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Pictures

myMPD supports local coverart for albums, streams and tags.

Albumart

myMPD can get albumart through through direct access to the MPD music directory, through the MPD protocol or with the help of scripts.

Direct access

The fastest and most flexible way is through direct access with albumart in folders.

This offers:

  • Configurable albumart filenames
  • Support of thumbnails
  • Support of more than one image, e. g. cover, back, inlet

Configure the music directory:

  1. If connected through the local MPD socket: myMPD gets the music_directory automatically, if the music directory option is set to auto.
  2. If connected over network: set the music directory option in the connection dialog.

Enable albumart support:

  1. Albumart in folders per album
    • Put the pictures and thumbnails in the album folders, name it always the same, e.g. cover-sm.webp (thumbnail) and cover.webp (full image)
    • Configure the name in the settings (albumart filenames and thumbnail names), a comma separated list of filenames and only basenames (filenames without extensions) are also supported
  2. Embedded albumart in the music files
    • myMPD must be compiled with flac/libid3tag support (default in prebuild packages)
    • Supported formats are id3v2 for MP3 and Vorbis Comments for FLAC and OGG
    • myMPD reads all embedded images, not only the first one as MPD.

Through MPD protocol

This is useful if myMPD does not run on the same host as MPD.

  1. Albumart in folders per album
    • Put the albumart in the album folders, the basename must be cover (e.g. cover.jpg), this is not configurable
  2. Embedded albumart in the music files
    • Only MPD >= 0.22 supports the readpicture command
    • Only first image is read

myMPD restricts the size to 5 MB.

Scripts

If myMPD does not find local albumart it emmits the mympd_albumart trigger. Attach a script to fetch and deliver albumart to this trigger. Only one script is supported for this event.

A fully working example implementation can be found in the mympd-scripts repository.

Streams

  1. Images must be named as the uri of the stream, replace the characters <>/.:?&$%!#\|;= with _, e.g. http___stream_laut_fm_nonpop.png for uri http://stream.laut.fm/nonpop.
  2. Put these images in the /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs folder.

Pictures for other tags

The "Browse Database" grid view can display pictures for other tags than album also. To enable this simply create a directory with the tagname in the /var/lib/mympd/pics directory and put pictures with filename equal the tag value in this directory.

You can download artistart with the script from https://github.com/jcorporation/musicdb-scripts

Tag values are case sensitive and are sanitized: / and \ are replaced with _ (AC/DC -> AC_DC)

If the tag directory exists and myMPD can not find the tagart it emmits the mympd_tagart trigger. Attach a script to fetch and deliver tagart to this trigger. Only one script is supported for this event.

A fully working example implementation can be found in the mympd-scripts repository.

Example

Create a directory named AlbumArtist under /var/lib/mympd/pics. Add pictures with the AlbumArtist name as filename in this directory.

Other pictures

Home icon pictures

Pictures for the home icons must be placed in the directory /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs.

Playlist pictures

Pictures for playlists must be placed in the directory /var/lib/mympd/pics/playlists. This directory does not exists in the default installation. Create it to enable the playlists picture feature.

Background images

Background images must be saved in the /var/lib/mympd/pics/backgrounds folder.

Supported file extensions

myMPD recognizes following file extensions:

  • webp, png, jpg, jpeg, svg, avif

Custom placeholder images

You can add custom placeholder images for albumart.

  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-booklet.webp
  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-folder.webp
  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-mympd.webp
  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-notavailable.webp
  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-playlist.webp
  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-smartpls.webp
  • /var/lib/mympd/pics/thumbs/coverimage-stream.webp

You can use every supported file extension.

Picture caches

myMPD caches covers in the folder /var/cache/mympd/cover and pictures for other tags in /var/cache/mympd/thumbs. Files in this folders can be safely deleted. myMPD housekeeps the caches on startup and each day.

You can disable the caches by setting the cache_cover_keep_days or cache_thumbs_keep_days configuration value to 0 or disable the cleanup of the cache by setting it to -1.