Ideas for improvements to Syncplay

We’ve got lots of great ideas for Syncplay, many of which have been helpfully suggested by our user. However, at present Syncplay 1.x only has one active core developer, so things might take a while. If you’re a developer then please chat on #Syncplay on chat.freenode.net about which features you could help developer, or e-mail dev@syncplay.pl. You can suggest an idea by raising an issue on our GitHub page.

Something we hope to get around to when we have time (volunteers welcome):

• (If you are interested in adopting this as a feature you wish to develop then let us know!)
• Get information about currently playing file – e.g. CRC32 checksum
• Per-server favourite rooms & remembering operator passwords – see issue #216
• Get paths for Media Players on Windows via registry
• Conversation & event logging – See issue #201

Would need someone to come on board to develop:

• Support for more languages  – We can help people who want to help us translate Syncplay into their language!
• Support for additional media players – Additional media players would need to come from an individual who used that media player and was willing to maintain it, and may require modifications to the media player software itself. Last we checked, SMPlayer and PotPlayer lack the APIs / API Features that Syncplay needed to synchronise playback. It has been reported that SMPlayer may be controllable via mpris 2 but this yet to be investigated. See this forum thread for a discussion of KODI/XBMC suppor, issue #197 for a discussion on MPC-QT support, issue #218 for a discussion of PotPlayer support, and issue #144 for a discussion of IINA support, issue #62 for a discussion of BOMI support.
• More style customisation options
• Allowing rooms to have a custom playback rate

Probably adds too much complexity to be worth it:

• Option to add info columns to the playlist (length, path) (#307)
• Detachable chat overlay as an option (#258)
• Expand Protocol: Syncplay URN (#264)
• Introducing a generic event hook system (#202)

If it happens, it will probably not be until Syncplay 2:

• Allow for various settings to be changed at runtime
• Support for moving seen files to a /seen/ folder, etc
• Support for plugins – Could allow others to develop integration with Ultros bot server, Bittlebee gateway server, Mumble, IRC, MyAnimeList, Android/iOS controllers, etc

Unlikely to ever happen:

• Support for frame-percent synchronisation, e.g. for public displays – It’d be a lot of work for something which makes no difference for our core purpose, which is allowing for people to synchronise over the Internet (where VoIP latency and the inability to actually see the other screen means any small amount of latency is unimportant).
• Support for media player’s internal playlists – Use Syncplay’s shared playlists instead