Various
Topics which didn't fit elsewhere, such a Moodbar, Amarok on other platforms, troubleshooting, common problems, and the FAQ:
Moodbar 
ReplayGain 
Amarok on other Desktops and Operating Systems 
Non-KDE Desktops 
Amarok on Windows 
Amarok on OS X 
Troubleshooting and Common Problems 
FAQ 

The Moodbar
The Moodbar shows you the mood of a track, which you can then use to figure out when something interesting happens in the song.
In order for to display moodbars for your music, you will need the Moodbar program (see below for downloads and binary packages).
The Moodbar package requires GStreamer and various plugins depending on the filetypes you use (see Supported filetypes). You will not need the phonon-backend-gstreamer package to create .mood files.
There are two parts to the new Moodbar implementation: the Moodbar package, which contains a program that takes a music file and generates a .mood file, and support code in the source, which runs the binary and displays the Moodbar. The Moodbar package depends on the GStreamer libraries. Without the Moodbar package, cannot generate the moodbars for your music.
As an alternative, there is a new script which will create moodbar files for tracks in an playlist; this is an exception to the above. The script needs nothing but to work, but it only creates the .mood files as they are played in the Playlist.
The Moodbar is due to the work of Gavin Wood and Simon O'Keefe, who designed the algorithms; their original paper is here.

Summary of Requirements
The Moodbar binary, in your PATH (it should be listed upon running which moodbar from a console) — Remember to configure the Moodbar package with proper path, ⪚ build and install with commands ./autogen.sh --prefix=`pkg-config --variable=prefix gstreamer-1.0` && make && sudo make install
The GStreamer 1.0 library and plugins for the formats you want Moodbar to be able to analyse. (An earlier GStreamer 0.10 based version is also still available for some distributions)
The Fastest Fourier Transform In The West (fftw.org) FFTW library version 3.0 or above (at least single-precision floating point version - libfftw3f) — If your platform does not provide this for you or you need to compile your own version, remember to configure the FFTW package with ./configure --enable-single
A version of with a Use moods option in the General section of the configuration screen. This means 1.4.4 or higher in the 1.4 series or 2.2.2 or higher in the 2.x series.
Systems with package managers should automatically install the GStreamer plugins and FFTW along with the Moodbar package if available; this information is provided mostly for people who want or need to compile from source or manually install packages, or where the distribution specific instructions are outdated and no updated moodbar package is yet available.

Usage
Currently .mood files must be generated manually. cannot do it for you. To do this for your entire collection, use the Moodbar File Generation Script described below.
To enable the display of moodbars in , activate it in the configuration: Settings Configure Amarok General Show Moodbar in Progress Slider. Moodbars should now appear in the track sliders in the player window and Playlist; there will also be a mood field that you may add to your playlist layouts.

Installation

Source Downloads
Latest release: moodbar-0.1.4.tar.gz — this is the Moodbar source package, which contains the Moodbar program (which generates .mood files from music files), and a GStreamer plugin that does the work. The Moodbar package needs GStreamer 1.0.* installed, plus the 1.0.* version of various plugins. Be sure to install the Moodbar package into the same prefix as GStreamer — follow the instructions in  the summary of requirements chapter. The 0.1.4 is a a fork of original 0.1.2 sources, updated to use GStreamer 1.0. The old 0.1.2 sources are not reliably available online any more, but packages might be still available for some distributions.
If you find any bugs, please submit a bug report at bugs.kde.org.

Debian packages
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
A package for Moodbar is now available in Debian unstable. Simply run apt-get install moodbar . You will likely also want to install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good, and gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad for format support.

Kubuntu and Ubuntu packages
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
A package for Moodbar is available in the official package repository; just ensure the universe section is activated (which should be default anyway). Just install the package moodbar with your preferred package manager (Kpackagekit, Aptitude, Adept, Synaptic). You will likely also want to install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good, and gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad for format support.
Or, to install, paste this into Firefox or and hit .
apt://moodbar,gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly,gstreamer0.10-plugins-good,gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad?section=universe?refresh=yep

Gentoo ebuilds
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
Moodbar is available in Portage, simply emerge moodbar Unofficial ebuilds are no longer required.

RPM builds
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated
If you are a rpm-based distro user, you can build a .rpm using rpmbuild with latest
gstreamer-plugins-moodbar.spec. The binary package will be soon available for PLD-linux distro.

