The Sidebar Browsers
Browsers in Amarok allow you to access your music collection in several different ways. They are situated on the left side of the window, and each one is represented by a tab with its name written on it. Clicking on a tab brings the selected browser into view. If a browser is active clicking on its tab again will contract the browser. Only one browser is visible at any time, although you can drag tracks from one tab to another by hovering on the target tab for 1 second until that tab becomes visible. You can also hide browsers by simply right-clicking on any tab and (un)selecting the desired browser(s) in the provided context menu.
The Context Browser displays various information related to the currently playing track. Its appearance can be modified by using themes known as Context Browser Styles. It is organized into three tabs: “Music”, “Lyrics”, and “Artist”. These tabs, whose function will be more fully explained below, supply information on different aspects the track currently being listened to.
Users of previous Amarok versions will notice that there is no longer a “Home” tab. The information from this tab has been redistributed throughout the Amarok interface. Analogous information can be found mainly in the Statistics dialog, accessible through ->.
The Music tab offers information about the currently playing track, and it's artist and album.
The first pane in this tab is for information about the track. The title of the pane lists the track name, artist name, and album. Inside the pane you will find it shows the album cover image for the track. Next to the image you will find a MusicBrainz icon. 
Click this icon to do a MusicBrainz look-up for the track.
Below the MusicBrainz icon there is more information about you current track. Here you will find the total number of times the track has been played, the track's current score, and when the track was first and last played.
To display album cover images in the Context Browser you must have the album cover image in the same directory as the track you are listening to. Supported file formats are .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, and .png. The images can be named anything, but images with the word “front” in the filename will be used with preference. The Context Browser will also use cover images saved from the album cover downloader, or images embedded in ID3v2 tags.
The next pane, Suggested Songs, lists multiple tracks for suggested listening. Click on any of the listed tracks to begin playback of the track.
Below Suggested Songs is the Favorite Tracks By Artist. This pane lists the five highest rated tracks by the current track's artist.
You can adjust the amount of information shown in the Music tab by right-clicking anywhere on Music tab and toggling items on the context menu.
The last pane, Albums By Artists, lists all of the albums by the current track's artists that are in your collection. Clicking on any of the albums in this pane will expand the album to show the album's content.
You can click on tracks in any of the panes to begin playback of the track. You can also right click albums and tracks for a pop-up menu to choose several ways to play or enqueue the track or album.
Lyrics tabs fetches lyrics for the currently played song from one of the supported websites. This feature is flexible, and it's possible to write scripts to fetch lyrics from different sites. See Chapter on Script-Writing. When you click on the Lyrics tab, Amarok attempts to fetch lyrics for the current track. If there is no lyrics script running you will be given the opportunity to select one.
You can perform various actions on the lyrics tab, using its toolbar buttons.
The button opens (in an external browser) the “Add Lyrics” page on the lyrics website, depending on which script you run.
The button allows you to edit lyrics for the current track. They are then stored in Amarok's collection database. This does not require a lyrics script to be active.
The button launches a google.com search (in an external browser) for the lyrics of the current track.
The button clears cached lyrics for current track, and searches again.
displays the current track's lyrics in your external browser.
The Artist tab shows Wikipedia article about currently played artist. Toolbar contains:
Navigational buttons for moving forward or backward
Page buttons for jumping to artist's, album's or track's Wikipedia page,
A button for opening current page in external browser
A configuration button for setting the Wikipedia locale
The Collection browser is the heart of Amarok. The entire collection is viewable here and sorted using various groupings. Within each grouping, everything is always alphabetical, symbols and numbers first, and case insensitive. In every grouping method, tracks that have unknown artists and/or albums are always grouped at the start of your collection, under “Unknown”. Although track numbers are not shown, tracks are listed in their album order. Clicking the header of the collection list reverses the sort order. Left-clicking on the expand icon to the left of any entry in your collection will expand that entry.
The “Group By” pull-down menu allows you to group your collection in several ways:
-> - Top level sort only, every track is grouped under its artist, with no consideration given to albums or genres.
-> - Tracks are sorted into artists, and then beneath this, sorted by album. If you want to see compilation or soundtrack albums, this is the best way to view your collection - these albums are grouped together at the very begin of your list, under “Various Artists”.
-> - Sorts by artist, with albums in descending order of year (most recent first). If there is no “Year” tag set for a track, the default “0 - album name”.
-> - Every album in your collection is displayed alphabetically based on the album name, regardless of artist.
-> - Tracks are grouped according to their genre tag, then by artist.
-> - Same as above, only with tracks sorted by album, below each artist.
The remaining items on the pulldown menu allow you to customise the grouping with any combination of the above.
The next two icons on the toolbar change the way your collection is viewed. The first, Tree View, is the default view, and the one you'll probably see the most. The next button enables Flat View, which at first appears empty. Typing search terms in the text entry box immediately below the toolbar will begin to populate your collection, which can be sorted in a variety of ways, by left-clicking on the column headers. Right-clicking on the column headers will pop up a context menu allowing you to change the columns shown.
