Amarok 2.6 overhauls support for iOS devices

Overhauled support for iPods and iOS-based devices, and improvements to the application's overall stability are among the most notable changes in the recent stable 2.6.0 release of the Amarok media player.

According to Amarok developer Matěj Laitl, the iPod collection plugin – which supports iPods and iOS devices such as the iPhone – was completely rewritten from scratch as maintaining it had become "rather painful due to its complexity that accumulated over time". In addition to code cleanups and addressing various bugs, the rewritten plugin supports playlists and multiple concurrent transfers, as well as detection and elimination of orphaned tracks. However, due to issues with the underlying libgpod library, the developers note that iOS 5-based devices are not supported.

Support for transcoding files when copying them to Apple i-devices and USB Mass Storage devices has also been added. Other changes include enabling the Free Music Chart service from Archive.org by default, better album art support, embedded Cover support for Ogg and Flac files, and fixes for more than 110 bugs.

Existing users are reminded that a database update will run on first start after they upgrade, noting that this should not be interrupted and can take several minutes for large collections. Users upgrading from a beta or release candidate of 2.6.0 have should have already had their database updated.

Further information about the release, including a full list of new changes and new features, can be found in the 2.6.0 announcement blog post (cached version). Licensed under the GPLv2, Amarok 2.6.0 is available to download as pre-compiled binaries or as a source tarball for self compilation from the project's site. At the time of writing, the project's site is experiencing problems.

(crve)