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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

#131

Post by 8bitsrule »

politelemon wrote: post #46

This is a very good list, thanks for sharing it. Despite having been on a music player journey like the author, in surprised to see several on the list I've not encountered before. This just tells me that the state of music players on Linux is extremely healthy, and that makes sense, it's the only os where the concept of owning your data exists, so of course time and effort is being spent on this part too. In the end…

Good old VLC couldn't be much simpler (or popular). Audio singles, drag-on. Folders of audio files, drag-on. Whatever's in the window can be easily saved as a named playlist. Including internet radio stations (there are thousands). Sort playlists into folders.

Oh yeah, and also handles almost ALL video formats in the same way.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#132

Post by barbs »

PokemonNoGo wrote: post #99
atoav wrote: post #39

For me peak musicplayer UI is still my customized foobar2000 setup on Windows. I need a waveform, a playhead, a good browser that can do both metadata based libraries and dumb folders fast and without lagging, a way to build/save/view/load playlists and a way to queue songs. Most players are just too basic or make the wrong or to many assumptions about my collection. Or the interface is just too cute and dysfunctiona…

I don't know how foobar2000 somehow got it so right so long ago and no one is replicating it making me stuck with it. I don't like the feeling of being stuck with software like this... What if it is abandonded or something...

You might be interested in Fooyin?

https://fooyin.org/

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#133

Post by mycall »

jszymborski wrote: post #122
maqp wrote: post #3

Something that wasn't mentioned in the article - if you're coming from Windows and using Foobar2000, you'll want DeadBeeF https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/

Also, Foobar2000 works just fine over WINE, FYI.

Do Foobar2000 Components work with WINE? I try installing components on MacOS and they say Nope, only Windows is supported for this plugin. My workaround is to use Ableton Live and Bluehole (for audio routing) but it is CPU expensive.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#134

Post by volemo »

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…

> It's the typical problem of free software: bad UI. > I use Music on macOS

I’m surprised to read this. While I have quite high tolerance for bad UI and don’t have my own opinion, I’ve heard many a Mac / iOS developer practically spit on Music.app design.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#135

Post by antisol »

robinsonb5 wrote: post #71
boje wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My biggest problem (of many) with client side decorations is that now when your program crashes, you can't just hit the close button to have the window manager kill it, because the process responsible for drawing and responding to the close button has crashed.

The trick is to avoid software using the newer gtk versions.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#136

Post by antisol »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #20

I'm very happy that I mostly listen to electronic music (house & techno in its various forms). The predominant way to listen to that is via DJ mixes and recorded Livesets. This field has always been ignored by the commercial streamers, and there is a culture of uploading sets to platforums such as youtube and soundcloud - where you can easily download (albeit youtube making things more difficult in recent years). Sin…

Yeah audacious is where it's at. I've never understood why anybody would want to use an audio player that doesn't look like winamp. I even use (a lightly modified version of) the original winamp 2 skin: https://skins.webamp.org/skin/5e4f10275dcb1fb211d4a8b4f1bda2...

Honorable mention to qmmp, too.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#137

Post by fuzzfactor »

8bitsrule wrote: post #131
politelemon wrote: post #46

This is a very good list, thanks for sharing it. Despite having been on a music player journey like the author, in surprised to see several on the list I've not encountered before. This just tells me that the state of music players on Linux is extremely healthy, and that makes sense, it's the only os where the concept of owning your data exists, so of course time and effort is being spent on this part too. In the end…

Good old VLC couldn't be much simpler (or popular). Audio singles, drag-on. Folders of audio files, drag-on. Whatever's in the window can be easily saved as a named playlist. Including internet radio stations (there are thousands). Sort playlists into folders. Oh yeah, and also handles almost ALL video formats in the same way.

VLC will also work as a media server and stream files outbound, which remote players can play (buffered) in real-time.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#138

Post by zombot »

I'm about to flee from macOS. Can't buy new Apple hardware any more because that will come with their atrocious new OS, and I have exactly zero hopes for any improvements in the future. So my next computer has to run Linux, and this article (and the other comments) is a very welcome aid for the transition.

Re: The state of Linux music players in 2026

#140

Post by fainpul »

musictubes wrote: post #118
fainpul wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably not gonna help you, but that's possible in Music (macOS). There are two sorting criteria, so you could choose to sort by artist first, then for each album of a given artist sort by year. Or you can sort all albums by year, then inside each year alphabetically (album or artist) if that's what you meant. It's a simple option to implement. But most developers without UI skills don't seem to think about stu…

The problem with that is that things like remasters, special editions, etc. screw up the timeline. Those are listed when they came out but that means they are not in original releases order any longer.

Just edit the year?
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