Download Amarok 2.3.0

The developers behind Amarok released version 2.3.0 on Monday. 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 2.3, the podcast section and working with playlists have been improved, among other things. The program also handles much better with USB-connected storage devices. The full release notes for version 2.3 are as follows:

Amarok 2.3.0 “Clear Light” released

Team Amarok is proud to announce Amarok 2.3.0. It contains many improvements and bug fixes about Amarok 2.2.2 as well as many new features. Areas such as podcast support and saved playlists have seen huge improvements, as has the support for USB mass storage devices (including generic MP3 players).

With large parts of Amarok 2 becoming quite mature, it was also time to start looking forward again. Therefore, this release also contains a number of new features of a slightly more experimental nature. These include a new main toolbar and a rewritten and much simpler file browser. These parts are brand new and based on user feedback, and they will change and improve over the next few releases. The old slim toolbar is still available should you prefer that, but we encourage you to try out the new toolbar and tell us what you think. The file browser’s look and feel now aligns more closely with the rest of Amarok with improvements such as breadcrumb navigation, and it is now focused on being a way to find and play music instead of being a multi-purpose file manager.

The context menu of tracks in your playlist now offers a “show in media sources” option, making it easier to find the same track again in the collection browser for editing, moving or deleting the file.

Podcasts have received a configuration dialog allowing you to change the update interval as well as the location to store new downloaded episodes. Podcasts and saved playlists are now also grouped by source, and a merged view is available just like in your local collection – perfect for those that don’t care where their music is coming from but simply want to listen to it. Now, when a new source of playlists or podcasts becomes available, Amarok will switch off merged view and show a collapsible list of your new listening sources.

The Wikipedia applet now looks better and left have been fixed. Internal links to other pages on Wikipedia will display in the applet, and external links open a browser window.

In short, Team Amarok has been focusing hard on furthering our long-term goal: making Amarok the best tool for immersing yourself in music, no matter where it comes from.

Amarok screenshot, click on the image for a larger version.