# &app; Manual V&manrevision;

2002
Mark Finlay
2002
2002
Mark Humphreys
2005
2006
Baptiste Mille-Mathias
2006
Victor Osadci
GNOME Documentation Project

&legal; Mark Finlay GNOME Documentation Project

    sisob@eircom.net

Mark Humphreys GNOME Documentation Project

    marquee@users.sourceforge.net

Baptiste Mille-Mathias GNOME Documentation Project

    baptiste.millemathias@gmail.com

Victor Osadci GNOME Documentation Project

    Victor.Osadci.GNOME@xhtml.md

Rythmbox Music Player Manual V0.0.2
October 2002

Mark Finlay

GNOME Documentation Project

Rythmbox Music Player Manual V0.0.3
August 2003

Mark Humphreys

GNOME Documentation Project

Rythmbox Music Player Manual V0.0.4
October 2005

Baptiste Mille-Mathias

GNOME Documentation Project

&app; Manual V&manrevision;
&date;

Luca Ferretti

GNOME Documentation Project

This manual describes version &appversion; of Rhythmbox Music Player.

## Feedback

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page.

Rhythmbox is the full featured music player for GNOME Desktop.

## Introduction

&app; is a music player and library for tagged files, that support various music formats.

Current &app; features include:

- Play various format music files from your tagged organized Library.

- Display information on the songs through meta-data reading.

- Display songs in an organized view.

- Create static playlists by dragging and dropping from the Library view.

- Create automatic playlists from criterias.

- Search for songs in the sources list like Library or Playlists.

- Listen to Internet radio stations.

- Read Audio CDs, and retrieve information like track title from the Internet.

- Burn Audio CDs from playlists.

## Getting Started

### To Launch the &app;

You can launch the &app; in the following ways:

Applications menu

  Choose Multimedia Rhythmbox Music Player.

Command Line

  Type `rhythmbox`, then press Return.

### Running the Assistant

The first time you launch the &app;, an assistant will help you import your music. On the second panel of the assistant, press the Browse... button and select the folder where your music is stored.

## &app; Window

### Overview

The &app; window enables you to browse and play your favorite music. shows the interface of the &app; with its main components.

#### The &app; Window

Show the &app; window showing the different parts on the &app; interface. Callouts: Menubar, Player area, Browser, Source list, Statusbar.

Table 1 describes the components of &app; window.

#### &app; Window Components

Id | Component | Description
--- | --- | ---
1 | Menubar | Contains menus that you use to perform tasks in &app; window.
2 | Toolbar | Provides access to player functions and details about the currently playing track.
3 | Time Slider | Displays the position of the read of a track; it enables to jump to another part of a track.
4 | Source List | Displays a list of available sources.
5 | Browser | Allows to browse and filter the Library tracks by Genre, Artist or Album name. The Browser also provides a search function to display only tracks that match your criteria.
6 | Tracks list | Lists the tracks that belong to the selected source.
7 | Statusbar | Displays informations about the source selected in Source List.

### The Source List

The source list is where you can access your music library, internet radio, your playlists and audio CDs. The source list can contain the following sources:

- The &app; library, where all of the imported tracks will appear.

- The iRadio source, with all internet radio stations.

- Podcasts.

- All playlists (normal and smart).

- Audio CD's inserted into the computer's CD drives.

- Portable players like iPod plugged to your computer.

- The DAAP Music shares discovered on the local network.

The display of the source list can be toggled on or off by selecting View Source List .

### The Player Toolbar

The toolbar area provides access to details about the currently playing track. When no track is being played, this area shows no information. When a track is played, the track name is displayed, and underneath, the artist and the album names.

A tracker is also displayed, showing the progress of the playing track. When the tracker has focus, the arrow keys can be used to Fast-Forward or Rewind the playing track.

Shows player area

If you are using a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can adjust the volume by scrolling up or down while the mouse pointer is over the volume button.

### The Statusbar

The statusbar contains additional information about the number of songs and the duration of the source selected. The display of the statusbar can be toggled on or off by selecting View Statusbar.

Shows statusbar

### &app; Minimized Window

&app; comes with a minimized mode. This mode enables access only to the menubar and the player function of &app;.

To switch to the small display, select View Small Display.

Shows the &app; in small display mode

## Using &app;

### Playing Music

To play a track, choose Control Play, or select the track and press the Play button on the toolbar, or simply double-click on the track to start playing.

