I love how clean it looks like

- Enhanced the bottom bar to make space for bigger cover art and added an equalizer button (@q-stankovic have look)

• It would be a valuable information to show the name of the album lists view right to the filter icon.
• The name of the playlist is also a relevant piece of information. Actually the playlist window should contain its own minimal playlist switcher. A drop down menu f.e. would not only act as a switcher but also display the playlist name. In the meantime I think that playlist tabs would disturb the design
• As far as I can see you separated in the footer bar the repeat and shuffle functionality into two icons. I wouldn't do that. I always loved that fb2k merged all these modes into one list of possible playback orders. I think that the playback orders name should be readable
• The current mac version wants to be an east replication of the windows version in terms of ui apart from the footer bar that is unique. I think that the most parts should be unique and mac-like. In my eyes an layout editor for cartoon of several layouts is not necessary at all. Generally a mac user expects a three pane layout. In my eyes a good three pane layout would be: library viewer - playlist - selection info viewer. While the playlist is always shown the library viewer pane and the selection info viewer pane could be switchable by icons in the top bar of the window. Also the cover view should be combined with fb2ks selection infos (metadata, location ...). Here a screenshot of another player to show what I mean:
  

Please don't take it personal if don't consider everything 1:1 what gets mentioned.

- Album name next to the library filter makes no sense because it's the library view and not the playlist. Album name etc. will be shown in the playlist and in the bottom bar.

- Shuffle and repeat are two very different things. Makes no sense to mash those things together.

An increased height of the bottom bar doesn't matter with nowadays resolutions.

The side bar makes complete sense because it solves a lot of issues with the current approach

Please don't take it personal if don't consider everything 1:1 what gets mentioned.

Hey, not at all!  On the contrary, I'm glad that someone is not only wishing for this, but also showing with his own design what a fb2k adapted to the Mac could look like.

Whatever a future version of fb2k may look like, it seems important to me that the design not only fulfills the expectations of Mac users, but that it is completely detached from how fb2k looks on Windows. The footer bar was a very promising start in this direction. I have to repeat myself at this point and emphasize once again that this customizability typical of windows is not expected at all for programs on the Mac. I would even go so far as to say that a single, but well thought-out layout on the mac is completely sufficient. Of course it makes sense to let the user decide whether he prefers to see a component (e.g. album list, facets, library search,...) integrated in the layout or as a standalone window. But that should be it.

A simple 3-pane layout, one where the individual panes are not even split vertically, would be ideal. I remember when I was active here, it was always said that fb2k is not about customizability. the credo was: make simple things easy and make complex things possible. Ultimately, however, it is the case in the windows world that it does seem to be about that for most users. And that is a fundamental difference between windows and mac.

- Album name next to the library filter makes no sense because it's the library view and not the playlist. Album name etc. will be shown in the playlist and in the bottom bar.

That's a misunderstanding! I didn't mean the album name, but the name of the album list view. However, in the last edition of your work you have already inserted a drop-down menu for selecting the view, which makes the name readable. Two suggestions: 1. the menu should be large enough so that you can read the full name of the view. And 2. there would be enough space in the top bar right next to the name “library”. If the search field is used temporarily, the drop-down menu can be covered.

- Shuffle and repeat are two very different things. Makes no sense to mash those things together.

Yes and no. I know what you mean, most players allow you to set shuffle and repeat independently of each other. But this is not the case in fb2k. They are already mashed together under the term playback order, which means that only one can be selected at a time. Your design in turn would provoke the misunderstanding that shuffle and repeat could be combined in several variations and would therefore be a bad decision in terms of UX/UI.

An increased height of the bottom bar doesn't matter with nowadays resolutions.

It certainly doesn't matter on an iMac, but it does on a 13-inch MacBook air. At least a little bit smaller, somewhere in the middle between you and me?

The side bar makes complete sense because it solves a lot of issues with the current approach

Ok, that's the point I'm critical of. And not even so much because of the possible 4-pane layout, which in my opinion should be avoided in mac apps, not only, but also because there is no space for it on macBooks.

It's about something else. You are not taking into account that fb2k has other library viewers, namely facets and the library search. And it cannot be ruled out in principle that other library viewers will be added in the future, either by default or as components. And this raises the question of how all this should be accommodated in the sidebar. It would be perfectly sufficient for me if all library viewers were accessible in the first and left pane via a tabbed view. This saves space, is simple and intuitive, but above all it avoids the problem I have just described.

You mean the "Library" text should be covered!?

I thought this through. A selected repeat mode would override any active shuffle mode and vise versa. This is very easy to implement and is still better then mashing things into one ugly dropdown and/or a non self explanatory icon. Dropdowns are a last resort pattern and you won't see any if at all in well designed applications.

I need to look into the facets (never used them) but I am not sure if it is really true that users want or need a gazillion different views on their library. Happy to be proved wrong. Search is a non issue because each different library view would have a library search on top as shown in the design.

I can definitely agree with your last sentence. It doesn't have to be a drop-down menu. Beautiful and meaningful icons would do just as well. My point is that you can't separate the individual types of playback order without causing confusion among users. This is because of the way they are designed in fb2k: the one random and the three shuffle orders do not only play the tracks through and then stop, but they themselves contain the repeat function and play the playlist again and again. This means that only the default playback order has no repeat function. And that is precisely why it makes sense, if not necessary, to keep these functions together. As I said, meaningful icons for each type of playback order would be the solution.

I have been a Mac user since 2014 and unfortunately have not used fb2k since then. Nevertheless, I have followed the further development from time to time. Until 2014 and probably still today, facets was and is a central component. It was not for nothing that Peter Pawlowski himself took over the component after the old developer left. And the library search is also a central component, as it offers a unique search based on a sortable track list: for example, it is easy to start a search according to certain criteria and sort the list to ultimately get an overview of tracks that are not fragmented by artist, album, genre or whatever.

Let's assume that the Mac version of foobar2000 will not receive numerous components. And to be honest: it doesn't have to. It's already one of the most feature-rich players in the mac universe. But I think that the central components should find a place in the layout, such as: radio, album list, library search, facets, playlist manager and maybe also the playlist search.

And last but not least: my much-loved playback queue (one of the coolest features ever since winamp introduced it decades ago), where you don't have to think long about how to place it in the layout, because Apple Music has shown that a pop-up is the ideal solution for this function.

Not sure if I would deviate from the fb2k approach regarding the playback queue in form of the playlist on the right. For me this Total Commander like approach to music has always been the best (signature) feature of fb2k. In my opinion it's quite elegant that you basically create a playlist on the fly through the playback queue which then can be saved and basically has the same appearance as before. Don't agree that the Apple Music playback queue approach is necessarily the right one for fb2k. Or are you referring to the Apple Music streaming service?

By the way: Why did you rename playlist to playback queue? These are still the playlists and not the queue that exists in fb2k. The term queue also exists in other players, but there it means something completely different

I have to tell you something else, in the hope that you won't take offence. In some places you go beyond improving fb2k in terms of ux/ui and a modern Mac look. At times at least it seems like you want to create a different and new player, where the different and new breaks with some of the things that make fb2k special, such as the playback order

You seem to be too attached to the status quo and got used over the years to some not so well executed things.

Not really If it were up to me, the shuffle functions could definitely be separated from the repeat functions. My point was rather that it's not like that. The question is, of course, to what extent your redesign is not just that, but also a proposal to change core functions.