The last icon in the toolbar lets you change your collection setup. Note that if you change any folders, Amarok will automatically rescan your collection - this may take quite some time if you have many tracks.
Immediately below the toolbar is a search filter, which behaves the same in both Flat and Tree views. See the Playlist section of the handbook for more details on searching techniques.
Below the Search Filter, another pull-down menu lets you see the most recently added tracks to your collection. Several time periods are available, ranging from the last 24 hours, to 1 year, or your entire collection.
The following options are accessible by clicking with the right mouse button on entries in the collection browser.
Load - Clears the current playlist and adds selected track(s) as first track(s), in sort order.
Append to Playlist - Adds selected track(s) to end of current playlist. Double clicking on a single track in the collection also achieves the same result.
Queue Tracks - Adds the selected track(s) to the queue as the next to be played.
Save as Playlist - Save the selected tracks as a playlist. You'll be prompted for a name to save as.
Add to Media Device Transfer Queue - Adds track(s) to a queue, ready to be transferred to a media device, when such a device is attached. See Media Device Browser section for more detail.
Burn All Tracks By This Artist/Burn To CD - Sends track(s) to K3b for burning as either a data or Audio CD. If K3b is not installed, this option is not selectable.
Fetch Cover Image - Searches amazon.com for a cover image for this album.
Edit Information for (n) Tracks - Opens the Track Information dialog and allows you to change tags for one or more tracks.
Manage Files
Organize (n) Files - Opens Organize Collection Files dialog.
Delete (n) Files - Pops up a confirmation dialog asking whether you want to permanently delete the selected track(s) from your computer.
Mark As Compilation - Sets the selected album as a compilation album, to be listed under “Various Artists”
Unmark As Compilation - Changes an album marked as a compilation to a normal album, and moves the listing from “Various Artists”, to back under the artists listed.
The Playlist Browser is used for easy handling of your multiple playlists. The Playlist Browser also features built in smart playlists making it the most clever playlist browser around.
The Playlist Browser is divided into two sections, Playlists and Smart Playlists. The Playlists sections is for your own custom playlists. You can view the contents of your playlists in a list view by clicking the “+” symbol found next to each of the listed playlists. When you view a playlist in the list view new items can be added to the playlist by dragging and dropping them into the view. When you have found a playlist that you would like to load, you can double click the playlist, or press the Space Bar to have Amarok load it. The other Playlist Browser keyboard shortcuts can be found in the Keyboard Shortcuts section.
When you save a new playlist from the Playlist Window it is automatically added to the Playlist section.
The bottom section of the Playlist Browser is the Smart Playlists. The Smart Playlists use Amarok's built in data base to compile some useful playlists on the fly. The Smart Playlists include the following:
All Collection: a playlist with all the tracks that are in your configured collection.
Favorite Tracks: multiple playlists of the fifteen highest rated tracks in a listview by artitst.
Most Played: multiple playlists of the fifteen most played tracks in a listview by artitst.
Newest Tracks: multiple playlists of the fifteen most recently added tracks in a listview by artitst.
Last Played: a playlist of the fifteen most recently played tracks in your collection.
Never Played: a playlist of the tracks in your collection which have never been played before.
Genres: multiple playlists in a listview ordered by genre.
User defined smart playlists are also possible. Clicking the button will open a dialog to configure a smart playlist to fit your criteria.
The Media Device panel is used for connecting your iPod, to Amarok. To use your iPod with the Media Device browser you must have your iPod mounted at /mnt/ipod before starting Amarok. Once you have started Amarok you will find the tracks on your iPod listed by artist in a listview at the top of the browser.
To add tracks to your iPod, drag the tracks you want to add from the playlist and drop them on the Artist listview. After you are done adding tracks to the list click the button to upload them to your iPod. After the transfer has completed, close Amarok and unmount your iPod.
The File Browser panel is like a mini konqueror embedded into the playlist. You can use the File Browser panel to browse your entire filesystem for audio files to add to the playlist. At the top of the File Browser you will find a toolbar with navigation buttons for moving Up, Back, and Forward through your filesystem. The tool bar also offers a Home, Reload, Short view and Detailed view buttons, it also features a Bookmarks button for creating bookmarks of your favorite filesystem areas.
Below the toolbar is a handy search bar for searching by file name. You will find the search bar useful for directories with many files as it searches as you type leaving only the relevant file names in the view.
At the bottom of the File Browser is an address bar for accessing your music from any URL that you type. For instance typing tar:/home/mike/music.tar.gz into the address bar and pressing Enter on your keyboard will allow you to access the files inside the music tar ball. Now you can drag the audio from the tar ball and drop it into the playlist.
When playlist grows larger than one screenful, it becomes hard to append files by simply dropping them. Holding Shift key on keyboard while dropping may help in this case: the files will be appended at the end of playlist rather than inserted at current drop position.
