Ubuntu’s default music player Rhythmbox comes with a host of handy plug-ins either enabled by default or waiting to be enabled via the ‘Edit > Plugins‘ menu, but if the default selection leaves you wanting you can easily add more

Here are 5 of our favourite extensions.

Desktop Art & Mini controller

If you’re not in the mood for the fancy themes and extra bells CoverGloobus offers but would still love some Cover-Art action on your desktop then this plugin is ideal.

It displays the cover of the track playing along with track details and as a neat bonus works as a mini ‘controller for pausing, resuming, and skipping between tracks – all without needing to open Rhythmbox or use the Sound Menu.

Rhythmbox desktop art plugin

Installation

Download the .deb installer beneath. Double click it to install.

Open Folder

This plugin is one of my favourites and it’s very simple in purpose: it inserts a ‘open file location’ entry in the right-click menu of a track, affording you super-quick access to a files’ location on disk without the need for endless browsing.

Download

Installation requires extracting the archive & moving the resulting folder to:

~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins/

You will find this in your Home folder: press CTRL+H and look for ‘.gnome2’.

Shoutcast

Big fan of Shoutcast radio stations? Hate having to use Totem (!) to listen to them? This plugin solves that.

If you’re old-fashioned like me and see radio as something you listen to in a music player and not a movie player then this Shoutcast plugin for Rhythmbox makes an ace addition to your audio arsenal.

Download
You’ll find the download here.

Extract the archive and double-click on the ‘install.sh’ script inside selecting ‘Run in terminal’ when prompted. Restart Rhythmbox and enable the plug-in via the’ Edit > Plug-ins’ menu.

Libre.fm scrobbling

Use Libre.fm in place of Last.fm and want to scrobble direct from Rhythmbox? ScrobbleFree is your answer.

Installation

  • sudo add-apt-repsoitory ppa:rsalveti/scrobblefree
  • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install scrobblefree

RhythmArty

We only featured this Banshee-style grid view a few days ago so you’ll find all you need to know – and download packages – by clicking here.

#omg5 Rhythmbox