Fedora
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
In Fedora 7 and higher (up to 16 as of this writing) Moodbar is available in the default repositories. Simply install it with your PackageKit GUI or with the following yum command:
yum install moodbar

openSUSE packages
GStreamer 1.0 based version 0.1.4 is available in KDE:Extra repository for openSUSE Leap 42.3 and later. An earlier GStreamer 0.10 based version 0.1.2 is also still available in the main repository for some openSUSE versions.
For details on how to add repositories, see the openSUSE wiki.
1-Click Install for openSUSE - just choose your version and installation procedure will do the rest:
openSUSE Tumbleweed
openSUSE Leap 15.0
openSUSE Leap 42.3

Mandriva packages
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
First of all, you need to add PLF repositories, so visit easyurpmi.zarb.org and add them to your repositories list.
Then simply install the following packages:
gstreamer0.10-moodbar
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad

Arch
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
There is a PKGBUILD for Moodbar in the Arch User Repository (AUR) available here.
For more information about the AUR and working with PKGBUILDs, see the AUR User Guidelines.

FreeBSD
This section contains old instructions for the GStreamer 0.10 based moodbar version 0.1.2, they might be outdated.
There is a port: audio/gstreamer-plugins-moodbar here.
To install the port: cd /usr/ports/audio/gstreamer-plugins-moodbar/ && make install clean
To add the package: pkg_add -r gstreamer-plugins-moodbar

Moodbar File Generation Script
Here is a simple bash script that will add .mood files to your entire collection. It adds mood files for all files matching the extensions in the current directory and all subdirectories, so it's best run from the base of your music directory.

 #!/bin/bash
 DIR=${1:-.}
 LAST=~/.moodbar-lastreadsong
 C_RET=0
 control_c()        # run if user hits control-c
 {
   echo "" > "$LAST"
   echo "Exiting..."
   exit
 }
 if [ -e "$LAST" ]; then
   read filetodelete < "$LAST"
   rm "$filetodelete" "$LAST"
 fi
 exec 9< <(find "$DIR" -type f -regextype posix-awk -iregex '.*\.(mp3|ogg|flac|wma)') # you may need to add m4a and mp4
 while read i
 do
   TEMP="${i%.*}.mood"
   OUTF=`echo "$TEMP" | sed 's#\(.*\)/\([^,]*\)#\1/.\2#'`
   trap 'control_c "$OUTF"' INT
   if [ ! -e "$OUTF" ]
     moodbar -o "$OUTF" "$i"
   fi
 done <&9
 exec 9<&-
 exit $C_RET

Copy and paste the above into a text file named moodbar.sh in your music directory and run the following commands:
cd /path/to/music bash moodbar.sh
Alternatively if the above does not work, you may try:
chmod +x moodbar.sh ./moodbar.sh
This may take a very long time for large collections! Note that the moodbars will not appear in until rescans the collection. The generated mood files will be dotfiles (, prefixed with a full stop), or hidden files - so keep this in mind if you can't find any generated mood files.
Based on the above script, an alternative for multicore CPUs:

 #!/bin/bash
 NUMCPU="$(grep ^processor /proc/cpuinfo | wc -l)"
 find . -type f -regextype posix-awk -iregex '.*\.(mp3|ogg|flac|wma)' | while read i ; do
        while [ `jobs -p | wc -l` -ge $NUMCPU ] ; do
                sleep 0.1
        done
        TEMP="${i%.*}.mood"
        OUTF=`echo "$TEMP" | sed 's#\(.*\)/\([^,]*\)#\1/.\2#'`
        if [ ! -e "$OUTF" ] ; then
                moodbar -o "$OUTF" "$i" &
        fi
 done

Troubleshooting
If the Moodbar executable gives you a bus error, that almost always means it can't decode (or can't find) your file. Take a look at the supported file types below for ideas on which GStreamer plugins to install. You can also try the command below to test whether GStreamer can decode your file:gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=[file] ! decodebin ! fakesink
If you are using the ffmpeg plugin to decode mp3s, you may also receive mysterious bus errors. The solution is to stop using the ffmpeg plugin, as it is extremely buggy — use mad instead.
If the Moodbar executable tells you that it can't find an element — , it gives an error message like

Could not create element of type fftwspectrum, please install it.

— that usually means that you either don't have the required plugins installed (see the plugin list here), or that you didn't install the Moodbar package in the same prefix as GStreamer. If libmoodbar.so and libgstdecodebin.so are not in the same directory, then Moodbar is not installed in the same prefix as GStreamer. Please read the INSTALL file for instructions on how to configure the moodbar package correctly. Alternatively, if you know what you're doing, it may be easier for you to take a look at the GST_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable.
If you're wondering why the Moodbar isn't working, either not working at all or not working for a particular file, run the command below, where [file] is a music file:moodbar -o test.mood [file] To generate a test image preview, one can use the commandːgst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=[file] ! decodebin ! audioconvert ! fftwspectrum ! moodbar height=50 max-width=300 ! pngenc ! filesink location=mood.png
If you have multiple versions of GStreamer installed, make sure all of the required plugins are installed for version 1.0.* -- different versions cannot use each other's plugins.