When track ends, &app; jumps to play next track in the list showed in view pane.

In the Library you can play all songs from an artist or a single album simply selecting Album or Artist entry in the library browser.

#### Next/Play/Previous

The Next and Previous buttons can be used to skip between tracks while playing. If a track is currently playing, the previous button will restart the track. Pressing the Play button will start playing the current track. Shows buttons Previous, Play and Next in toolbar.

#### Repeat

The option Repeat makes the &app; restart to play tracks from the beginning of the list when it reach the last track.

To activate repeat, choose Control Repeat, or press the button Repeat on the toolbar. Shows repeat button in the statusbar.

#### Shuffle

The option Shuffle makes the &app; play tracks in a random order.

To activate shuffle, choose Control Shuffle, or press the button Shuffle on the toolbar. Shows shuffle button in the statusbar.

#### Volume Control

The volume control is located in the right hand of the toolbar. Pressing the loudspeaker icon will show the volume slider. Sliding this up and down will increase and decrease the volume. The loudspeaker icon will change to reflect the relative volume. Shows volume slider in toolbar.

You can adjust the volume by using the mouse scroll wheel over the loudspeaker icon.

## Library Source

The Library is the main source available in the &app;, it is the database that contains all the music files that you import in the &app; (The Library stores the path to access your music files, not the files themself).

The Library can not only contains music files which are physically on your computer (in your HOME Directory for instance), but it can also contains music files available over remote network services. Some examples of supported network services are :

- Public FTP

- Authenticated FTP

- NFS

- Windows Share

The files imported in the Library are displayed in the track list with the information (like the Artist name or the Album name) stored in the tags embedded on the tracks. &app; uses these tags to display the tracks in an organized manner.

At this time &app; is not able to modify the tags of your music files, but you can use another software like Easytag.

### Add tracks in the Library

To add tracks to the Library, you can follow these different methods:

- To import only one track, choose Music Import File... from the menu, then select the file in the file selector and press the Open button.

- If you want to import several music files located in a folder, choose Music Import Folder... from the menu, then select the folder in the file selector and press the Open button. All the music files located in the folder and its sub-folders will be imported.

- Drag and drop files from the file manager (like Nautilus) over the Rhythmbox window.

If you have enabled the watch directory function (see ), all the music files stored under the chosen directory will be added to the Library. New files added later will be also added.

### Remove tracks from the Library

To remove a track from the library but leave it on the disk, choose menu EditRemove. The track and its properties (like rating or the play count) are removed from the Rhythmbox database.

To delete a track from the Library but also from your disk, choose menu Edit Move to Trash. The track will be removed in the same way as previous, but the file will be moved in the file manager Trash.

### Find tracks using Search

Rhythmbox comes with a search function, which enables to find and filter tracks by using a search term.

Enter some text in the search entry, and as you type, only the tracks that match the text entered will be displayed. The search function does the lookup in all the tags of the tracks stored in the Library.

To perform more precise search, you can choose to lookup only in specific tags Artists, Albums or Titles.

### Find tracks using the Browser

The Browser is another convenient way to find tracks. The Browser is a two or three pane view which enable to navigate among music genres, artists and albums and display tracks that match the chosen criteria.

First, to display the Browser, select View Browser. Select artist, album and genre, and as you choose, only the tracks that match your choice will be displayed in the track list. The criteria on the columns apply from the left to the right.

You can choose several criteria of the same category by using the key Ctrl.

You can also find from a selected track in the track list, all the tracks with the same genre, artist or album name. Select a track in the track list, right-click on it, and choose Browse this Genre/Artist/Album. Then the browser will filter the tracks using the criteria chosen.

## Radio Source

The Internet Radio tuner can be used to listen to streamed audio files over a network, local or Internet.

### Internet Radio in &app;

### Adding a station

To add a new station to the Internet Radio tuner, choose Music Add New Internet Radio Station, then enter the URL of the Internet radio, then press the button Add.

### Viewing and Changing the settings of a station

You can view and edit the settings of an Internet Radio station using the menu Music Properties.

You can also change the properties of a station by selecting the station and right-click, then choose Properties.

When you access the properties of a radio stream, you can modify its title, its genre; you can also modify the stream location, and set a rating to it.

### Removing a station

To remove a radio station from the radio stations list, choose Edit Remove; you can also right-click on the station and select Remove.

## Podcast Source

Podcasting is a new way to broadcast audio content over the web; when an author publishes an episode, podcast suscribers are informed, through an XML feed.

