Quick Start Guide
Congratulations on installing , the most advanced music discovery software available. will help you explore your music, and enjoy it as never before. Also, you can tour different sources of music, radio stations and audio books online. In this guide, we'll show you how to let find your collection, play it for you, and also how to use to find things online. We'll assume that you know nothing about , but do know how to use menus, a mouse, and your keyboard.
Getting started 
Starting Amarok 
Closing Amarok 
The Amarok window 
Default layout of the Amarok window 
Using the Amarok window to manage and play your music 
The Music Collection 
The Media Sources Pane 
Setting up a collection 
Adding Media Devices to the Collection 
Ripping a CD into the collection 
Accessing other media sources 
Streams and Podcasts 
Using the Content Browser 
Hiding or expanding information 
Changing the order of tracks and albums 
Deleting items from the collection 
Playlists 
The Playlist pane 
Adding music to a playlist 
Using the Toolbar 
Manipulating playlists 
Removing a track 
Using the Playlist tools at the bottom 
Saving and retrieving your favorite playlists 
The Context View 
Default layout 
Customizing the Context pane 
How to deal with problems 
Glossary 

Getting started

Starting Amarok
If you already know your way around your operating system, you probably also know how to start , and you can continue. Else, continue reading.

From Plasma
If you are running the Plasma Workspace, you can start by either:
pressing on Kickoff and then Multimedia Amarok.
invoking KRunner (F2 by default), entering amarok and then pressing .

From the file manager
Open a multimedia file that is known to play.

First Time
The first time you use , a dialog box will come up asking you to specify your locale:
Next, a First Start dialog box will come up asking you to specify where your music is located. If you have a music directory already configured in your system, should detect it and ask you to use it:
If you select No in this dialog, you will be presented with another one which allows you to select your music folder:
See Setting Up a Collection
Once you have selected the folder where your music is, will scan the folder and sub-folders, creating the collection. This can take some time, depending on the number of tracks and the speed of the location.

Closing Amarok
If you want to close :
Type Q when you are in the window, or
Select the Quit option in the menu, or
Right-click on the blue wolf icon in the System Tray at the bottom of your screen. You will be presented with the following:
If you close the window by clicking Close on the window border, will continue to run in the background and only show the blue wolf icon in the System Tray:
If you log out of your session or shut down your computer without quitting , some of your settings will not be saved.

The Amarok window
The window is designed to let you rediscover your music. So, it gives you as much information about your music as possible. While many users will enjoy the default layout, it is fully customizable.

Default layout of the Amarok window
Upon installation, will look like this:
Amarok 2.8, newly installed
Amarok 2.8, newly installed
The window has four main parts:
under the top-level menus is the Toolbar which lies above three panes:
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.

Using the Amarok window to manage and play your music
Playing music using usually takes two steps:
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.
Also, you may want to transfer some of your music to a mobile music player, such as an iPod. The next sections will explain how.

The Music Collection

The Media Sources pane
The Media Sources pane is the place where you browse and display your complete collection of music. This includes the tracks on your local hard disk, as well as those on any external devices or media connected to your computer, such as audio CD, USB devices, media players, network disks or Internet sources.

Setting up a collection
Do you have music tracks in mp3, Ogg or FLAC format on your computer? Begin by telling where to find those files, so it can create your collection. In the top-level menu: Settings Configure Amarok Local Collection.
Configure Collection Dialog, as of version 2.8
Configure Collection Dialog, as of version 2.8
A tree-view of your home directory is shown above. Click the check box where your music is stored; usually home Music. Then choose Fully Rescan Entire Collection. This will take some time, so do not be alarmed if seems slow for a while. Once the scan is complete, it is best to quit using the top-level menu, or Q, and then restart it. Your newly-added music should show up under the Local Collection section.
More about configuring your collection here.
The set of multimedia formats recognized by is not restricted to those mentioned above; is controlled by the Phonon back end.

Adding Media Devices to the Collection
Underneath the search bar near the top of the Media Sources pane you see the different devices and/or content categories within the Content Browser. If you insert an Audio CD in the CD drive it will appear in the Media Sources pane, along with media players, thumb drives, and other USB devices. After an external device has been mounted, it will show automatically within the Media Sources pane.
Below is a screenshot showing three connected sources with music: Audio CD, mp3 player, and the Local Collection.