Supported Filetypes
You will need various Gstreamer plugins to enable Moodbar to analyze your files. Here is a list of the plugins you will need; make sure to install the 1.0.* version of each plugin:
Filetype	Required Plugin	Note
All	gstreamer-1.0.*, gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good
mp3	gst-plugins-mad (in gst-plugins-ugly)	ffmpeg plugin has problems; do not use for mp3
ogg	gst-plugins-vorbis, gst-plugins-ogg
flac	gst-plugins-flac
mp4	gst-plugins-faad, gst-plugins-bad
musepack	gst-plugins-musepack
wma	gst-plugins-ffmpeg

Screenshots
Moodbar in progress slider in Amarok 2
Moodbar in progress slider in Amarok 2

Replay Gain
Replay gain will automatically adjust the volume of the currently played song, relative to other songs, as determined by the person who encoded the audio file. To enable replay gain, see Settings menu.
To handle this, relies on metadata embedded in the audio file:
If no replay gain information is embedded, will not adjust the volume
If replay gain information is found, it will be written into 's database
During playback, will only look into its own database for this information. Updates to the metadata of the file will not always get written into the database during a collection update (⪚ replay gain is deleted from file).
This can lead to unexpected behavior: Songs from the same artist play at different volume levels

Is replay gain being used?
To figure out if the volume problem is caused by replay gain or bad encoding:
Disable replay gain processing (see above)
Start in debug mode and search for gain- related output:
amarok -d --nofork | grep gain
If replay gain is active for the played song, the output will be
Using gain of -10.28 with relative peak of -1

View replay gain information
For .flac files, metaflac can be used to view embedded replay gain data:
metaflac --list Millencolin\ -\ Balanced\ Boy.flac
Among other things, this will show something like this:
METADATA block #2
type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
is last: false
length: 390
vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917
comments: 14
comment[9]: REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS=89.0 dB
comment[10]: REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-1.55 dB
comment[11]: REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.75894165
comment[12]: REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=-4.19 dB
comment[13]: REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.98712158
To view this tracks information within the database:
select id, title, albumgain, albumpeakgain, trackgain, trackpeakgain from tracks where title like "Balanced%";
Will show:
+-------+------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+---------------+
| id | title | albumgain | albumpeakgain | trackgain | trackpeakgain |
+-------+------------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+---------------+
| 10459 | Balanced Boy | 0.53 | -5.60297 | 0.44 | -5.60297 |
Note the difference in loudness levels

Delete replay gain information
First, delete the metadata from the file:
metaflac --remove-replay-gain Millencolin\ -\ Balanced\ Boy.flac
After that, update your collection. If it is still using replay gain, update the database entry:
update tracks set albumgain=-1,albumpeakgain=-1,trackgain=-1,trackpeakgain=-1 where id=10459
Restart and the log output should now show the updated values being used.
Feel free to try and mess with the values manually to improve volume levels.

Amarok on other platforms
is intended for the KDE desktop, but it works on other platforms as well. Although it takes some effort, Amarok can run on these configurations:
	Non-KDE Desktops 
	Windows 
	OS X 

Amarok on Non-KDE Desktops
Although is one the most well-known KDE applications, it can run on other desktop environments too.
This section shows how can be used on non-KDE desktops. These are examples; there may be more.

GNOME
To configure the proxy for on GNOME, modify and add this to ~/.kde/share/config/kioslaverc

[Proxy Settings][$i]
ProxyType=1
httpProxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/
httpsProxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/
ftpProxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/

Enlightenment
The systray icon does not work by default with E17. So, one should disable the Show tray icon from General Options in 's preferences.

XFCE
To launch faster, enable Launch KDE services on startup by going into Settings Sessions and Startup Advanced and checking the option.

Fluxbox
If is taking to long to load, add exec kdeinit to ~/.fluxbox/startup.

LXDE
In case starts slowly in LXDE, you can add kdeinit to the startup applications using the lxsession-edit command.

Amarok on Windows
This pages needs screenshots for the Amarok 2.8 version
As you already know, a normal Windows install doesn't use KDE, so if you want to install , you can't just download the package. You must install a compatible compiler first. Here is described how to download, install and run in the Windows operating system.

