Good news for those who use iPeng with VoiceOver, Apple’s accessibility feature for users with vision impairments.

Since iOS 13 came out, there was an issue in iPeng that prevented VoiceOver users from accessing the MultiPlayer control, meaning they were unable to switch players and reach player settings.

This was due to a change in how iOS handled the assignment of visible items to items made accessible through VoiceOver.

iPeng 9.7.1 now contains a long-awaited fix for this issue. Unfortunately fixing the problem wasn’t easy and took us quite a while, so we would like to take the opportunity to apologize for the inconvenience caused and thank our customers for their patience.

In addition to this, the update speeds up artist image rendering significantly, fixes the text color for Search and Web Browsing in dark mode, and contains smaller improvements like better handling of dialog boxes on newer iPhone models.

Except for the changes in artist image rendering, all of the above applies to both iPeng and iPeng ue.

Have fun!

Apple’s launch of the latest iOS version on September 19 with major changes across the entire system has prompted us to update the iPeng app too to give you a consistent and troublefree experience with it under iOS 13, the most relevant changes relating to color schemes (light/dark modes).

While iPeng has had its own dark mode with automatic color scheme selection for years, it now adopts iOS’s newly introduced light/dark mode system setting. For iPeng 9.7 that means that the default („automatic“) setting for the scheme now uses iOS’s scheduled switching between light/dark modes instead of ambient lighting, providing you with a system-wide consistent behavior of your color schemes.

In addition to the new default setting there will of course still be the option to select a specific mode (light/dark) in iPeng.

Further enhancements include bug fixes and details.

As always: have fun with iPeng!

Like every year during fall, Apple have presented their new devices and thus laid the foundation for changes to iPeng. Once again, that kept us busy to deliver the best design and functionality.

For the iPhone XS Max, the challenge was to adapt to the truly huge (6.5-inch!) screen. The Apple Watch Series 4, whose design Apple – by ist own words – has not only “evolved”, but “transformed”, also comes with a larger display and rounded corners, which made design adjustments necessary.

iPeng now also supports the following new features on the Apple Watch:

• multicolored complications
• more formats for complications
• implementation of the curved corner complication design

The new version is now available as a free update in the App Store. Another update for iPeng UE will follow shortly.

It’s just “iPeng” again

One last note on the product name of iPeng, because there are news here as well: From now on you will find the app in the App Store under “iPeng” again, not under “iPeng 9”: Since iPeng Classic got removed from the App Store by Apple, we decided to return iPeng to it’s original product name since the distinction is no longer necessary.

And as always: Have fun with the app!

iPeng 9’s Apple Watch App gets an update.

Now, with iPeng 9.5, we have updated to the watchOS 3/4 platform.

Use the Digital Crown to Change the Volume

While watchOS 1 apps are running on your iPhone,  watchOS 2 and newer lets the app run directly on the watch.

The most immediate change you will notice after the update is that iPeng can now finally make use of the digital crown to change the player volume. This allows you to change the volume much faster than before by simply turning the crown. To illustrate this, the volume indicator is now symbolized by a (round) dial instead of a bar.

Use Complications to Quickly Launch the App from the Watch Face

Another new feature is Complications, which you can add to your watch face. Depending on the watch face and the type of complication you select, it will show an icon for the currently selected player and the player name or the current volume.

Tapping the complication directly launches the app.

Other Changes in the watchOS App

But the switch to the new watchOS versions also comes with some downsides: Apple no longer lets us bundle the original watchOS 1 app with iPeng, so iPeng 9.5 now requires your watch to run at least under watchOS 3.

Also, while performance on the new Apple Watch Series 3 is pretty good, the app can feel a bit slower on the original Apple Watch (“Series 0”). That is because the processor on this old watch is slow and the app can no longer use the resources of your iPhone.

Use the “Music, Walk With Me”-Plugin for QuickSwitch

One more feature seeing a change is “QuickSwitch” when selecting a player on the watch. So far, the feature allowed you to move your music (the current playlist) directly from one player to another. This now requires the “Music, Walk With Me”-plugin to be installed on your Logitech Media server and will no longer work with MySqueezebox.com. The reason is that the feature requires continuous communication with the server over several commands, which isn’t possible in a reliable and quick way on watchOS. The old app could do this by calling the main iPeng app on iOS, but since watchOS 2 this is no longer possible.

You can install the plugin simply from the “Settings->Plugins” section in your server’s web interface.

Overall, if you have one of the newer Apple Watch models, iPeng 9.5 will make iPeng on Apple Watch much more usable and useful, you get really quick actions and volume changes, we hope you will enjoy it!

And Finally: On Privacy

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last month or so, you will have been nagged with a lot of privacy announcements due to the new GDPR rules in Europe, and yes, we briefly need to talk about this, too.

For the details: iPeng now has a new Privacy Policy.

First: We never used iPeng to collect any personal data from you, we never had any accounts, registrations or the like, and all data iPeng generates and uses is stored on your device and your iCloud account only.

The only exceptions are crash reports, which are fully anonymized and don’t contain data that allows us to identify you, your device or what you have been doing.

But since iPeng is a remote control app that works with a Squeezebox and can use online services, it does communicate as well.

MySqueezebox.com

If you use Logitech Media Server (LMS), most of iPeng’s communication will be directly with LMS, unless you use iPeng Playback, which will read remote streams if you play them

If you use MySqueezebox.com, however, your Squeezebox will be completely controlled by this service. This will be the case independent of whether you use iPeng or not, it’s how the Squeezebox works with MySqueezebox.com.

Obviously, Logitech can track what you are doing on your device, please refer to them if you want to learn more about how they handle privacy.

Making it Optional

If you want to stay completely private, the easiest way is not to use MySqueezebox.com but LMS instead and to disable MySqueezebox.com in LMS (unlike Logitech’s App iPeng never required you to use it). To make this easy and consistent for you, iPeng now also lets you completely disable MySqueezebox.com support. It’s configurable in “iPeng Settings”, and when you launch iPeng 9.5 the first time, it will ask you whether you want to use MySqueezebox.com or not.

We hope we have given you a comprehensible introduction to the topic, please read our Privacy Policy for further details on what iPeng does, what information it communicates and how, and how the whole Squeezebox system works with MySqueezebox.com.

Today we’ve launched version 9.4 of both iPeng 9 and iPeng ue, and as a headline feature, this update brings you full support for Apple’s latest phone, the iPhone X.

With its new edge-to-edge screen, rounded corners and gesture control, it brings a few challenges to app migration from older phones, both from a design and usability point of view.

iPeng 9.4 takes this into account by presenting itself with some smaller changes to its look on iPhone X and by adapting to the different screen format.

For iPeng 9 and iPeng ue!

This update comes to iPeng 9 and iPeng ue at the same time. It’s the first iPeng version built for iOS 11, which results in some minor design changes, particularly on iPad; generally the look should now be a bit more consistent. Besides that the makeover includes some small improvements like new icons and bug fixes.

We are still working on a bigger redesign of iPeng that will modernize the look and feel of the app and in which we plan to design it even more around iPhone X and its new screen. So stay tuned!

Easier Playback Purchase

And for those who found it difficult to buy iPeng’s playback feature in the past, the purchase has become much easier: you can now select the feature directly from the App Store and will then be taken to iPeng which completes the transaction.

As usual: have fun with iPeng!