Download Amarok 2.2

The final release of Amaraok 2.2 was released on Thursday. This audio player features extensive options for playing and organizing music. It is primarily developed for KDE but there are also versions for Mac OS X and Windows, but they are not at the same development level. In version 2.2, among other things, a much requested option has been added, namely the possibility to adjust the user interface as desired. More information about the changes in version 2.2 can be found at this blog are found and of course in the release notes:

Amarok 2.2 “Sunjammer” released

Amarok 2.2 comes with an almost completely new look and feel. It now has a new layout for the Browser Pane on the left and an easier navigation using “bread crumbs” on top. All elements, the Browser Pane, Context View and the Playlist are dockable widgets, which you can place how and where you like. It is even possible to stack or remove them. Of course it’s up to you to change the position, width and height to your liking.

The Playlist has seen a complete overhaul and comes with many new features, allowing you to sort and shuffle the content. A layout editor comes with three different pre-configured layouts and allows you to build your own preferred layout you can save. This way you can have the playlist only contain the information that is important to you. Clicking on a track twice allows you to edit the content in-line in the playlist for quick tag corrections and song ratings.

Playing an opera where you would like to find a particular passage easily? Do you have tracks with a lot of silence before a hidden song that you would like hear with a simple click? Just add bookmarks. Listening to audiobooks and podcasts is made so much easier with bookmarks too, since you can group and edit them with the bookmark manager!

The Context View has seen layout improvements as well. It comes with automatic resizing for the applets and you can place them where you would like to have them. A new photo applet shows you pictures of the artist and a video applet finds contextual videos for the now playing artist. The Wikipedia applet has been extended to allow you to change the language of the content, based on the system languages ​​installed, and you can show information either for the artist, the album or the track you are listening to.

The collection has seen a lot of changes and bug fixes: Scanning has improved and is now much faster and more accurate, the import of the Amarok 1.4 database has been improved and you can use an external MySQL database now, too. Insert an Audio CD and it will show up in the Collection Browser, allowing you to play directly from the CD or to copy the CD content to your collection. The same applies to media devices: UMS devices show up in the Collection browser, as do various other media players.

Dynamic Playlists have the new possibility to use Biases based on Last.fm and Echonest. Don’t know what to listen to? Let Amarok decide with the help of Last.fm and Echo Nest.