How to download
If you run into any difficulties, please visit the Amarok on Windows wiki page where the latest links will be kept updated. Otherwise, use the latest at the following links:

How to install
The installation is very simple, just run the downloaded .exe file.
If you want to update be sure to remove your current install.

Step 1
First, review on the license terms.

Step 2
Second, choose the install location.
If you want to change the default location, select Browse... and choose a new location.

Step 3
Wait a few minutes while the installation finishes.

Step 4
When the installation is done, dismiss the window with Close. Your installation has finished.

Running Amarok
When the installation finishes, you'll find an shortcut on your desktop. To run , just click the shortcut.

Amarok on X
Current Macports 2.1.3 only ships an outdated Amarok 2.6.0 version
can be installed and used on the X.

Installation using MacPorts
To install on X, first one needs to install MacPorts from here. Once MacPorts is installed one needs to run the following command in the terminal:
sudo port install amarok
The port command will fetch all the dependencies, compile, build and install them. This process may take quite some time, four to five hours in a recent install.

Screenshots
The following screenshot shows running on the X:

Other resources
If you run into difficulties, there is a troubleshooting page here.

Troubleshooting and Common Problems
If you work through the procedures here, but don't have success, please come into IRC (irc://irc.libera.chat/amarok), post on the KDE Forum Amarok section, or write to the Amarok list.

Problems installing

Bad packaging
Occasionally, users will encounter bad packaging from the distributions; either from the wrong version of a component being included, or some needful part being left out. For some reason, this often happens with MySQL dependencies. Bug reports in these cases should be made to your distribution, not to bugs.kde.org.

Difficulties building from source
For those who wish to help out by testing the newest versions, a local build is advised. Use this excellent guide: Compiling Amarok from GIT Locally; a Full Summary. Detailed information about git can be found here: Techbase GIT Tutorial.
If you have built successfully before, and now are encountering errors, try removing CMakeCache.txt and try again. If that still errors out, remove the entire Build folder and build completely fresh.
The URL to pull from git has recently changed. Run git remote set-url origin git://anongit.kde.org/amarok if you still using the old URL. Please ping us if you find the old link in our documents so we can update it everywhere.

Problems starting up

Playlist errors
The current playlist can occasionally get corrupt, which will prevent from starting. This can be fixed by simply removing the current playlist file in the directory, $HOME/.kde/share/apps/amarok/current.xspf . Note that on some systems, this may be .kde4 rather than .kde.

Database issues
If the database is corrupt and this is preventing from starting, you can move the database to a backup location (or simply delete it). This will cause to rebuild the database from scratch. Move the $HOME/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle folder to a backup location (such as $HOME/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle~) and restart .

Other issues and backing up settings
If the above two items do not help, or you otherwise need to restore to a clean configuration, you can move to a backup location (or delete) the directory at $HOME/.kde/share/apps/amarok and the config files at $HOME/.kde/share/config/amarok* (there may be two or three files matching this pattern). Again, the directory may be .kde4 rather than .kde.

Problems Scanning, Sorting files
scans your music files on first startup, and will keep your collection up-to-date automatically, if you chose Settings Configure Amarok Collection Watch folders for changes.
If you don't want scanning for changes, uncheck that, and use Tools Update Collection whenever you make changes to your collection.
More about Amarok collection scanning here.

Corrupt tags
Some folks notice that seems to be missing some files. One of the causes can be corrupt tags, which you can check using the tagging application kid3. More about tagging here.
To find the bad file(s), run amarokcollectionscanner from the console. Details here.

Inability to write tags
If is not saving changes to tags, you may have permissions problems. Ensure that your user has write permissions to your music. For example, chown -R youruser Music/ to change ownership to your user, or chmod -R +w Music/ to add write permissions to the owner.

Incorrect Sorting (Various Artists)
Sometimes people report that tracks are in Various Artists when they should not be, or are sorted into Unknown Album. What separates Various Artists albums and tracks and albums sorted under their artists is the Album Artist tag. When you click Show under Various Artists in the context (right-click) menu, that tag will be emptied if it is filled. The opposite happens to a file in Various Artists when you choose Do not show under Various Artists, but the Album Artist tag will be auto-filled from the Artist tag.
If there is no Album tag, and no Album Artist tag, will put the track into Unknown Album in Various Artists. If you want them sorted otherwise, tag them the way you want them sorted. If you don't know some of the information, try out the new MusicBrainz function in the tag editor, or use a tagging application.

