Media Utilities Beta – Review

Media Utilities Beta – Review

Media Utilities Beta – Review

When I downloaded Media Utilities it was mainly for the lack of a widget for the stock music app. I understood it was in the notification area, but I like the feel of a good widget on the homescreen. So I went into this, just believing this app would be a good stock music widget, oh how wrong I was.

Media Utilities was an ok widget for my music app. The album art didn’t display and it took some between tracks to refresh, but it did off a wide range of widgets, from very large ones to just simple ones with no track information at all. But the major advantage I found was its a replacement widget for any app that plays music.

Screenshot_2013-05-13-09-09-06

If I was listening to a podcast then the widget would update with the Beyondpod interface and allow me to pause. If I was was playing a radio station on TuneIn then I could again pause and see what i’m listening to. You get the point, I tested this on five different music players and it worked on all of them. One thing that has annoyed me about having various media programs, is the variety of widgets you get with them.  I once had two home screens completely overrun with media widgets for podcasts, music, radio etc. Media Utilities can clear all that space, and replace it with just one clean and simple widget.

This app is currently in beta and has a great amount of support behind it, both on the play store and on XDA. I’m hoping when this is released in a stable mode, then the album art issue would be resolved, as this is the one major disadvantage.

Screenshot_2013-05-10-08-09-59[1]

You can even set the widget control to be in the notification area, and this works quite well. Apart from then you have two music controls, so you have to remember to disable the notification control for the stock music player.There been some improvements made over time and there is an addition of new features and some new widget controls:

New Features
– Increased size of icons/buttons on notification to accommodate back button.
– Back button now available optionally on every widget.
– Back button now available optionally on notification.
– Optional link to your applications on every widget.
– Optionally can round the corners of the widgets.
– 2 new widgets based on user feedback
– 4×1 – Cover art on the left large text and hidden controls on the right.
– 3×2 – Same as existing 3×2 just with bigger cover art.

*** Widget Configuration Controls ***
– Background color
– Background transparency
– Support for background gradient. Gradient are from top to bottom with independent color and transparency controls for each.
– Border color
– Border depth/thickness
– Text color
– Enable/Disable current media application icon
– Enable/Disable your media application icon *NEW*
– Enable/Disable Rounded corners *NEW*
– Enable/Disable Back *NEW*

You can download the app for free now. I recomend any issues please report it to the developer as otherwise this app won’t meet its full potential.

Link for the app is included below:

google-play-logo

Owner of a rooted One and Nexus 7. Mostly write reviews of apps and any hardware I can get my hands on. I frequent Google+ and XDA-Developers.

3 Comments

  1. Glad to see you are enjoying the application so far. Shot me an email with the media applications you are using and Ill see if I cant get those to work for you 🙂

    Reply
    • I’ll get it sent across 😀

      Reply
      • All fixed, thanks again for contacting me.

        Reply

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