Usage Guide

This guide covers day-to-day usage of soundspan: setup, navigation, playback behavior, and administration.

For deployment and installation, see DEPLOYMENT.md. For configuration and security, see CONFIGURATION_AND_SECURITY.md.

First-Time Setup

Create the first account (this user becomes admin)
Optionally configure integrations (see INTEGRATIONS.md)
Wait for initial library scan and enrichment

Home and Search

Home surfaces continue listening, recently added items, radio stations, mixes, and recommendations
Search includes tabs for library, discovery, and podcasts
Discovery search supports preview/download/subscription actions

Artist Playback Order

Artist-level Play queues owned albums newest-to-oldest, with track ordering by disc and track number.

Podcast Behavior

Playing an older podcast episode creates a forward-only queue of newer episodes; starting the latest episode plays just that episode. If a queue is already active, the episode (and its not-yet-queued newer episodes) is inserted after the current item instead of replacing the queue, so anything you queued stays queued.

Podcast episodes and music tracks share one mixed-media play queue: while an episode plays you can queue tracks behind it (and vice versa) with "Add to queue" / "Play next", and skip controls and auto-advance move through the combined queue. Listen Together sessions remain music-only.

Playback Settings

Configure stream/transcode quality and cache behavior in Settings.

Player quality badges show active source details (codec/bitrate or bit depth/sample rate).

Social and History

Activity panel Social tab lists users who are online and sharing presence.
If a user shares listening activity, their current track appears inline in the Social roster.
Non-admin accounts only see Notifications and Social in the activity panel (Active and History remain admin-only).
Open My History from Settings -> History & Personalization (Open My History) for queue-like controls: click-to-play, add to queue, and add to playlist.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Space	Play / Pause
N	Next track
P	Previous track
S	Toggle shuffle
M	Toggle mute
Arrow Up	Volume up
Arrow Down	Volume down
Arrow Right	Seek forward 10 seconds
Arrow Left	Seek backward 10 seconds

Administration

Admins can manage users, integrations, downloads, enrichment automation, queue dashboards, and API keys.

Common admin areas

User Management
Connected Now live card under User Management for currently connected accounts
Integration and storage settings
Download source/fallback settings
Enrichment controls
Activity panel events and active jobs
API keys and Swagger docs
Bull Board dashboard (/admin/queues)

Technical admin configuration and security notes are in CONFIGURATION_AND_SECURITY.md.