Duplicate Tracks
Sometimes Amarok pops up following dialog during (perhaps initial) collection scan:
This most probably means that an identical file ended up twice in your collection at different places. You can use Amarok's File Browser to check the files individually, usual action is to remove one of the duplicate files. If you are sure that the tracks are not (or shouldn't be) duplicates, there may be several reasons why thinks they are:
The files are bit-by-bit identical
You can use for example md5sum command to verify that
You can edit metadata of one of the files from within File browser to differentiate them somehow, perhaps by editing (album) artist, year, composer or a comment
The files have the same Amarok AFT unique id
This is often a result of running amarok_afttagger and then creating multiple copies of a tagged file; tag reader such as Kid3 or MP3Diags can be used to verify this, look for Amarok 2 AFTv1 string in tags
You can use amarok_afttagger command-line utility to reset unique id of one of the tracks: amarok_afttagger --newid --verbose path/to/one/of/the/tracks.mp3
Alternatively, you can remove the unique id from one of the tracks, loosing the track-even-if-changed-from-outside functionality: amarok_afttagger --delete --verbose path/to/one/of/the/tracks.mp3
(for Amarok before v2.7.0-96-g216c18b) The files have the same MusicBrainz id
Released versions up to 2.7 treated MusizBrainz id embedded in tags (filled in by MusicBrainz-enabled tagger such as Picard) as unique identifiers of tracks. However, MusicBrainz changed the semantics of the id to mean recording id since it was originally implemented in , which means that you may get false duplicates for example for tracks that appear on the original album and the Best of one. See bug #315329 for more info
You can use any advanced tag reader to verify this (look for MusicBrainz string in tags) and to remove the MusicBrainz id from one of the tracks
As an alternative solution, you can use amarok_afttagger to add AFT id to one of the tracks because will then prefer its own id rather than the MusicBrainz one: amarok_afttagger --newid --verbose path/to/one/of/the/tracks.mp3

Problems playing files

Amarok skips over tracks, or appears to play them without sound
If the files you are attempting to play are in mp3 format, please see instructions for enabling mp3 support on your distro, here. Note that one piece of software being able to play mp3s on your system does not necessarily mean has had the required codecs installed.

No sound, or bad sound
For more general sound issues, first check what Phonon backend you are using in Settings Configure Amarok Playback Configure Phonon Backend. Consider switching to a different backend; VLC and GStreamer backends should be available from your distribution. Both the Gstreamer or VLC backends are recommended, if your distribution is still shipping other backends do not use them.
Also check whether the backend standalone software can play the files correctly; if not this is an issue with that software and you may find information in their help files. In other words, can Gstreamer or VLC play the same file? Will it play in Dragon, which also uses phonon?
If it seems to be a PulseAudio problem, and you want to provide a log to the PulseAudio developers, the troubleshooting page is here.

Problems with collections on iPod

Amarok show no cover-images or images are lost when transferring to device
Most likely the wrong version of libgpod4 is installed. On Debian and it's derivatives like Kubuntu the default is libgpod4-nogtk, which comes without support for covers. Simply install the variant libgpod4: sudo apt-get install libgpod4 The package libgpod4-nogtk can then be removed without problem. From Kubuntu Quantal Quetzal on (released as 12.10) this package has been removed and the default is libgpod4.

Crashes and bugs
How to run from the command line: amarok --debug --nofork
crashes, but Dr. Konqi doesn't pop up — run in gdb with the following command: gdb --args amarok --debug --nofork In gdb's console, type run to start , reproduce the crash, and then in gdb type thread apply all bt to generate the backtrace.
Filing bugs: If triggered, Dr. Konqi will provide an option to report a bug and do most of the work for you. If not, you will need to submit the bug manually at bugs.kde.org. For crash bugs, paste the backtrace from gdb as a comment.
How to get personal support with problems: IRC (#amarok on Libera Chat IRC), Forum, Mailing list

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Amarok?
is an audio player. More information can be found in a summary of its features and the screenshot gallery. To get started using , see the Quick Start Guide. The Handbook is here.