Ripping a CD into the collection
If you don't have any music files on your computer, it's easy to rip them (copy the tracks from your CDs to your collection). Just pop in a CD, and right-click on the banner of the CD device in the Content Browser to play, or copy to your collection, which will rip and tag your tracks (see image below). If you copy music from an audio CD to your Local Collection, the message bar at the bottom of the window will indicate that it is busy copying. The ripping may take several minutes. Once the rip is complete, the message in the message bar disappears and the music appears in the content browser of your Local Collection. If the ripped music does not appear in your Media Sources pane it's best to quit from the top-level menu, or Q, and then restart it. Now you should see it in your collection. The screenshot below shows how you move tracks from your audio CD, iPod or other device to your collection, using the context (right-click) menu.
In the above context menu, you can also see the choice to Edit Track Details. Use this option if you have a track that needs a tag edited. This becomes important when you rip music to .WAV format, losing some of the tags. If quite a bit of your collection needs tagging, consider dedicated tagging software, such as
Picard
EasyTag
Kid3
Correct tagging is important to help show your tracks in the appropriate albums and proper sort order. Learn more about ripping and tagging.

Accessing other media sources
You might have wondered why the Media Sources pane is not called the 'Collections' pane. gives you access to much more music than just your collection -- Internet shops, audio books, podcasts, music files stored outside your collection, and previously stored playlists. The breadcrumb navigation is the key to all of this. The starting icon for the breadcrumb navigation is the home folder icon at the extreme top left of the Media Sources pane. This icon expands and contracts as you browse through the Media Sources pane, allowing you to easily navigate your collection by clicking your desired folder in the breadcrumb bar.
If you click the home folder you see the Media Sources pane on the left below, containing icons to available resources. If you click Files (left image below, second item from the bottom), you will see something similar to the image on the right, below. Notice how the breadcrumb bar expands and how the content of the selected folder is shown in the Media Sources pane (right image below). Clicking the > symbols among the breadcrumbs allows you to view the folders available at that level of the folder structure. The file browser gives you access to your entire file system, even outside your Local Collection.
Media Sources pane	Files icon clicked
The functions of the icons in the Home folder (left above) are:
Icon	Name	Action
	Local Music	Your collection
	Internet	Internet shops such as Magnatune, Jamendo and Last.fm. First configure your internet resources in: Settings Configure Amarok Internet Services
	Playlists	Saved playlists -- see also Playlists. Also playlists on media devices
	Files	Your file system
	Podcasts	Access to Podcasts via RSS feed
Clicking Local Music in the root of Media Sources (image above) or in the breadcrumb bar returns you to your collection, showing you a list of all the available resources, artists, albums and tracks that you have previously defined as part of your collection. The breadcrumb bar indicates that you are viewing Local Music.

Streams and Podcasts
There are two ways to listen to streams.
If you have a favorite station, get the stream URL and add it: Playlist Add Stream. If you then save your playlist, later you can find it again in Playlists, as a Saved Playlist.
Browse through the scripts available in our Script Manager, Tools Script Manager up to Amarok 2.4.0, after 2.4.1 Settings Configure Amarok Scripts. There are some excellent collections available, which will show up in the Internet section of your Media pane.
Podcasts have their own section in the Media pane, above. If you have an RSS or Atom feed URL, click the and add it there. If you have an OPML file to import, that choice is available also. Use the context (right-click) menus to Add to playlist, Configure, Remove Subscription, Update Channel, or mark an episode as New. If you are interested in browsing through a large collection of podcasts, check out the Podcast Directory available through the Script Manager, referred to above.
More about configuring Amaroks Internet Services here.

Using the Content Browser
The hard disk of your computer, audio CDs, external devices and the Internet are the basic resources for your collection. After your collection has been set up, it is likely that your collection will hold a large number of albums and tracks, much more than can be shown on a single window.
How to change the display of your collection, below:

Hiding or expanding information
The area of the Media Sources pane below the search bar is called the Content Browser. Three media sources are indicated in the image of a Content Browser below: CD, Local Collection and a Media Player:
Clicking the banner for a device (the blue bar for the Sansa above) shows or hides the content of that device. The direction of the arrow on the right indicates whether the contents for that device is hidden or shown. The content on a particular device can, in turn, be hidden or shown using the same principle, clicking on the appropriate artist or album. An arrow pointing down on the left of an artist or an album indicates that the contents has been expanded. An arrow pointing right indicates that more content for that category is available but currently hidden. In the image above, the information for Mike Oldfield - The Songs of Distant Earth CD has been expanded, showing the individual tracks. On the other hand, the albums and tracks in the Local Collection are hidden. By clicking these arrows you also can expand or hide information.

