MacLife UK – August 2019

Image rights: Aditya Rajveer.

MARVIS PRO

Easy to customize

Very flexible

A little frustrating

No iPad app

SOLID

Marvis promises to make

you fall in love with your

music library all over

again. It’s a replacement

for Apple’s own Music app that

works with iTunes, iCloud Music

Library and Apple Music, and which

exports listening data to Last.fm.

Marvis revolves around the Home

page, which you can customize with

up to 30 sections: charts, playlists,

today’s recommendations,

personalized mixes, and so on. You

can also change how sections work

by specifying the sort order and

direction, whether to display

metadata, whether to display them

in list or grid format, and even

whether to curve the corners of the

artwork. If you choose the grid

option, you can specify how many

columns to display and what style

of grid to use. This customization

means you may never need to leave

the Home page ever again,

because everything you need

is right there where you

want it. There’s also a Dark

Mode in anticipation of iOS

13. At the time of writing
    Dark Mode is an in-app
    purchase but it’ll be free.
    Playback is simple, and
    it’s easy to drag and drop
    tracks to play them, add
    them to the beginning or
    end of your play queue, or
    use them as the beginning
    of a shul·e play.
    The app supports AirPlay
    2 and it can also display
    lyrics via the Musixmatch
    app; if you don’t have it you
    can call up the App Store from within
    the app and get it from there.
    There are some things that Marvis
    can’t do. It can’t delete items from
    your library, and you can’t remove
    items from playlists. That’s not the
    developer’s fault; it’s a restriction
    Apple puts on third–party music
    apps. There’s no iPad version, it
    doesn’t do 3D Touch, the default
    color scheme (which you can change,
    although it isn’t obvious) is dull, and
    the interface doesn’t feel logical. For
    example, the Settings link is in tiny
    text at the lower–right of the
    navigation screen. That means at
    Ľrst it’s a little frustrating to use.
    Marvis is the kind of app that
    rewards Ľddling: it’s not

immediately obvious what you can

do, but it can do a lot. If you get

irritated by Apple Music’s layout, the

extensive customization options will

make you quickly fall in love with it.

It’s just a shame that API restrictions

limit what it can do with playlists.

THE BOTTOM LINE. Marvis is a fun

Music app replacement with some

limitations. CARRIE MARSHALL

The available filtering options make it easy to

sort your music just how you like.

Marvis Pro

Get more control of your music

$3.99 From Aditya Rajveer, appaddy.wixsite.com/marvis

Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 11.0 or later

App Life

56 AUG 2019 maclife.com