What can I do with FlightCase?

FlightCase can act as a companion to Apple’s Music App, making it easier to use and provide lots of extra information about your favourite music.

Adding an Artist, Album, Track or Playlist to FlightCase, makes it easy to open that item again in Apple Music, so in this way FlightCase acts like a specialised bookmarking App.

FlightCase will also search the net looking for crowd-sourced content about the music you add to it. This can be images, reviews, discographies, related artists, web pages and social media accounts, etc. etc. In this way FlightCase can keep you up to date with the music you are interested in.

FlightCase automatically searches Discogs, Last.FM and MusicBrainz.

Adding Content

FlightCase App cannot do anything without your content. Here are a few ways you can add the music you are interested in to the App.

Music Picker

By tapping the add icon (➕) in the top right corner of the screen, you can use the System Media Picker to add tracks from your own music Library to FlightCase.

If you choose a Playlist or Album, FlightCase will add every track it can from those collections, not the collections themselves. This is the way System Media Picker works.

Please keep in mind that not every track you have in your library can be added to FlightCase. For example, tracks that are not on iTunes.

By tapping the search icon (🔍) in the top right corner of the screen, you can use the search feature.

Choose wether you are looking for an Artists, Album or Track, then enter your search terms. FlightCase will search the iTunes Store. If you see a result you are interested in, tap on it and FlightCase will perform it’s normal lookup on the item plus add it to it’s library.

Extension

FlightCase comes with a Sharing Extension, available from Apple Music, that allows you to add Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists to the App.

When you are viewing or playing something in Apple Music that you would like to add, tap the ‘more’ button (…), then tap the relevant “Share …” menu item to trigger the System Sharing Pane. Choose the FlightCase icon, you will see FlightCase perform it’s normal lookup on the content you have chosen. When you return to FlightCase, this item will have been added to your library.

Enable the Extension

The first time you use FlightCase, you will need to enable it’s extension for future use. When you are in the System Sharing Pane, you will see a horizontal row of coloured icons. Slide all the way to the right and tap the More (…) icon. The following screen should contain the icon for FlightCase with a switch to enable it.

Basic Navigation

There are three basic types of view in the App

List Views

Show the contents of your FlightCase library or search results and allow you to select an item to lookup or play.

Tapping an Artist, Album or Track in a list will take you to the detail view for that item. Tapping an item that is a Playlist opens it in Apple Music.

A long press on an item brings up a menu of options for sharing and editing.

Bottom Tab Bar

From left to right, the tab bar contains controls to filter what types are shown in the list views of from your library.

All Items, Artists only, Albums only, Tracks only and Playlists only.

Top Navigation Bar

At the left is the Favourites button (⭑), tapping this will toggle showing just favourites or not. At the right are two buttons that can add new content to your library, the add button (+) and the search button (🔍) mentioned above in “Adding Content”

Detail Views

The top cell shows the name and type of the item you are viewing. Tap on here to open it in Apple Music.

Below this is shown the content discovered about each Artist, Album or Track (detail views do not exist for Playlists).

Tapping one of those content items, usually opens it in a web view, unless the item represents an Artist, Album or Track, in which case we may have enough information to open it in another detail view or as a pre-made search list.

A long press on an item brings up a menu of options for sharing.

Web Views

Show the discovered content from 3rd party websites.

Sharing your content

Long press an item in a List or Detail View to bring up a menu of sharing options that depend on what type of thing you pressed on.

When you see “Share …”, tapping that will bring up the System Sharing pane providing a URL to share. The URL will be to open that content, so if you are sharing a discovered web page, the URL will be to open that page. If you were sharing an Artist, Album, Track or Playlist, the URL will open those directly in Apple Music.

If you were sharing an Artist, Album, Track or Playlist and you tapped “Send …”, the URL that is shared is a special one that will open that item directly in FlightCase on the device you send it to.

Editing and Deleting

Other actions are available when you long press an item in one of the list views. Items in your library can be deleted (shake to undo). Playlists can be renamed. URLs can be copied to the clipboard. Items can be added or removed from Favourites. You can open Artists, Albums, Tracks or Playlists directly in Apple Music without going through the detail screen.

Keeping up with FlightCase

To keep up to date with the latest updates, tips and general news about FlightCase, read the Apps @ Fiveone•Org Blog, you could subscribe to the RSS feed.

Developers

FlightCase URL Schemes

FlightCase has a URL Scheme to open content directly within the App, simultaneously adding that content to the library and performing a lookup on it, if that content represents an Artist, Album or Track.

flightcase://urn/apple:artist:us-551695 will open David Bowie on the US iTunes Store.

The format is as follows :

flightcase://urn/VENDOR:TYPE:COUNTRY-ID

The only vendor supported at the moment is apple.

Supported types are artist, album, track and playlist.

country and id are the iTunes specific identifiers.

In the case of Playlists, the entire URL of the playlist is URL Encoded and inserted as is. eg.

flightcase://urn/apple:playlist:https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fgb%2Fplaylist%2Fbest-of-60s-psychedelic-rock%2Fpl.c4964b9e5ea542f0950d1d73d94bcab3