Digger Manual

Where Digger finds your music

After you grant permission to access your music, Digger makes an MPMediaQuery to ask iOS for all songs available. To copy songs onto your device, use Apple Music to sync all or part of your collection from your computer.

After you grant permission to access your music, Digger queries the Android MediaStore for available music audio. To copy songs onto your device, use the Android File Transfer app from your computer.

Digger creates .digger_config.json in your home directory with musicPath set to the Music folder. To change where Digger should find your music, tap the library button () at the top center of the app and choose "Music Files" to set where Digger should look. If there are folders Digger should avoid, use the "Ignore Folders" button under the library options. Folder names can end with an asterisk ('*') wildcard.

Digger relies on song file metadata for search and sync. While it may be able to guess missing metadata from an Artist/Album/Song file organization, any missing metadata in your collection should be fixed using a tool for that purpose. Each song must have a title and artist. Digger does not modify your song files.

Where Digger saves your song info

Digger saves your ratings and annotations in the app. Tap the "Digger" link in the upper left of the app to connect to DiggerHub for backup and sync across multiple devices.

Digger saves your song info as digdat.json in your home folder. To change where Digger saves, tap the library button at the top center of the app and choose Digger Data. Tap the "Digger" link in the upper left of the app to connect to DiggerHub for backup and sync across multiple devices.

Albums, Deck and Search

Digger initially starts in (Album) mode with suggestions active. To play individual songs, switch to (Deck) mode. To find something specific, use (Search). Song playback follows either album or deck order, depending on which is active.

Songs on deck and suggested albums lean towards what you have least recently heard. Digger goes deep through your collection stacks to pull what you probably want to hear next.

Noting your impression

Digger is designed to note your impressions intuitively, with minimized distraction and possible enhancement of your listening experience. All songs default as average. Adjust as you see fit whenever you like.

Perhaps "Chill" reflects how you find this song slow, quiet, or relaxing. Maybe "Amped" indicates it's fast, loud, or activating. Adjust as you like.

Perhaps "Easy" reflects how you find this song soothing, consonant or simple. Maybe "Hard" indicates it's challenging, dissonant, or complex. Whatever you feel.

Toggle keywords to associate a song with common listening situations. Hit the '+' button to add a keyword. The default tags have been chosen through trials to yield excellent selection power; for example the "Social" keyword, combined with Energy Level and Approachability range settings can pull appropriate music for everything from a relaxed brunch to a high energy party.

The star bar lets you mark a song better or worse relative to your collection. Everything in your collection is worth keeping, but if it's a personal anthem or underwhelming album filler, this is what to adjust.

If you have something to note, the comment button opens text space suitable for a sentence or two. Longer stories and discussions are best posted separately. Links in comments might not be clickable on all platforms. Comment text is searchable within Digger.

The share button copies all information about a song, including your annotations, to DiggerHub or the clipboard for sharing with others. The sleep button is an extended transport control allowing you to pause playback when a song ends.

Tuning Options

The tuning fork in the upper right of the player panel provides detailed song information and advanced rating actions.

Digger autoplays songs at most once in 24 hours and prefers least recently played. If a song seems suggested too often, marking it Tired switches the playback frequency from 'P' (playable) to 'B' (backburner) meaning it will be played at most once every 90 days. Skipping a backburner song makes it a 'Z' (sleeper) that plays at most once every 180 days. Skipping a sleeper song marks it 'O' (overplayed) and eligible to autoplay once a year. If a song has played enough for this lifetime, or if it doesn't stand on its own outside of the album, "Don't Suggest" disqualifies it from autoplay.

Digger automatically marks duplicate songs played so you don't get an album song suggested again from a compilation. Dupes are checked via song metadata, so a remix or a separate album release might still be suggested. adds or overwrites all currently selected keywords to all songs on the album. marks all album songs tired.

Filtering songs for autoplay

Your song impressions directly drive autoplay, following the playback filters you can adjust anytime.

Adjust Approachability window width and position using its x/y positioning track. Double tap to reset.

Adjust Energy Level window width and position using its x/y positioning track. Double tap to reset.

Filter on up 4 keywords at once. Each active keyword has a 3-way toggle to specify if matching songs must have the keyword, must not have the keyword, or not specified. Tap the keys icon to choose which keywords are active and in what order. The default keywords are:

Social: Playable in gatherings with other people.
Personal: Special to you.
Office: Appropriate while working.
Dance: Music to move to.
Ambient: Transitionable from and to silence, listenable at different attention levels.
Jazz: As applied to your collection.
Classical: As applied to your collection.
Talk: Spoken word, conversational attention.
Solstice: Seasonal holiday. Whatever/whenever you celebrate.

Keywords like "Morning", "Workout", "Commute" and others were obviated by range controls and general tags. Specific genre categories can get tedious, but may be useful for some collections.

"Standard" means 2.5 stars or higher, including all songs that have not had their rating value adjusted from the default initial value. Tap this 5-way toggle to adjust the minimum star level for playback.

"Allow Untagged" is normal keyword filtering. If you only want songs without any associated keywords, you can change this to "Untagged Only". The opposite of that is "Tagged Only".

Frequency filtering is normally on, meaning that Digger will not suggest a song if it was played too recently. If you've run out of music on deck, you can use this toggle to see which songs would otherwise have been eligible.

Viewing and tuning songs on deck

switches the display to songs you have previously played.

overlays a summary of how many songs passed each of the filtering stages.

Tap any song on deck to show an action bar where you can:

	Play the song immediately.
	Play the song next, or after the last song previously bumped to play next.
	Skip the song.
	Mark the song tired and skip.

Library actions

The button at the top center provides general information and actions. You can switch between Light and Dark display modes here.

The "Carry" button provides library maintenance information. If you are running Digger on a device with access to all of your music files, select Permanent Collection. If you are running with only a downloaded subset of your music collection choose Local Copy.

Digger will suggest offloading any album with no 4+ star tracks, displaying a badness percentage of songs that are 2 stars or less. Since you've recorded your impressions and are unlikely to want to listen to the album again, you may want to delete it. For local copy, Digger may also suggest offloading tired albums on the assumption you can copy the album back from your permanent collection later. Tap the album name to play it or view details.

To suggest downloads, Digger checks your ratings on DiggerHub against what is on your device. If there is more than one song rating for an album, then it will be found with Albums selected. Singles are fetched separately to avoid cluttering up the album suggestions. General filtering is not supported in hub queries, but you can choose a keyword for more focused download suggestions. Digger may occasionally suggest downloading music you already have due to differences in album title or artist name metadata. If this happens, tap the album name to let the hub know you already have it, or just not to suggest it.

DiggerHub

Tap the "Digger" link in the upper left to sign in or join. Connecting to DiggerHub will sync your song impressions to the hub and back out to all devices where you run Digger.

After signing in, whenever you play a song or adjust your impression of it, you may notice a "hub" communication indicator light briefly in the player panel display. Normally the amount of data sent to save a rating is around 0.0005mb so it is barely noticeable, but if you've been running Digger offline for a really long time, or if you are restoring your ratings to a new device, the "hub" indicator light might stay on while sync completes. Tap it to view progress details.

DiggerHub also provides optional structured song rating information. Essentially two DiggerHub users can collaborate through similarities and differences in their music collections and their song impressions. If you trust their impressions, you can even use their ratings as default settings for music you have but haven't rated yet. Another option is to receive a weekly report detailing what your top 20 songs were, so you can share with others who might be interested in great music you have collected and what you've been listening to recently.

Visit DiggerHub.com for details.

The Digger Manual