Amarok, the beloved open-source music player, has just released version 3.3, aptly titled “Far Above the Clouds,” marking a significant upgrade by transitioning the music player’s foundation to Qt6/KF6.
This latest update arrived approximately 15 months after Amarok’s initial Qt5/KF5-based version (3.0) and 5 months following the final Qt5/KF5 iteration (3.2.2).
The centerpiece of Amarok 3.3 is the revamped audio engine, which now leverages GStreamer for playback instead of the previously used Phonon. This change addresses earlier limitations, ensuring all users enjoy consistent access to features like ReplayGain and visualizers, which were previously dependent on individual Phonon backends and posed compatibility issues, especially with Qt6 implementations.
Additionally, the database system has seen considerable improvements, particularly regarding character set support. Now fully supporting UTF-8, Amarok gracefully handles emojis in podcast descriptions and other uncommon symbols.
Developers have also tackled the notorious ‘year 2038 problem’, enhancing the software’s long-term reliability and mitigating potential database issues.
From a user perspective, support for Qt5/KF5 has officially ended. TagLib extras support for RealMedia and Audible files has been removed, and some discontinued Last.fm radio functionalities have been replaced by direct links to relevant Last.fm content.fm pages.
The update also features several critical bug fixes. Notably, this release resolves volume reset issues during track changes, ensures consistent date handling, prevents simultaneous database scans to maintain integrity, and reintroduces partial support for cue files.
For more information, see the announcement.
Amarok 3.3 is available immediately as source code (for those who want to compile it manually), with package repositories across various Linux distributions and the Flathub flatpak expected to update soon.
Image credits: Amarok