What are the differences between Amarok 2 and the previous versions?
2 is a nearly complete code-rewrite so the codebase has little to do with 1.4. If you are missing a feature, please file a wish in Bugzilla.
Here you have a short list of some new features:
Maybe the biggest new feature is the Service Framework, which integrates networked music sources directly into . This includes online music stores, media servers, Web music lockers, and more. Thanks to it you'll get easy access to music provided by Magnatune, Jamendo, Last.fm, MP3Tunes Locker, Ampache and many others. Expect more big (and small) names to join during the 2.x lifecycle. See Internet Media Sources for more.
Another exciting feature is the Context pane, occupying the central place of the 's window, replacing the old Context Browser from the 1.x series. It displays contextual information about the music you play, like the album cover, track rating, labels, lyrics, artist information, related songs and artists, guitar and bass tabs and others. Thanks to the Plasma technology it uses, the Context pane can provide very rich content, like AJAX, video and animations, all in an eye-catching fashion. More about the Context pane.
To accompany the Context pane, we developed a new, space efficient playlist. In order to preserve horizontal space, it groups the track name, artist, album name and cover art together, and allows further grouping by album names. Plus you can rearrange it to your heart's content! If you prefer the old 1.4 playlist, you can have that too. See Changing the Playlist layout for more.
Another great gem is the video support. Watching your music videos inside feels great!
We can't forget the Dynamic Playlists, which extend the old Dynamic Playlists. They allow you to define an automatically populated playlist, based on specific probability driven criteria called biases. The Dynamic Playlists is joined by the new Automatic Playlist Generator, used to generate lists for specific purposes and of a specified length. See Dynamic Playlists and Automatic Playlist Generator for more information.
There are many more great features like advanced scripting, dynamic collections, usability improvements, improved media devices handling, a new podcast manager, support for more software platforms, and others.

Installation

Can I use Amarok without KDE?
requires parts of KDE to be installed to run, but will run fine in Gnome or other desktop environments, including Windows and OS X. For to run, kdelibs and kdebase-runtime need to be installed.
For some features to work correctly, such as the on-screen display, your window manager must be configured to support the relevant freedesktop.org standards. More about running on other platforms here.

Why does Amarok use KDElibs?
We are committed to supporting on all platforms. We use KDElibs and Qt because they provide an excellent development environment. Aside from and BSD, works on Windows and MacOS, and there are installers available, but unfortunately we don't have (yet) the resources to offer full support for those operating systems. Almost all of our developers use free operating systems, and those have priority for us. We do however welcome Windows and OS X developers willing to help, and improve on those platforms.

General usage

How can I control Amarok from the keyboard?
Keyboard shortcuts are available; see our Keybinding Reference page for more information.
To control from the console, type amarok --help-all for a current complete list of available control commands.

Where can I get support for Amarok?
There are several options. Often times problems you have with the initial install of are best answered by experts of your particular or distribution. You may seek help from fellow users and developers at the Amarok forum and the Amarok IRC channel at irc.libera.chat channel #amarok.
Note that bugzilla is not a place to seek support. Please do enter a bug if you are serious about helping fix a bug in itself.

How do I report a bug?
If you find a bug in , please submit it to the KDE bugzilla instance. To make a complete bug report, please always include the following information:
The exact version (the version can be found in Help About Amarok). You should not report bugs for versions older than the current stable release as we do not provide backport fixes.
The exact KDE and Qt version, even if you do not run in KDE (Help About KDE)
The exact Phonon backend. You can find this information in the Diagnostics (Help Diagnostics)
Whether the bug is reproducible. Please do not report bugs that you can not reproduce as these are almost impossible to fix.
Exact steps how to reproduce the bug
If any of these information is missing the bug report is not complete. Please also be prepared to answer questions from the developers or bug triagers and eventually test other settings.

Questions about the Playlist
More about the Playlist here.

When I start Amarok, I see an empty playlist. How do I actually get tracks in there?
Use the Media Sources on the left side to navigate to the desired artist/album/track. Then drag the files into the Playlist part on the right. You can use Dynamic Playlists or the Automatic Playlist Generator to populate your playlist. You can also drag files in from any file manager, such as . You may also double-click a track, artist or genre in your Media Sources or file-system, or right-click and Add to Playlist or Replace Playlist.

How do I remove tracks from the Playlist?
Select the track(s) you want to remove, and press the Delete key. Or right-click the selection and choose Remove From Playlist.

How can I load a playlist?
Just drag and drop the playlist file into the Playlist, like you would do with any other file. It's that simple!

How can I save the current playlist?
Click the button in the Playlist toolbar. Slow-click the disc icon to chose to save to your harddisk, or to the database.

Playback Questions

How do I play audio CDs?
Audio CDs are treated differently than data CDs, which are also supported. When you insert an audio CD, it will be shown as a local collection. Drag to the playlist or Pop-Up Dropper, or right-click the selected tracks and choose Add to Playlist or Replace Playlist.

What media types does Amarok support?
does not play music by itself, but lets Phonon do that job, specifically the VLC or GStreamer backends of Phonon. Therefore, whatever files they can play, can play. To analyse file tags, uses Taglib, which supports most file types that contain metadata.

