foobar2000 v2.24 for Mac release notes

Overview

This release introduces all-new modular user interface, allowing various modular elements to be included in the main window.
For customization options, see main menu View / Layout.
Built-in elements include: Album List, ReFacets, album art viewer, selection properties, console, Internet Radio browser.
Can embed Audio Units in main window (as visualizations or as live DSP controls).

System requirements

This version requires Mac OS 11 "Big Sur".
Use foobar2000 2.6.x series on Mac OS 10.13 - 10.15 instead on older Macs, it doesn't have latest features but was actually verified working on oldest supported system. Or use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to get newer Mac OS on your unsupported Mac.

Full list of changes

New version numbering scheme: 2.24 for planned stable release year of 2024.
Lowest supported Mac OS version is now Mac OS 11 "Big Sur".
Entirely new Mac user interface, allowing various panels to be embededd in main foobar2000 window.
Lots of appearance & usability improvements, reworked various windows to look more consistently with modern Mac OS.
Internet radio improvements:
- Fixed Internet radio search not working through a proxy server.
- Internet Radio search & list: clicking a stream that is already playing no longer restarts playback.
- Made disconnected internet radio streams resumed quietly, without showing error popups.
- Suppressed advancing to the next playlist item if internet radio playback stops due to a network error.
Codec & audio format fixes
- Implemented Ogg chapter support.
- Fixes for plain WAV files near & over 4GB in size. Note that WAV file format does not actually support content longer than 4GB.
- Refactored Matroska chapter handling. If a multichapter Matroska file is played as a whole (from remote URL etc), chapter names will be shown as dynamic track titles.
- Made refuse to retag MP4/M4A/M4B files with QT chapters if chapter count exceeds 255, to prevent erratic behavior. Please remux such files to another container to allow tagging.
- Made WMA tag writing behave less erratically if fed tags read by FFmpeg decoder wrapper.
- MP4/M4A/M4B: Prefer QT chapters over chpl if more than 255 chapters found.
- MP4/M4A/M4B: Fixed very rare tag update failures if exceeding 4GB boundary. Note that previous versions would just leave the file untouched and report an error if running into this scenario, never corrupt files.
- Updated MP4 tmpo tag manipulation, restored ability to write which was lost a few years ago.
- Improved compatibility with multi-value MP4/M4A tags.
- Fixed JXL/AVIF/HEIC external album covers not being recognized.
- Made fact chunk in PCM WAV files ignored.
- Removed arbitrary denial of reading of cuesheets over FTP/HTTP/etc.
- Allowed absolute paths in cue sheets.
- Extended MP4 chapter manipulation commands to work with other formats that support chapterizer interface, such as Ogg or Musepack.
- Prevented nonsense sample rate & channel count from being shown on MP4 files with no audio track.
- Made possible to store peak information in Opus files.
- Fixed erratic behavior if ID3v2 tag contains multiple date fields.
- Added video_codec info for Windows Media Video.
- Added stream_count info for formats that support multiple streams.
- Allow local M3U referencing remote M3U to be both read as playlists, prevent HLS reader being used on non-HLS content.
- Report zero-length WAV files as broken.
- Fixed more odd behaviors of tag editing on MP4/M4A with QT chapters.
- Made stream selector show long codec names.
File Operations
- Suppressed useless secondary progress bar if renaming files.
- Defer info reload to prevent bugged display of cuesheets after moving whole folder.
- Added an option to overwrite existing files.
Usability improvements
- Added update checks - checks for last public beta/stable build, same as Windows version.
- Added menu commands to configure Audio Units without going through Preferences.
- Utilized monospace digit font in for most of user interface.
- Implemented meta autocomplete in Properties dialog.
- Enabled chapter manipulation menu commands, same as on Windows. They were not available in previous versions.
- Added missing Decoding Speed Test warm-up toggle (the feature was actually always-on before).
- Implemented Advanced Preferences search.
- Made dock icon accept dropping folders.
- Made possible to keep running after closing main window.
- Made possible to save AccurateRip logs directly from the results window.
- Amended AccurateRip log formatting, added track number info to lines where it was missing before.
- Made AccurateRip log saving output Mac-style line endings.
- Made current console backlog saved when toggling logging on.
- Added %channel_mask% title formatting field, on top of on $info(WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE_CHANNEL_MASK).
- ReFacets & Album List: Improved processing of %<field>% expressions, artist and artist sort should be split together properly.
- Added tweak options for ReplayGain thread counts.
- Removed arbitrary limit of items per "apply gain to file content" pass.
- Made File menu dynamic-generated properly, made various previously-hidden commands accessible, including "Reset Configuration", "Browse Configuration Folder", etc.
- Cleaned up title capitalization in menu commands.
- Implemented Cmd+F search in Playlist.
General improvements
- New major revision of bitcompare code, improved performance of 64-bit build.
- Fixed whole lot of bugs related to wildcard characters (*, ?) in file names.
- Improved recovery of corrupted configuration data.
- Fixed bugs with urlencoding in HTTP redirects.
- Made https:// used for help.foobar2000.org links.
- Refactored metadb_display_field_provider lookup, faster title formatting evaluation on heavy configs.
- Media Library: made track add & remove events triggered in groups, resulting in much faster autoplaylist updates.
- Playback CPU usage optimizations.
Third party code updates
- FFmpeg 6.1.1
- Opus 1.5.2
- WavPack 5.7.0
- Monkey's Audio 10.80
- unRAR 7.0.9