A new version of iconic Qt music player Amarok has been released, the first to be based on Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6.
Amarok 3.3 (codenamed ‘Far Above the Clouds’, a reference a song by progressive rock musician Mike Oldfield) picks up a glut of improvement as a result of the toolkit bump, which its developers describe as a “decade-sized update of the technological foundations.”
GStreamer is used for audio playback in Amarok 3.3 rather than Phonon, the KDE-developed multimedia API Amarok has used since the Amarok 2.0 release in 2008.
Amarok’s devs say the switch ought to “provide a solid and future-proof sonic experience for years to come”. Given that GStreamer is widely used, actively maintained and offers a modern API, plugins and effects, it’s a logical fit.
Beyond that, Amarok 3.3 improves its database with various fixes and tune-ups ranging from mitigating the “year 2038 problem” to handling emojis and other obscure symbols in in podcast descriptions (yes, Amarok can handle podcasts).
Other changes include better handling of pre-gain when ReplayGain is active or inactive, cleaning out a raft of unused/deprecated Last.fm features, and plugging in partial support for cue files.
So, are there any new features?
Having been in development for a year Amarok 3.3 is surprisingly light on any “user facing” new features.
That said, given the effort needed at the low-level to finish the (much needed) Qt6 port, and replace the Phonon audio engine with GStreamer (an invisible yet tangible improvement), it’s understandable that it’s the foundational changes that are the headline changes.
This, presumably, is why it is released as Amarok 3.3 and not Amarok 4.0. The latter is in the works, and with modern underpinnings in place (to be stabilised further with likely bug fix releases in the coming weeks) there’s a solid base to build out from.
What might we expect in Amarok 4.0?
The development team talk of “extensive work on the user interface and other aspects of the software”, which is encouraging (though the impact of Amarok’s past UI changes do still linger in the minds of many).
Getting Amarok 3.3
Amarok 3.3 source code is available, for users looking to build it from source or for Linux distribution maintainers and packagers wanting to create installable builds.
Most end users don’t need to go to those kind of efforts to install Amarok 3.3 on their distro of choice since the latest version of this music player is available install from Flathub, although at the time of writing the new 3.3.0 release has yet to be added.