What is Phonon? What are Phonon backends?
Phonon is the multimedia framework of KDE 4. You can find more information here.
We currently recommend both the Gstreamer and VLC backend as both are actively maintained. If you want to play streams you should use the VLC backend only as the Gstreamer backend has some shortcomings in this regard. Make sure you do not use any other backend as those are obsolete.
If you are using the Phonon-backend-gstreamer make sure you only use plugins from one single gstreamer version, else your sound will be compromised.

Amarok won't play mp3s, what can I do?
You probably lack the codecs required by your particular Phonon backend (Gstreamer, or VLC). Please report this to your distribution if you were not prompted to install them automatically when you started for the first time.

I have the codecs, but Amarok still won't play mp4s and mkas
When using some phonon backend, like the gstreamer one, might refuse to play mp4 and mka files. This is a known problem, see bug #290168 for more technical information.
A very simple workaround is to change the file extension. Change mp4 extension to m4a and for mka change it to mkv. Of course you must be sure the files contains audio only. You can use the ffprobe command to look at what data streams are present in the file. If the file has a video stream it must be stripped out. There are a lot of tools able to edit these formats and most of them are based on ffmpeg/libav, which you can use if you are familiar with them. If you prefer graphical tools one possible choice is avidemux.
This is a quick example how you can remove a video stream from an mp4 video with ffmpeg. Stripping a video stream from an mkv file is the same. First check if there is a video stream
$ ffprobe example.mp4 2>&1 | grep Video

Stream #0.1(und): Video: h264 (Baseline), yuv420p, 480x360 [PAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 242 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25k tbn, 50k tbc

If the output of the previous command is null there is no video stream in the file. To create an m4a file with just the audio stream you can use something like

ffmpeg -i example.mp4 -acodec copy -vn example.m4a

You can also use avconv in place of ffmpeg with the same options, where
-i example.mp4 option is the input file name
-acodec copy is used to not encode again the audio stream but just copy it. This to avoid quality loss, but you can also encode in a different format if you want, and you are not forced to use m4a container in this case
-vn strips the video stream
example.m4a is the output file name
Another possible workaround is to change the phonon backend. For example the VLC backend doesn't suffer this problem.

I have a second soundcard and I'm using ALSA. How do I make Amarok use it instead of the default?
Configure this in the Phonon system settings module. Settings Configure Amarok Playback Configure Phonon

Where's the equalizer?
The equalizer is only available if you are using the phonon-backend-gstreamer. You can find the equalizer in the Tools menu.

How can I control the volume in Amarok only without having to change in KMix?
Most distributions ship the PulseAudio sound-daemon nowadays which handles the sound settings system-wide. If you can't change the volume in independently of , then your PulseAudio settings have the option
flat-volume=yes
enabled. Depending on your distribution this is located either in the file $HOME/.pulse/daemon.conf or in the system file /etc/pulse/daemon.conf. More information about Pulseudio-specific settings can be found in pulse-daemon.conf man page.

How do I turn on visualizations?
Visualizations come in the form of an applet. For more information please see the applets page. Visualizations are currently under development and may be buggy at this time.

How can I add podcasts?
Go to Podcast section in the Media Sources pane and then select Add Podcast... Add the podcast URL where indicated. More about podcasts here.
We also have some services, such as gpodder and Podcast Directory to help you find great podcasts. Enable services in the Settings menu: Configure Amarok Plugins.

How can I use Amarok to stream to my own radio station?
If you want to stream directly to an icecast or shoutcast server the answer simply is: it is not supported. You could use IDJC for that.

Collection questions

Folder not properly picked up
If you find that most of your music is recognized by , but some folders are not properly picked up, open a console and type
touch folder
where folder is the path to the folder that has the problem. Then select Settings Configure Amarok in main window menu, open Collection page and click the Full Rescan button. Your folder should be visible again now.
this will not work on Windows, as the touch command is specific to and BSD-like systems.

Can I use removable media inside Amarok?
has a greatly improved support for the media devices based on Solid, the KDE hardware layer, that doesn't need a lot of configuration. You should be able to just plug in your device and access it within . Also, thanks to the Dynamic Collections, your media devices could become part of your music collection, and be searchable and accessible within the Local Music section of the Media Sources pane when it's connected.
You can transfer your songs, albums and artists from your local collection by right-clicking, selecting Copy to Collection and picking your device; and you can also do it in the other way: right-click and select Copy to Collection Local Collection. More about and devices here.

Can I use the old Amarok's collection in Amarok 2? Will my tags, score are ratings be lost?
A database importer is available. You will be able to keep your ratings and statistics just fine. More here.

