v2.2

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Added display of last played track duration at startup when user is offline
• NEW: Added option to customize the path for OAuth app access token cache file with possibility to use in-memory only cache
• IMPROVE: Restored old SP_CLIENT_ID:SP_CLIENT_SECRET format for -z / --spotify-creds flag (more reliable in corner cases)
• IMPROVE: Updated captions shown for Apple and YouTube Music links

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Added exception handling when retrieving Spotify access tokens to prevent crashes
• BUGFIX: Coerced artist, track and album to strings before sanitization

v2.1.1

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixed config file generation to work reliably on Windows systems

v2.1

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: The tool can now be installed via pip: pip install lastfm_monitor
• NEW: Added support for external config files, environment-based secrets and dotenv integration with auto-discovery
• NEW: Added support for saving recent tracks to CSV when using -l with -b
• IMPROVE: Improved parsing of tracks file: supports CP1252 encoding, comment lines (starting with #) and ignores empty lines
• IMPROVE: Refactored comparison logic between listed and played tracks for better accuracy
• IMPROVE: Enhanced startup summary to show loaded config, dotenv and monitored tracks file paths
• IMPROVE: Simplified and renamed command-line arguments for improved usability
• NEW: Implemented SIGHUP handler for dynamic reload of secrets from dotenv files (previous handler for progress indicator has been assigned to SIGURG)
• NEW: Added configuration option to control clearing the terminal screen at startup
• IMPROVE: Changed connectivity check to use Last.fm Audio Scrobbler endpoint for reliability
• IMPROVE: Added check for missing pip dependencies with install guidance
• IMPROVE: Allow disabling liveness check by setting interval to 0 (default changed to 12h)
• IMPROVE: Improved handling of log file creation
• IMPROVE: Refactored CSV file initialization and processing
• NEW: Added support for ~ path expansion across all file paths
• IMPROVE: Refactored code structure to support packaging for PyPI
• IMPROVE: Enforced configuration option precedence: code defaults < config file < env vars < CLI flags
• IMPROVE: Updated horizontal line for improved output aesthetics
• IMPROVE: Removed short option for --send-test-email to avoid ambiguity

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixed issue handling 'track songs' files encoded in Windows-1252/CP1252

v2.0.1

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixes the issue with using the incorrect Spotify API endpoint for validation (it consistently returned a 401 error since the client credentials flow does not provide access to it)

v2.0

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Added support for the Spotify Web API (client credentials flow) to address recent changes in the Spotify Web Player token endpoint; it requires the spotipy pip module (optional, only for Spotify-related features)
• NEW: Caching mechanism to avoid unnecessary Spotify token refreshes
• IMPROVE: Email notification flags are now automatically disabled if the SMTP configuration is invalid
• IMPROVE: Exception handling in few places
• IMPROVE: Code cleanup & linting fixes

v1.9

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Support for YouTube Music search URLs

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixed small bug with occasionally wrongly reported new offline entries

v1.8

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Added new parameter (-y / --send_test_email_notification) which allows to send test email notification to verify SMTP settings defined in the script
• IMPROVE: Checking if correct version of Python (>=3.8) is installed
• IMPROVE: Possibility to define email sending timeout (default set to 15 secs)

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixed "SyntaxError: f-string: unmatched (" issue in older Python versions
• BUGFIX: Fixed "SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot include a backslash" issue in older Python versions

v1.7

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Added new signal handler for SIGPIPE allowing to switch songs on loop email notifications
• IMPROVE: Better handling of situations when new offline entries show up just before user gets online
• IMPROVE: Switching offline entries notifications included in SIGUSR1 signal handler
• IMPROVE: Better way of checking for error strings (without case sensitivity) + some additional ones added to the list
• NEW: Support for float type of timestamps added in date/time related functions + get_short_date_from_ts() rewritten to display year if show_year == True and current year is different, also can omit displaying hour and minutes if show_hours == False

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Escaping of exception error string fixed

v1.6

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Suppressing repeating API or network related errors (check ERROR_500_NUMBER_LIMIT, ERROR_500_TIME_LIMIT, ERROR_NETWORK_ISSUES_NUMBER_LIMIT and ERROR_NETWORK_ISSUES_TIME_LIMIT variables)
• IMPROVE: Information about log file name visible in the start screen
• IMPROVE: Rewritten get_date_from_ts(), get_short_date_from_ts(), get_hour_min_from_ts() and get_range_of_dates_from_tss() functions to automatically detect if time object is timestamp or datetime

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixed issues with sporadic broken links in HTML emails (vars with special characters are now escaped properly)
• BUGFIX: One very important space removed in the subject of active email notification

v1.5

Features and Improvements:

• NEW: Full support for real-time playing of tracked songs (-g) in Spotify client in Linux
• NEW: New way of playing tracked songs (-g) in Spotify client in Windows
• NEW: Rewritten code for playing tracked songs (-g) in Spotify client in macOS
• IMPROVE: Improvements for running the code in Python under Windows
• IMPROVE: Better checking for wrong command line arguments
• IMPROVE: Showing listened percentage for last listened track
• IMPROVE: Duplicate entries are counted now and displayed in the console & emails (more entries indicate higher chance of private mode)
• IMPROVE: pep8 style convention corrections

Bug fixes:

• BUGFIX: Fixed bug when track_songs functionality (-g) was not working without -r
• BUGFIX: Improved exception handling while processing JSON files
• BUGFIX: Better handling of Spotify HTTP requests exceptions when getting track ID and duration in spotify_search_song_trackid_duration()
• BUGFIX: Better handling of exceptions when listing tracks