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The state of Linux music players in 2026

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Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#71

Post by robinsonb5 »

boje wrote: post #43
agent013 wrote: post #32

Worth noting that most of these GTK4/libadwaita players are going to look out of place on anything that isn't GNOME. If you're on KDE or a tiling WM, Strawberry or one of the Qt-based options will integrate much better

I haven't really looked into this, but is it possible to make GTK4 apps look liek standard GTK2/GTK3 applications? It feels like every single modern GTK app I've encountered has that modern Rounded-Material look to them and ignores the window manager decorations.

> and ignores the window manager decorations.

That's because Gtk4 does "client side decoration". That has the advantage (or otherwise, depending on your point of view!) that the application can now place custom widgets in the title bar, and the disadvantage that when apps do that, the part of the title bar available for dragging windows around becomes significantly smaller.

My main objection to client-side decoration is that middle-clicking a window's title bar to push it to the back no longer works. (Plus, for those of us with eyes that aren't as young as they once were, it's now much harder to choose a window border style that clearly indicates which window has focus.)

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#74

Post by pbmonster »

komali2 wrote: post #22

> [regarding spotify] At the end, I had nothing to show for it. My carefully curated “library” was not mine Not just your library, but your listen history and your playlists. I was very annoyed that I had to pay a 3rd party company to export this data so that I could import it into listenbrainz and navidrome. Not to mention there's a song that Spotify removed from my "Liked" playlist that to this day I can't quite re…

Sounds like you have a music discovery process in nicotine? Can you elaborate on how you find new things to listen to? Just my looking at what individual other users listen to?

Music discovery is the one thing I cannot drop Spotify for. I want to make a playlist with 10 songs and then have an algorithm suggest 20 more - ideally songs I have never listened to before, or songs I haven't listened to in a long time.

Spotify is mediocre at that task, but I just can't find a replacement at all...

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#75

Post by Zren »

fainpul wrote: post #48

I'm not thrilled by the music player options on Linux. I've tried many and found most of them awful. Even the author of this article notes negatives about all of the listed players, which I find unacceptable (except for Recordbox , I'll have to look at that). And these are their favorites out of 200 players! It's the typical problem of free software: bad UI. I use Music on macOS (disable the music store and it's fine…

> less intuitive than I’d like it to be giant translucent strawberry in the middle of my screen at all times

You can disable the background image that in the options under Appearance. It's a holdover from Clementine's branding which I also find annoying. I also dislike the glow animation on currently playing track in the playlist which can also be disabled.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#77

Post by sudoaptinstall »

puika wrote: post #5

How is Quod Libet not here? Cross platform and its plugin system should be enough reason on its own https://github.com/quodlibet/quodlibet

I popped in to see if it made it.

I've been using it for ages. It's awesome. I think the only issue I've ever had with it is some Bluetooth weirdness. Honestly, the reason I keep using it is the ability to use custom genres from the metadata as search windows. I have a bunch of custom genres (like performer which removes all the ft. xyz nonsense in artist listings) that I always find hard to access easily on most other players.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#78

Post by komali2 »

pbmonster wrote: post #74
komali2 wrote: post #22

> [regarding spotify] At the end, I had nothing to show for it. My carefully curated “library” was not mine Not just your library, but your listen history and your playlists. I was very annoyed that I had to pay a 3rd party company to export this data so that I could import it into listenbrainz and navidrome. Not to mention there's a song that Spotify removed from my "Liked" playlist that to this day I can't quite re…

Sounds like you have a music discovery process in nicotine? Can you elaborate on how you find new things to listen to? Just my looking at what individual other users listen to? Music discovery is the one thing I cannot drop Spotify for. I want to make a playlist with 10 songs and then have an algorithm suggest 20 more - ideally songs I have never listened to before, or songs I haven't listened to in a long time. Spot…

I scrobble from navidrome to listenbrainz.

Then, logged in, I look here https://listenbrainz.org/explore/fresh-releases/ "for you" tab. Or here https://listenbrainz.org/explore/similar-users/

Then, when downloading in nicotine, you can click a user to see all their shares, so I just scroll through what other kind of stuff they have, and download anything that strikes my fancy.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#79

Post by NoboruWataya »

I am still with Spotify, but for local playback I like ncmpcpp with MPD. My wishlist is for a native client that, in addition to local playback, integrates well with various streaming services like Spotify, online radio, Jellyfin, etc. But it's a hard problem. When I last checked it seemed Clementine used to be a good candidate for this but the Spotify plugin, at least, was no longer working at the time.
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