Download Amarok 2.3 Beta 1

The Amarok program is a popular audio player for KDE and features extensive opportunities to create (dynamic) playlists, search for lyrics on the internet and adjust MP3 tags. In addition, Amarok can play streams and supports various backends such as xine, NMM and MAS. The developers recently released Amarok 2.3 Beta 1 with the following announcement:

Amarok 2.3 Beta 1 “Altered State” Released

Due to considerable visual changes in the main toolbar, and many other improvements, we have decided to release the next version of Amarok as 2.3, instead of 2.2.3. From the developer’s perspective only little changes with a version number bump; our policy is to still put quality first. With that note, many of these exciting new changes are still works in progress. During the next two weeks we will be focusing on polish, overall stability, and bug fixing, so that you can enjoy a great Amarok 2.3!

We encourage every brave user out there to try the beta and report back any issues spotted. Although it runs very smoothly on our computers it can in fact cause some problems and things unspoken 😉 Please report problems you might find at bugs.kde.org.

Features:

• Added a configuration dialog for Local Podcasts. Update interval and base download directory can now be configured. (BR 221398)
• Make it possible to go to next/previous track with horizontal mouse wheel button on TrayIcon. (BR 225783)
• New main toolbar with completely redesigned look and new features. Contributed by Thomas Luebking .
• Podcasts and Saved Playlists can now be grouped by provider like iPod, Local, USB Mass Storage, etc. This can be toggled using a button in the relevant Category.
• The playlist context menu now has a “Show in Media Sources” action for many types of track.
• The collection scanner now also looks for cover images named “folder.*”. Apparently some applications use this convention. (BR 224692)
• It’s now possible to automatically use a USB Mass Storage device as a collection when it’s connected.
• The progress bar tooltip now shows the position in the track that the cursor is hovering, making it simple to jump to a specific position.
• D-Bus: Added StopAfterCurrent method for /Player.
• You can now elect to rescan specific folders. Right-click on a folder in the collection setup dialog to rescan just that folder. This will only work for folders that have previously been added to the collection, ie you cannot check a folder and immediately rescan it. This will never be recursive (as that defeats the point of scanning a specific folder!)
• Non collection files with a cue sheet will now load their tracks as individual tracks in the playlist instead of as one big track with bookmark markers.
• Dynamic Collection is back. (BR 171213)
• Searching covers from Last.fm using custom query in interactive mode.

Changes:

• All move/copy operations to the local collection are asynchronous.
• Proper handling of disk full and permission errors for copy/move operations to the local collection.
• A preview of the moving/copying operations is now shown in the Organize dialog.
• Added an expander icon to the collection root items.
• The equalizer configuration is now a separate tool window accessible from the tool menu.
• Files with ogg and flac extensions can now be copied to UMS devices.
• The search/filter edit in the playlist is now cleared when pressing enter. (BR 217159)
• Amarok now checks if the version of the “amarokcollectionscanner” tool is correct. Some users had issues with having multiple versions of it installed, causing scanning to fail.
• First run: Let users decided on how to handle music location set in standard desktop services.
• Improved cover fetching accuracy and speed.
• Usability: Better design of playback configuration dialog.
• Use millisecond accuracy for track bookmarks. Backwards compatible with bookmarks stored in previos versions. (BR 215145)
• Loving a track for Last.fm via the global keyboard action also show a message in the status bar.
• Improved usability of the playlist layout editor dialog.
• Duplicate unique file identifiers are now indicated in debug output, along with the paths of the files, when found instead of being silently ignored. This can help discover multiple copies of the same file or files which incorrectly have the same MusicBrainz unique identifier.

Bug fixes:

• Prevent custom sliders from allocating a lot of pixmap resources (xrestop)
• Fix multiple busy indicators being shown in the Context View. (BR 208102)
• Corruption of guid strings by passing them as a KUrl caused podcast episodes to be readded on each update. This issue has been solved. If you have episodes that appear twice, remove the channel and add it again. (BR 219516)
• Cleaned up the Organize dialog to make it more usable. (BR 199574)
• Made it harder to Move Files unintentionally. (BR 220716)
• Returned “Organize Files” to the collection’s context menu. (BR 215902)
• Fixed Amarok Solid action for playing audio CDs working. (BR 209204)
• Fixed crash with moving applets in the Context View. (BR 191918)
• Fixed crash in KNotify. (BR 224673)
• Fixed queue management with mouse. (BR 217153)
• Fixed playback of some streams causing the progress slider to show garbage track length and position values ​​like -322:0-35:0-59.
• Prevent a crash when loading PLS playlists with invalid filepaths.
• Fixed scrolling crashes with the cover manager. (BR 224000)
• Fixed a bug that was deleting files when using “Move to collection” from the file browser. (BR 217002)
• Allow fetching of album covers in the unified view. (BR 220873)
• Lyrics applet: Fixed scrollbar incorrectly displayed (and sometimes not at all) for long lyrics under KDE 4.4. (BR 222260)
• Fixed bug in Photos applet that made it break with translated versions of Amarok. Patch by Bellegarde Cedric . (BR 222566)
• Lyrics applet: Fixed saving and restoring font styles. (BR 222277)
• Lyrics applet: Fixed a bug where sometimes suggested URLs are not cleared when switching tracks.
• Fixed playlist layout editor blocking control of Amarok. (BR 220825)
• Fixed moodbar in progress slider not correctly updating after moodbar style change (BR 220695)
• Fixed progress slider not moving for many streams (and possible other types of tracks) (BR 221747)
• Sort artists named like “The Foo” correctly in all cases. (BR 176670)
• Fixed behavior when clearing the bookmark manager filter.
• Fixed track not being added to the playlist when playing a track from the bookmark manager.