WAIT!

before you start commenting that TUI musicplayer xy is the best, my priorities:

must have:

  • support for m3u playlists (synced to Android with Syncthingy) should autodetect them in a single folder I use also for the music files, and read/write them
  • support for viewing all files
  • support for custom music directories
  • support for deleting music files
  • Flatpak OR clutterfree on KDE

would like:

  • Pipewire output
  • nice simple GUI
  • modern, clutterfree design OR customizability
  • subtitles, cover images, etc.

I used G4Music which looks awesome and has minimal playlist support. It works really well but it cant write to the playlist. It is blazingly fast, and I made an issue, offering a bounty for write-to-playlist support.

I found Lollypop, the old GTK UI is way better than the Qt alternatives, while still kinda ugly. But it seems to tick all boxes, apart from Pipewire support.

What I tried:

G4Music

  • UI perfect
  • no file deletion
  • no playlist addition
  • no playlist creation

Lollypop

  • UI is bareable
  • pulseaudio, no setting at all
  • playlist support including writing to! You need to enable it
  • lots of internet stuff for artwork and subtitles
  • sane defaults

GNOME music

  • does not detect my .m3u playlists
  • slow
  • needs pulseaudio
  • settings are a joke
  • no folder view

Strawberry

  • UI is horrible and not customizable enough
  • no Pipewire support
  • no .m3u detection
  • cluttered, no UI zoom possible
  • system icon theme is not applied

Clementine

  • like strawberry but different?
  • more online stuff
  • interface less customizable
  • cursor broken on the Flatpak

Amarok

  • Strawberry in even older?
  • bloat?
  • retro-development status

MusicPod

  • UI hides too much stuff
  • no playlist support
  • no filesystem hierarchy support
  • strange Ubuntu look, but good UI, fancy background
  • no podcast backup file support (so Kasts is better for that)
  • but pipewire support!

Plattenalbum

  • no playlist support
  • otherwise looks great

Resonance

  • modern, GTK4 Libadwaita, UI is damn lit
  • freezes, fills up the entire RAM (scans every title at once!) -> not optimized at all, made system freeze and needed to hard shutdown.
  • no playlist support?
  • no pipewire support?

Melody

  • uses soon EOL GNOME 42 runtime

Amberol

  • beautiful but too minimalist
  • why are there soo many GNOME music players??

moosync

  • very nice UI
  • electron: tiny cursor on Wayland, no Pipewire support
  • plugin support for Youtube, Spotify (using librespot) and LastFM
  • local playlists seem broken
  • @sudo@programming.dev
    1•6 months ago

    MPD + some GUI client. Plattenalbum is one such client but it’s an outlier because its album based when MPD is playlist based.

    • directories for music or playlists are configurable
    • supports alsa, jack, pulseaudio, and pipewire
    • album art is up to the client
    • deleting music is up to the client.

    Cantata is another GUI mpd client that I’ve used and enjoyed. It’s unmaintained but would other fit your needs. I also recommend installing mpDris for mpris support.