Changing the order of tracks and albums
The order in which tracks are sorted in the Content Browser can be customised by using the button at the top of the Media Sources pane:
The Collection sort options for version 2.8
The Collection sort options for version 2.8
The sort order is indicated on the top left of the Media Sources pane, just below the Search text box. The default order is Artist / Year - Album. The display order of the Content Browser can be temporarily switched between the user-defined sort order (described above) and a Merged view in which artists are listed alphabetically, no matter on which media the music is stored. To toggle the Merged view, click the icon at the top right-hand of the Media Sources pane:
To search your collection, type your search term into the Search bar at the top of the Local Music section. Not only can you search by artist, album or track name, but any part. You might create a nice playlist by searching for winter, for instance, or merely find a track when you only remember one word of the title. You can also search by rating, playcount, even filetype. See Search in Collection for more details.

Deleting items from the collection
You can delete any item from your collection by right-clicking on it and choosing the bottom item Move Tracks to Trash. A confirmation dialog will appear, preventing the accidental deletion of any tracks. More than one item can be selected with click.

Playlists

The Playlist pane
Now that has scanned your collection of music, you want to listen to it. So use the Playlist pane to create a playlist containing the selection of tracks you want. This is where you play your music, streams, or podcasts.
You can sort your playlist by title, album, artist, genre and many others. For instance you can sort your tracks by year first, then by artist and so on.
The search box lets you search or filter your tracks. The and icons near the top of the Playlist pane lets you skip to the next or previous track containing the letters you have chosen. The button lets you filter your tracks by artist, album,
The layout of the Playlist can be changed through the top-level menu: Playlist Playlist Layouts.

Adding music to a playlist
There are five ways to add music to the playlist.
Pop-up Dropper when adding a single track
Pop-up Dropper when adding a single track
Choose some of your music in the content browser and drag it to the right. If you drag it over the Context pane you will see the Pop-Up Dropper, also known as PUD. The image above shows PUD in action. PUD provides three options: Add to Playlist, Replace Playlist, and More.... The option highlighted in the gray area (Add to Playlist in this image) is the active one. Dropping the album there adds it to the playlist in the Playlist pane. Choose one of the other options to do something else with your selection. Dragging it over More... brings up a new menu of choices in PUD.
Drag your selection all the way onto the Playlist pane on the right-hand side of the screen.
Double-click the album/track to append to the playlist, doesn't start to play.
Middle-click the album/track to append it to the playlist and play immediately.
Right-click the album or track. In your right-click menu, you will find similar choices. The image below shows the context menu that appears after an item has been right-clicked. Select Add to Playlist.

Using the Toolbar
The Toolbar at the top of the screen provides a simple interface to control the playing of music in the Playlist.
Click the round icon on the left to start your music playing, and click it again to pause. On the right is the volume and mute control; click on the center of the icon to mute. Use your mouse scroll wheel to control the volume, or drag/click your mouse on the outside ring of the volume icon.
Once a track or stream begins to play, the Artist / Album / Track title slowly alternates in bold in the center. On the right is the next track, which you can click to start it playing immediately. Once a track has played it will be on the left, so you can click on the title to go back to it. The progress bar in the middle of the Toolbar indicates the time elapsed (left hand) and time remaining (right hand) for the track that is currently playing.
If you'd rather see a more traditional toolbar, you can select Slim Toolbar from the View menu.

Manipulating playlists
You may want to delete albums or tracks from your playlist, rearrange the displayed items for each track or rearrange the display order of tracks.

Removing a track
You can remove any track or album from your playlist by:
Right-click on the item in the playlist and choose the option Remove from playlist.
Drag the item to be deleted over the Context pane to activate PUD. Several options will appear over the Context pane. Drag the item to the area marked Delete from playlist. See the image below that shows a track being dragged onto the Remove option in PUD.
Selecting the track or tracks and use your Delete key. Multiple tracks can be selected using or .
Pop-up Dropper when removing a track
Pop-up Dropper when removing a track
Undo your delete by pressing Z or by clicking the arrow in the Playlist Toolbar at the bottom of the Playlist pane (see below).

Using the Playlist tools at the bottom
At the bottom of the Playlist pane are seven icons:
Icon	Action
	Clear playlist of all albums and tracks.
	Save your playlist. If you do not rename, saves the date as a name.
	Undo your last edit to playlist.
	Redo your last undo to playlist.
	Highlight the track currently playing. Useful for long playlists.
	Set the play mode: repeat tracks, random order, prefer rarely played,
	Edit the playlist queue; which are tracks played first before the playlist resumes.
These buttons provide convenient alternatives to several keyboard actions.

