Let's rejoice and celebrate: Amarok 2.6 is here! The Amarok Team is proud to present you the result of their work over the last 7 months. With a reasonable set of new features, we focused this release on bug fixing and improving the overall stability, making this the most stable Amarok release ever. The new features are:

A complete overhaul of the iPod, iPad and iPhone support including solid support for device playlists (however, underlying library, libgpod, still doesn't support iOS 5 devices completely)

including (however, underlying library, libgpod, still doesn't support iOS 5 devices completely) Transcoding for iPod-like and USB Mass Storage devices that complements transcoding for Local Collection

that complements transcoding for Local Collection The Free Music Chart service is now activated by default

Embedded Cover support for Ogg and Flac files

Album Art support for tracks on the filesystem and USB Mass Storage devices

And of course numerous bug-fixes

It should be noted that unless you upgrade from 2.6 Beta or Release Candidate, a database update will run on first start. This procedure, that shouldn't be interrupted, can run up to a couple minutes on large collections with thousands of tracks.

Amarok now also includes a new Diagnostic Dialog in the Help menu, reporting versions of Amarok, Qt, KDE and Phonon libraries as well as the used Phonon backend and status of plugins and scripts. This is of great help when reporting problems. The Amarok developers have also refined their unit tests and we intensively use a continuous integration server which was of great help during the 12-week testing period.

Amarok 2.6.0 comes translated into 35 languages and more are being worked on for future releases. More than 110 reported bugs were fixed (40 alone were reported and fixed in the testing period) and more than 20 features were implemented in this version. A total of 640 bug reports were closed, of which most were duplicates.

Did you know? -> Amarok releases are usually named for Mike Oldfield (of "Amarok" fame) track names. We chose "In Dulci Jubilo" this time to celebrate Oldfield playing this in the thirtieth Olympiad opening ceremony. It can be found on the official Olympic soundtrack.

For an optimal sound experience we also recommend you use the new Phonon backends, released this weekend as well: phonon-backend-vlc 0.6 or phonon-backend-gstreamer 4.6.2

We have the following download options available:

Update 2012-09-10: Windows installer available

List of All Important Changes

Features

Since 2.5

Amazon store: improved album search

Support for transcoding when copying tracks to USB Mass Storage devices; per-device transcoding preference can be saved, too.

Provide Repopulate and Turn off link in "Dynamic Mode Enabled" bagde.

Support for setting cover images for albums on USB Mass Storage devices.

Support for setting and unsetting cover images for iPod albums, can write back covers to file meta-data too, respects configuration.

Amazon store: ability to check out an item directly without using the Amarok shopping cart. (BR 288808)

Amarok now includes the Free Music Charts service by default.

The maximum dimensions for embedded covers are now configurable. (BR 279493)

Small configuration dialog for iPods that shows troubleshooting information and allows to change iPod name.

Improved usability of iPod playlists: iPod collection automatically transfers tracks dropped to iPod playlists to iPod when it is needed.

Tracks can now be transcoded when transferring them to iPod. (BR 291722)

A diagnostic dialog reporting versions of Amarok, Qt, KDE and phonon libraries as well as the used phonon backend and status of plugins and scripts. Patch by Andrzej Hunt.

Ability to move track position bookmarks by dragging; patch by Jasneet Bhatti. (BR 214721)

Amarok can now remember whether and how to transcode tracks when transferring them to a particular collection. (BR 264681)

"Crop playlist" functionality implemented using drag & drop. (BR 267729, 211811)

Added keyboard shortcut for "Edit Track Information..." (BR 173814) Patch by Jasneet Bhatti.

Support for embedded album covers in non-collection tracks and in USB Mass Storage collection.

Hold the Shift key when dragging tracks to collections to move them instead of copying.

New search filter for absolute date

Named UMS collections

Albums with same name but different album artist are now correctly separated in USB Mass Storage, iPod and various online service collections.

Support for detecting compilations in USB Mass Storage collection.

Support embedded covers for ogg (read only) and flac files. (BR 288752)

Track meta-data can be edited in USB Mass Storage collection.

Support for album artists in USB Mass Storage collection.

album artist (if differs from artist), BPM, labels, last played time and bitrate are now shown in playlist track tooltip (if not already displayed in playlist)

Volume normalization: ReplayGain is now converted to iPod Sound Check and vice versa. (BR 142579)

Changes

Since 2.6 Beta

Show all audio and video files in file browser. (BR 303253)

Remove codec install support. It's long ago been implemented in phonon.

Prevent lags with large Saved playlists. (BR 301700)

Increase minimal required ffmpeg version up to 0.7.

Use audio-x-generic icon for bit rate, not a generic one. (BR 302753)

Add Amarok.Playlist.playMediaList() script bindings for API symmetry.

Building the spectrum analyzer applet can now be disabled with a CMake argument.

Since 2.5

Builds with ffmpeg 0.11.

Database structure (lyrics table) was updated. Starting Amarok for the first time after the upgrade may take up to one minute as the data is migrated.

Amazon store: try to show a sensible default in the country selection.

Only offer delete action when Shift key is pressed in Collection context menu.

Only offer move action when Shift key is pressed in Collection context menu.

Remove context view video applet. Unmaintained and broken. (BR 242793)

Album cover images are written in background to prevent freezes. (BR 298332)

Make keyboard & mouse behaviour of saved playlists browser same as of the collection browser, including the delete key.

Delete and Shift + Delete keys now work as expected in collection browser.

Preserve statistics when copying or moving tracks to Local Collection.

Common album actions such as Show cover, Show under Various Artists are now available for all collections that support it, not just Local collection.

When copying files to iPod, ensure target directories exist.

When writing covers to files, all existing covers will be replaced.

PulseAudio status in diagnostic dialog.

optional libgpod dependency raised to 0.8.2 to support newest iPods.

Amarok now prevents accidental unmounting of iPods in (small) time-frames when iTunes database on iPod is not yet updated.

Amarok detects when iPod is to be ejected from system and gracefully disconnects it when it occurs.

Hitting the eject button on iPod collection ejects it also from the system.

iPod collection now detects whether iPod is safe to write and marks iPod as read-only if not. This prevents "iPod shows 0 tracks" problem.

Correct progress bar advancement when transferring tracks to iPod. (BR 139454)

iPod Collection supports multiple simultaneous cancellable transfers. (BR 219963)

Improved dialog to initialize iPod. (BR 279797)

Load tracks in playlists asynchronously using proxy tracks. (BR 295199)

It is now possible to transcode tracks when moving them. (BR 280526)

Drag & drop of tracks and playlists to Saved Playlists works in all cases.

Don't show unmounted USB Mass Storage devices and make it clear when the device is not "activated" yet.

"Devices" in Amarok configuration -> Plugins is with other related strings renamed to "Local Collection Backends" to reduce user confusion.

Enable keyboard activation of PlaylistBrowser items.

Don't use `mysql_config --variable=pkgincludedir`, find mysql include directory manually by looking up mysql.h.

Album artist is now guessed for tracks that do not belong into any collection and tracks from USB Mass Storage collection. Guessing uses the same algorithm as Local Collection.

When hovering iPod, UMS or MTP collection in collection browser, "1.2 GB free" is shown instead of "85% used"; thicker capacity bar.

Bugfixes

Since 2.6 Release Candidate

Fix problems when sql server is not reachable (BR 298425)

Fix crash with exporting playlists with invalid tracks (BR 303056, BR 302607, BR 297816)

Since 2.6 Beta

Since 2.5