General questions

What are scripts?
They are little pieces of software that add some functions to . There are a lot of scripts, and you can find them in kde-apps.org or you can find and install them inside using the Script Manager. More details can be found here. You will find the Script Manager from the Settings menu, Configure Amarok Scripts.

Can I use Amarok 1.4 scripts in Amarok 2?
No. A new and powerful scripting API has been created, which provides huge improvements but won't let you use your old scripts. The new scripting system is based on QtScript and will significantly reduce 's dependencies, a huge problem for non-technical and cross-platform users, and will greatly reduce the amount of external processes launched at runtime. Another advantage is that the new API will allow much deeper integration with than the old scripting system. Amarok Scripting API.

What are Moodbars?
Moodbars show the mood of a song in the progress bar. More about Moodbar here.

Can I play video files?
is mainly a music player so no video file management, collection support, DVD playback, subtitles, or any other sophisticated features are available.

Is it Amarok, AmaroK or amaroK?
It is ! The former spelling was amaroK, but it was changed due to its strange look around 2005.

How are track scores determined?
assigns a score (a number 0-100) to a song based on how many times you've listened to it and whether you skip the song without it finishing. Every time the song finishes playing, the score is changed.
Here you have an example script that can calculate scores:

if( playcount <= 0 ) # not supposed to be less, but what the hell.
       newscore = ( prevscore + percentage ) / 2
   else
       newscore = ( ( prevscore * playcount ) + percentage ) / ( playcount + 1 )
   end

You can easily create your own script with your own algorithm. Look at the Script-Writing-Howto for further information.

How do I manually change a track's score?
You may change the score manually in the Track Details dialog, available by right-clicking on a track, choosing Edit Track Details and going to the Summary tab.

But I also want that stars system like in other players!
, of course, supports a user-defined rating system, and you can rate your tracks with a single click using the Current Track applet. You can also do this in the context menu (right-click) Edit Track Details Summary tab. If you have the rating stars displayed in your playlist layout, you can also edit there, with the slow double-click.

Can I drag and drop Plasma applets from the main window to the Desktop?
No, but there are several Plasmoids available for your Desktop, which will let you display information provided by as well as control .

How can I save a stream?
First of all, load the stream into the playlist. There are several ways to do this: downloading the file and opening it with ; using the menu Playlist Add stream; among others.
Once the stream is loaded, you can save it by clicking on in the Playlist pane, and giving it a meaningful name. The Stream will then be added to the Saved Playlists view for later reference.

Where do I find the settings for Amarok?
`kde4-config --localprefix`/share/apps/amarok
`kde4-config --localprefix`/share/config/amarokrc

Troubleshooting

How can I obtain a backtrace?
If has crashed and you want to report it, visit the Debugging HowTo. The bug report must be made in bugs.kde.org after verifying if it has not already been reported.

Amarok just freezes! How can I help get this fixed?
You can obtain a backtrace of a frozen instance of using gdb like so:
$ gdb -p `pidof amarok` (gdb) thread apply full bt all
Then just post the backtrace to PasteBin, as described in the Debugging HowTo.

Amarok takes a lot of time to start
If this happens you have to check what scripts you have installed and what internet services are running, because some of them may slow down the startup. Also, if you have streams in the playlist when you open , the startup can take a little longer. The same happens if you have a great number of tracks in the playlist (over 300 and more).
On the other hand, if you don't use KDE, but a different desktop environment, startup time can be increased very slightly because there are more libraries to be loaded.

Development questions

How do I get a GIT version of Amarok?
See the Amarok Development build instruction page. Check here for a local build: Building from Git Locally: Full Summary

Why isn't Amarok part of KDE Multimedia?
Packages in the KDE Software Compilation proper have a release schedule that doesn't fit with 's development pace, and since none of the other KDE applications depend on there is no need to follow this release schedule.

I've found a bug / I've got a great idea for Amarok!
Please report it at bugs.kde.org. If you have a list of suggestions or wishes it may be best to send them to our mailing list: amarok@kde.org. Simply posting the idea to our IRC channels or on an obscure wiki page or blog won't help much as the information will get lost.

Do you accept patches?
Happily! Your best course of action is to let us know what you plan to do before you do any work so we can discuss it, but don't fret; we haven't turned down a patch yet! Discussion is mostly to help you patch the correct bits of . Submit your patches and code contributions to git.reviewboard.kde.org. See also How to Submit Patches to . If you have a bug fix then just go ahead; this is open source after all.

Why did you choose the name Amarok?
Amarok is an album by British composer Mike Oldfield. Project founder Mark Kretschmann happens to like it a lot, and he thought the name had a nice sound. Plus, of course, it contains the all important K.