Nuvola Integrates Repeat & Shuffle Status, Adjusts to New Deezer Design, And More

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Nuvola News

5 min readSep 24, 2018

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The latest flatpak builds of Nuvola Apps integrate shuffle/repeat states, fix compatibility with the new Deezer design, and introduce Flash plugin updater for Amazon Cloud Player. In addition, the free tier bar was removed from the main window, the purchase flow was simplified, and the pricing has changed offering lifetime licenses as a one-time payment.

To install Nuvola, follow the installation instructions at the Nuvola Apps Project website. To update Nuvola, run flatpak update --system && flatpak update --user in terminal (as a regular user, not root/sudo) or use a package manager which supports Flatpak (e.g., a recent GNOME Software application with the Flatpak plugin).

This blog post applies to the genuine flatpak builds of Nuvola. If you use a third-party build, contact your distributor to find out which features are available.

Repeat & Shuffle States

Web app integration scripts can now export repeat and shuffle states. You can change them from Media Player Indicator applet or a tray icon, for example.

Shuffle/repeat states in Media Player Indicator.

Shuffle/repeat states in a tray icon menu.

These script support this new feature:

Deezer 3.0.15
Amazon Cloud Player 5.7.9
Spotify 3.0.8
Soundcloud 1.4.5
Plex Music 1.4.5
OwnCloud Music 1.3.4
Jango since 2.4.3
Google Play Music 6.1.4
Qobuz 1.1.5

New Dezeer Design

Deezer has started offering a new look, which broke the integration with Nuvola. Deezer script 3.0.15 supports both the old and new designs.

Flash Plugin Update

Good news is that BBC iPlayer 1.5.7 has recently joined the no-Flash party, which makes Amazon Cloud Player the last script which needs Flash plugin for audio playback.

While the long-term goal is to get rid of the Flash plugin entirely, Nuvola comes with a small security improvement: If you use Amazon Cloud Player, Nuvola will ask you to confirm the upgrade of Flash plugin every time a new release is available. Nuvola will then download and install the new version for you.

Upon your approval, the Flash plugin is automatically installed/updated. Note that only Amazon Cloud Player requires Flash, you won’t see this dialog with the other services.

Changes in Pricing

These changes apply only to the genuine flatpak builds of Nuvola. The entire source code from Nuvola Apps project is still available for free under 2-Clause BSD license.

I and my employer have agreed to reduce my employment to 60% which means I will have two full workdays a week to work on my open-source portfolio including Nuvola. In order to compensate the imminent salary drop, I decided to make changes to Nuvola pricing, simplify purchase flow and reduce the feature set of Free Tier.

Purchase Widget Removed From Main Window

Nuvola no longer shows the bottom bar containing information about the free tier and asking you to purchase Nuvola. These kinds of bars are never popular. They only annoy users and spoil the user experience. You can now purchase Nuvola from the Preferences dialog instead.

Free Trial of Nuvola Premium

Each user now has a chance to try out all Nuvola features for free for 31 days. The free trial of Nuvola Premium starts automatically when you launch Nuvola without any license and includes following features:

Simplified Purchase Flow

Nuvola switched to Gumroad license keys for new purchases. When you purchase Nuvola on Gumroad, you immediately receive a license key to enter into the Nuvola application. Previously, it was necessary to create a Tiliado account and wait until the purchase was linked to that account, which was cumbersome.

Lifetime Licenses

A few users asked whether it could be possible to purchase Nuvola with a one-time payment instead of the current subscription options. Nuvola now offers lifetime licenses to address this demand.

Nuvola Basic for $49
Nuvola Premium for $99
Nuvola Patron for $199

The lifetime licenses come with a backup of Nuvola Apps flatpak repository so that the user could install and use Nuvola even if Tiliado went out of business.

Changes in Free Tier

The Free Tier currently contains following features:

These features were moved to the Basic Tier:

Tip: If you choose the annual billing, you can have Nuvola Basic for just $1/month.

Other Changes in Nuvola 4.12.92

Other changes since Nuvola 4.12.43:

The permissions of Flatpak builds were tweaked to require specific DBus services instead of the unrestricted access to session/system DBus. [GitHub ticket]
Memory leaks with Vala 0.42 were fixed.
Other performance improvements.

Nuvola Contributes to Good Angel Foundation

Jiri Janousek, the core developer of Nuvola Apps project, is glad to contribute a part of the project’s revenue to the Good Angel foundation. This way, he can regularly help families with children, which face financial distress as a result of severe illness. Even small monetary donations can help these families overcome a tough period.

Nuvola contributes to Good Angel Foundation.

Thank You for Your Support

At the time of writing, the awesome people listed below and a few others are Nuvola Patrons, who support the development of Nuvola Apps Runtime. Thank you all!

Christian Dannie Storgaard, José Antonio Rey, Ryan Wagner, Simon Law, Bart Libert, Chris Beeley, Andrew Azores, Bryan Wyatt, Balázs, Denton Davenport, Ben MacLeod, Duco van Amstel, David Wiczer, Andrew Allen, Nathan Warkentin, Chuck Talk.

If you are a Nuvola Patron but your name is not listed, you have to enable the “Show my name and a link to my external profile page in a list of Patrons.” option in your profile settings. Obviously, it is not enabled by default to protect privacy of our patrons.