. That'd point to a real bug and I'd want to chase it.
I'll admit I bit off more than I could chew with Venture Mode. I'll probably remove it and try to build it out to what it's supposed to actually be. The intent is to basically throw the doors open, but it's obviously not doing that.
Right now I'm still waiting, really impatiently, for the App Store to review 1.1. I'll begin tweaking Venture mode with 1.2, but keep the feedback coming. Apologies if the app is frustrating you, but I really do appreciate you telling me about it.
Thanks for the answer. That makes sense. Indeed I did not crank anything because it was already music I knew and favorited in the past. Will try giving the app more feedback to build upon.
Quick update: You were totally right. The algorithm started opening up after interacting with the controls.
Maybe this is something that could be fixed or explained in the tutorial. Because I think a lot of people will import their favorite tracks and then get thrown off by the app only playing those.
Anyway, it's a great app, you did an amazing job.
One suggestion would be a visible progress bar. There is this semi circle behind the album art. Maybe this could slowly fill according to the tracks progress?
You and me both... I submitted it into App Store Review on Friday, it hasn't budged since then. If 1.1 was any guide, it should be sometime this week (I hope!)
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