mpd-intmod.widget: Visible Controls but No Song Data, and can't play music

[ffs-akl]

Arch linux+labwc
sfwbar git ver cc386b5
When the MPD client is not running, the mpd-intmod.widget shows control buttons (like Play/Pause and Next/Previous), but it does not show any song information and can't play any music.
Once I start a client (Ario ), the widget immediately starts working correctly.
After activating the widget with the Ario client, I then ran killall ario and even sudo pacman -Rsn ario. The sfwbar MPD widget continued to work normally until the next system reboot.

My Questions
Could you please clarify two points regarding the widget's function?
Why does the widget show the control buttons but fail to show song information when the MPD Daemon is running but idle (immediately after a system boot)?
What steps should I take to ensure the widget displays song information immediately upon startup, without needing to launch a separate MPD client first?
Thank you for your assistance.

[LBCrion]

I expect this is because mpd's current playlist is empty on startup. Sfwbar's internal mpd client is pretty basic. It allows controlling the playback of the current playlist, but not creating or modifying that playlist. It would in theory be possible to implement playlist creation and manipulation, but I'm not sure how we'll it would work with currently available widgets. A proper music library browser would usually require more complex widgets and so far, I've considered it beyond the scope of a taskbar.

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On Thu, 9 Oct 2025, 14:17 ffs-akl, ***@***.***> wrote: Arch linux+labwc sfwbar git ver cc386b5 When the MPD client is not running, the sfwbar MPD widget shows control buttons (like Play/Pause and Next/Previous), but it does not show any song information. Once I start a client (like Ario or mpc), the widget immediately starts working correctly. After activating the widget with the Ario client, I then ran killall ario and even sudo pacman -Rsn ario. The sfwbar MPD widget continued to work normally until the next system reboot. My Questions Could you please clarify two points regarding the widget's function? Why does the widget show the control buttons but fail to show song information when the MPD Daemon is running but idle (immediately after a system boot)? What steps should I take to ensure the widget displays song information immediately upon startup, without needing to launch a separate MPD client first? Thank you for your assistance. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#433>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASHPFFD3DVDWKC5IUKKGTQ33WZOADAVCNFSM6AAAAACIXO3KASVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43ERDJONRXK43TNFXW4OZZGAYDINBYHA> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>