Saving and retrieving your favorite playlists
The disk icon, in the popup which can be called from the bottom of your Playlist pane, allows you to save the current playlist. This enables you to recall a particular selection of music from your collection at any time. Playlists only contain pointers to the music you selected, not the music itself. So if your playlist is pointing to music on an external device, it must be connected and mounted, otherwise the music cannot be played. There are three places to store playlists:
outside on your computer file system,
in your playlist database
on an portable media device.
Clicking the disk icon at the bottom of the Playlist pane stores your playlist in the playlist database. To save to disk, click and hold, then scroll to that choice.
Current playlist saving options
Current playlist saving options
By default, your saved playlist has a name composed of the date and time when you saved it (see image below). Right-click the playlist name to rename it. Right-clicking on a playlist name also allows you to add it to your existing playlist in the Playlist pane, or to replace your existing playlist.

The Context View
The power of is in the Context pane (in the center of the default window), where you can install various applets to help you enjoy and explore your music. Most of this additional information is obtained from the Internet, so a connection is important to get the most out of your Context pane. By default, three applets are preset: Current Track, Lyrics and Wikipedia.

Default layout
The default Context pane shows the following items: CurrentTrack, Analyzer, Wikipedia and Lyrics. Depending on the screen size the Lyrics might not be visible, but clicking on the button at the bottom will make it visible. When nothing is playing, the CurrentTrack applet will show the last played tracks and information about the Local Collection
The default view as of Amarok 2.8
The default view as of Amarok 2.8

Customizing the Context pane
At the bottom of the Context pane are four buttons for the default applets. On the right of these buttons you see , clicking on it will show allowing you to remove these applets. Click the applets to add them to the pane. Drag the labeled buttons to re-order the applets you have, and click again to save your selections.
This makes the Context pane extremely flexible, maximizing the possibility of a custom display that fits your preferences. More here.

How to deal with problems

Some of the music is being rapidly skipped over
You may not have installed the necessary codecs. More about that here:
FAQ: What Media Types Does Amarok Support.
Please refer to your distribution.

After my iPod has been mounted, it is not shown in the Content Browser
This should not happen. Check that the device has been properly mounted. Simply typing mount in a console will show you all mounted devices.

After I have updated my collection, the additions are not shown in the Content Browser
From the top-level menu Tools Update Collection. If they don't show up, quit from the menu, or use Q to quit. Once you restart , your collection should show your updates.

Amarok cannot find the lyrics of the songs that I play
Possibilities:
The lyrics are not available in the sites checked on the Internet. You may wish to add more sites via the script menu.
The track numbering system within an album in your collection is not correct.
The title of your song contains special characters with a cedille, accent, that do not show in your track title; therefore the lyrics script applet cannot find a match for your title. Check your tags and track numbering system with a tagger such as Picard.

My question isn't answered here
More complex issues are covered in this handbook, including Troubleshooting and Common Problems, and the Amarok FAQ.

Glossary

Breadcrumbs
This is a way of navigating a hierarchical file structure; on near the top of the Media Sources pane. Starting at the Home folder level, it shows how deep one has navigated into the file system. When you have gone to a particular place in the file system, you will see all folders at a higher level. In the > links between folder levels allow you to find out what alternative folders are available at a particular level. The breadcrumbs are an efficient mechanism to navigate the whole file system on your computer.

Collection
All the sound files that has compiled in the database. Your collection may vary in size and composition of music tracks, depending which external devices (such as audio CDs or portable players with music) are connected and mounted on your computer.

Collection Browser
This is in the Media Sources pane for your Local Music section and shows you the list of the music that you have in your collections. The Collection Browser allows you to search and sort your track lists by various id3 tags.

Playlist
A selection of tracks from your collection that you wish to play. Some portable music players have predefined playlists that are likely to differ from your playlists.

Script
plugin to extend functionality. Scripts are available from Settings Configure Amarok Scripts. Add more lyrics sources, more streaming stations, save covers to your album folders, burn CDs from playlists,

Scrobble
To scrobble a track means that as you listen to it, the title of the track and artist are sent to a Web site such as Last.fm, where the information is added to your profile.

Stream, streaming
Like 20th-century radio stations, Internet radio stations send out streams of content. One can find music, news, commentary and opinion. Many streams can be accessed through , either through scripts such as Cool Streams, or individually added by menu, Playlist Add Stream.

Tags
The information about each of the tracks you listen to, ⪚ album name, track title, composer, artist, year, There is a standard called ID3 for including this information on audio CDs. You can edit the tags of individual tracks within if the file permissions are correct.