Amarok
Amarok is a powerful music player with an intuitive interface based on the KDE Platform.
Amarok comes with a lot of features including but not limited to:
- Scripts - enhance your Amarok experience with community developed scripts
- Dynamic Playlists - create playlists that automatically update
- Context View - customize interface
- PopUp Dropper - simplify drag & drop actions with revolutionary menu system
- Multiple Language Translations
- Collection Management - organizing your music collection has never been easier with Amarok's powerful tagging, renaming, and sorting abilities
- Database Importing - import collections from Amarok 1.4 or iTunes
- Scriptable Services - integrate other web services into Amarok
How To Install Amarok
Open your Terminal and enter the following:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install amarok amarok-doc
You can also download the install file from pkgs.org.
To remove the program enter the following:
sudo apt-get remove amarok amarok-doc
Open your Terminal and enter the following:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install amarok amarok-doc
You can also download the install file from pkgs.org.
To remove the program enter the following:
sudo apt-get remove amarok amarok-doc
The Amarok window is designed to give you easy access to your music. It is highly customizable, so you can change the way it looks and behaves. Upon installation, Amarok will look like this: (I am using a dark theme on my system.)
The Amarok window contains a menu bar beneath the title bar, your media sources (music collection and other media) in the left pane, the Context pane in the center, and the Playlist in the right-hand pane.
Playing music from your system using Amarok:
Playing music from your system using Amarok:
- Create a playlist by selecting some of the tracks in your collection, which you will find listed in the Media Sources pane, and send your music to the Playlist pane.
- Play the music in your playlist, using the Playlist pane and/or the Toolbar.
You can also access your media using the Playlist menu and click on Add Media...
Select an album or albums when the Add Media dialog box appears and click the OK button. You can select music files from your computer or enter a link to your music online.
You will notice your music will now appear in your playlist on the right. You can use the Playlist pane and/or the Toolbar to select and play a song from your list. You will notice your song info in the Context pane in the center.
You can load all your albums from a Music folder on a seperate drive. You can see the name of music folder on the left while looking at the album information on the right. You'll see a very small album art or cover along with the names of the songs on the album. If you select a song you can display a variety of information in the center. You can pull information from Wikipedia or click on one of the icons in the center at the bottom to select another applet from the Applet Explorer.
You can display the lyrics to your selected or active song.
Amarok has a unique look. It took me a while to figure ot the speaker icon in the upper right is like a round volume control knob. You click on the edge of the round icon and drag the mouse pointer left or right around the edge of the circle to turn the volume up or down. You'll notice a floating message or notification with the volume percentage above the program. Clicking on the speaker icon will mute the sound. The round pause button on the left will pause the music when it's pressed, but you'll notice the music will fade away instead of immediately stop.
You can disable the fadeout when you press the pause button or the stop button in the Configure dialog box. To do this, click on the Settings menu, then on Configure Amarock... when the Configure dialog box appears, click on the Playback tab or section on the left. Under Volume Fading uncheck Fadeout on stop and/or Fadeout on pause. Your music will now stop immediately when you press stop or pause.
The slideshow below will allow you to look through the sections within the Configure dialog box. Amarok is highly customizable. The online manual does an excellent job explaining all the parts and sections that make-up the Configure dialog box.
You can change the look of the player through the View menu. You can uncheck everything except Slim Toolbar and make the player look very small.
In Slim Toolbar mode you have access to Previous Tract, Play/Pause, Stop, Next Tract, Love, Add Position Marker, and Volume (on the right). In slim mode, the Volume control will work as a vertical slider.
You can use the Slim Toolbar instead of the Main Toolbar with the Context, Playlist, and Media Sources. This gives you more of a traditional way of controlling your music.
You can right-click on an album in your playlist and click on Show in Media Source to display the songs in the left panel. You can get more data from each song in this list. As you can see in the image below, you can view the size of each file.
You can right-click on an album in your playlist and highlight Album and then click on Display Cover to display the cover art for your album.
You'll see the cover art for the selected album in a pop-up window.
Amarok also lets you search for similar artist to the one's you already have. This helps you discover new artists or groups that sound similar to the genre you like.
You can turn on visualizations or musical analyzer and watch it as you listen to your music.
You can right-click on it and change its looks. The look above and below is Blocky.
Below is the ASCII Analyzer.
Below is the Balls Analyzer.
Below is the Disco Analyzer.
Amarok is one of the many music players available for Linux and other platforms. You can customize it in a variety of ways. It has one of the best online handbooks to help you with any problem. You can also post your question on the Amarok Forum. It's Sunday, March 15, 2020 at the time I am writing this and you can see that the Amarok Forum is very active.
May 3, 2020