Cannot control music apps from dockbar

Question

I'm having some problems to control the music app (but also other, like spotify), from the dock bar. In fact, more than once I wasn't able to stop the music by closing the app, because it was simply not marked as "open" in the dockbar.

Let me try to explain some situations linked to this problem:

• If I open an audio from "files", then it's played into the music app, but I can access the instance that is playing, only by clicking in the top bar speaker (wingpanel), and finally clicking on the music app in the list.
• Opening an audio file when some music is playing, can start a new instance instead of adding the new file into the play que.
• If I'm listening some music, again opened from files, then if I try to open the music app from the dock bar, instead of the wingpanel instance, a new instance of the app is started, which is indipendent from the other one(accessible from wingpanel)..hence, I've got no control on what is playing.
• When I wasn't aware of this behavior, the only way to stop the music was to kill the app process.
• I've found a method to link the music app instance in the wingpanel to the music app dock icon. Basically you must open the app from wingpanel, then reduce it from this icon , and finally the app can be closed - as now is marked as running. It's the only way to close the app without killing the process.

I don't know if it's expressed very well, the major issue is about having no connection between the music apps in the wingpanel menu, and the icons in the dockbar.

It's all this known by the creators of elementaryOS? There's any improvement planned to fix the detached instance issue?

another question about this from 2018!

Thanks

Answer 1

Installing another version of plank (from the "unofficial" repo) seems to fix the problem.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/docky
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall plank
killall plank
plank --preferences

Original post here: Plank magnifying effect