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Part 8 of this project

Now Playing

Highlight the current track and show metadata

Goal for this part

Highlight the current track and show metadata.

Treat 08-Now-Playing as the source of truth for this checkpoint. If your local tree drifted, re-clone that folder rather than mixing files from neighbors.

What you should already know

You do not need prior PyQt experience for part 1. Later parts assume you finished the earlier snapshots on the same machine.

  • You can open a terminal and run python3
  • You are comfortable editing a .py file and saving it
  • You have a desktop session (not a headless SSH box without display forwarding)

Why PyQt fits Soundquarry

PySide6 exposes Qt Multimedia so you can teach play/pause/seek without building a decoder. Playlists stay ordinary Python data.

Transport buttons, a slider, and a track list are natural QWidgets. Keep the player object on the window so signals stay wired.

Checkpoint

After you run the snapshot, you should recognize the behavior described in the goal—before you move on. If the window (or server) never appears, stop and fix the run steps.

Code shape

Snapshots stay small on purpose. Look for this kind of core call as you read the folder:

player.setSource(QUrl.fromLocalFile(path))

How to run it

Clone the teaching repo, open 08-Now-Playing, install what the README asks for, then run python app.py.

git clone https://github.com/michaeldunga1/fcc-pyqt-player.git
cd fcc-pyqt-player/08-Now-Playing
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r ../requirements.txt
python app.py

Common mistakes

  • Ignoring platform-specific install notes in the snapshot README
  • Persisting preferences without a defaults fallback
  • Storing secrets in plain text beside the app
  • Forgetting to reload prefs after a restart

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