Staying in the flow means having the right sound in your ears. Whether you are mixing music tracks, auditing podcast clips, reviewing client feedback notes, or just vibing to your favorite focus beats, FlowJoe ensures audio is never treated as a silent, static attachment. FlowJoe features a Global Header Audio Player built directly into the workspace frame—giving you persistent playback that flows with you as you branch, draft, and brainstorm. FlowJoe Global Header Player The Global Audio Player is always accessible in the application header, persisting across all workspaces.

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🎧 Persistent Cross-Node Playback

Most tools force you to stay on a specific page to listen to attached audio, or open cluttering external media player windows. In FlowJoe, audio lives on the header shell:
  • Zero Interruption: Start a track in the tree’s Research branch, and keep listening as you jump into Milestones to update tasks or brainstorm with Joe.
  • Exclusivity Sync: Starting playback on the header player automatically pauses any other video or audio cards playing on your active gallery board, keeping your workspace aurally clean.

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📂 Drag-to-Curate Playlists

Curation is instantaneous. You don’t need to manually configure files to build a queue:
  • Drag-and-Drop: Drag individual audio slots or entire media stacks from your gallery and drop them onto the header player to build a temporary queue.
  • Auto-Filter Queues: By default, the player compiles a queue from your currently selected tree node. You can add a Tag Filter (e.g. #mix-take-3 or #voicemail) to automatically isolate target audio files.
  • Format-Safe: Dropping stacks containing mixed media (e.g. images + audio files) is fully supported; FlowJoe filters out non-audio files automatically.

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💾 The Playlist Modal

Clicking the queue button on the header player opens the Playlist Modal—your command center for track management:
  • Current Queue Tab: Manage your active playback queue. Reorder tracks using drag-and-drop, delete items, search through titles/nodes/tags, or click the link badge to jump directly to the origin tree node where that audio file resides.
  • Saved Playlists Tab: Turn your active queue into a named, permanent playlist. You can reload, update, rename, or reorder playlists at any time.
  • Keyboard Control: Capture full keyboard navigation inside the playlist modal:
    • Space / Enter to play the selected track.
    • Delete / Backspace to remove tracks from the queue.
    • Cmd/Ctrl+A to select all tracks.
    • Escape to dismiss the panel.

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🎨 Automatic ID3 & Custom Cover Art

FlowJoe parses incoming audio files (MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG) on drag-import and builds rich visual assets:
  • ID3 Metadata Extraction: Instantly extracts track title, artist name, and album metadata to format player titles and list rows.
  • Embedded Album Art: Automatically extracts embedded cover art and caches it in local storage, rendering it as the preview thumbnail of the gallery slot.
  • Artwork Flyout: Open the cover art panel to upload custom files or generate placeholders, keeping your references visually striking.
  • Joe: You can ask Joe to set, replace, or remove the album art on an audio item, using a picture already saved in FlowJoe. On a linked audio file the cover is remembered on this machine and does not change the file itself.
  • Joe: You can ask Joe to play the current queue, choose a saved playlist by name, change playback mode, play one gallery audio file once, or play audio carrying one of your tags. These controls take effect right away; they do not use an approval card. Hiding the player stops playback.

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Ask Joe to control playback

  • “Play some music.” Joe starts the current queue. If it is empty, he starts the first non-empty saved playlist he can access, in the order shown in the player.
  • “Shuffle the current queue.” Joe turns on shuffle for that queue.
  • “Loop this track.” Joe turns on repeat-one. “Play the playlist in order” uses sequential mode, which repeats the queue when it reaches the end.
  • “Play the audio in the Opening node once.” If the node has several audio files, name the slot or stack item so Joe can choose the exact file; playback stops when that file ends.
  • “Play something tagged calm.” Joe can match a mood or vibe only when your visible audio slots have a matching user tag. Add tags such as calm, focus, or upbeat to the audio you want grouped; Joe does not guess a mood from a filename.
  • “Save this queue as Focus Mix.” Joe saves the current queue under that name. To save tagged audio without starting playback or changing the current queue, ask “Make a playlist called Quiet Work from audio tagged calm.” He asks for a name if you did not give one and will not overwrite an existing playlist.
Joe can only select a one-off file or tag he can see. Hidden-from-Joe and locked private nodes are not searched or played. Joe does not list track titles in his tool results.

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⚡ Syncing Playlists & Preferences

Your soundtracks are as portable as your outlines. When you export your app preferences, FlowJoe bundles all your saved playlists and loop settings, allowing you to transfer your focus environment cleanly between devices.