Rhythmbox enables you to suscribe to podcast feeds, so when a new episode is available you'll be informed, it will download this episode and it will play it.

You can find more information about podcast and podcasting by visiting the definition of Podcast on the site Wikipedia.

### The Podcast interface

The Podcast interface with some registered podcasts

### Podcast Management

#### Add a podcast

To register to a podcast, choose Music New Podcast Feed, then in the new window, enter the URL of the podcast feed. Rhythmbox will retrieve the list of episodes and the latest episode will be downloaded on your hard disk.

To add a new podcast feed, you can also right-click over the Podcasts source, and select New Podcast Feed.

#### Delete a podcast

To delete a podcast, right-click on the podcast feed's name in the browser, and choose Delete Podcast Feed, then choose Delete Feed Only if you want to keep the podcast's episodes, or choose Delete Feed And Item if you want to delete the feed and all its related episodes.

#### Update feeds

To know if new episodes have been published for a podcast, right-click over the podcast name in the browser and choose Update Podcast Feed. If new episodes were pusblished, they will appear in the episode list.

Rhythmbox checks regularly, by its own, the podcast feeds list to know if they were updated.

You can also check all podcasts, by right-clicking over the Podcasts source and choose Update All Feeds.

#### Access Podcast Feed properties

To access to the Feed properties, right-click on the Feed name, and choose Properties.

- On the tab Basic you view the podcast Title, Author, the Last Updated date and the Description.

- On the tab Details you view the feed Source, Language, and the Copyright properties.

You can view the properties, and also edit the rating.

### Episode Management

#### Download a podcast episode

To download an episode on your disk, right-click on the episode, and choose Download Post, Rhythmbox will start to download the episode in the location defined in the preferences. You can see the download progress of an episode in the column Status.

By default, podcasts are downloaded in folder `Podcasts/` in your home directory. To change location, see .

#### Read a podcast episode

To play a podcast episode, select the episode you want to read, and choose Control Play; you can also press the button Play.

The episode have to downloaded before to read it, see to know how to download a podcast episode.

#### Delete a podcast episode

To delete an episode from a podcast, right-click on the episode, and choose Delete, then choose Delete Episode Only if you to keep the episode file on your disk, or choose Delete Episode And File if you want to remove the episode from the list and delete the file from your disk.

When you delete an episode, it won't be available no more in the list of episodes, even if you update the podcast.

#### Display Podcast Episode properties

To access to the episode properties, right-click on the episode, and choose Properties.

- On the tab Basic you view the podcast Title, Feed, the publication Data and the Description.

- On the tab Details you view the podcast Source, Duration, the Bitrate, the Last Played Date, the Play count and the Rating.

## Play Queue Source

Play queue is a source designed to store temporary the next tracks you want to play. When you add a track in Play Queue, &app; will automatically switch to this source, after the tracks played.

Once a track been played, it will be automatically removed form the Play Queue Source. Once the Play Queue is empty, &app; will play the source which was played before.

### Add a track in Play Queue

To add a track:

1. Select the track you want to play, in any source.

2. Choose Edit Add to playqueue.

### Remove a track in Play Queue

To remove a track stored in Play Queue:

1. Select the track you want to remove in Play Queue source.

2. Choose Edit Delete .

## Playlists Source

Playlists are sources which are created from the tracks available in the Library source. They enable to gather tracks following a particular 'genre', a specific group of artists, or even tracks that are of a particular 'mood', or whatever you want.

Rhythmbox has 2 kinds of playlists:

- Static Playlists

- Smart Playlists

Rhythmbox lets you burn the tracks of your playlists to an Audio CD.

### Static Playlists

Static playlists are playlists built from tracks dropped from the Library.

#### Create a static playlist

To create a new playlist, choose Music Playlist New Playlist. An empty playlist without name appears in the Source list. Enter a name for the playlist and press Enter.

#### Add tracks to a playlist

To add tracks to a playlist, select tracks from the track list from the library and drag and drop your selection over the playlist icon in the Source list.

You can also drop over a playlist a genre, an artist, or an album name from the browser, and all the tracks that belongs to the chosen category will be added to the playlist.

You can create a playlist with tracks in one action. Select tracks from the Tracks List, or directly one or more categories from the browser (Genre, Artist or Album) and drop the selection over the Source List. It will create automatically a named playlist.

#### Remove tracks from a playlist

To remove tracks from a playlist, first select the tracks to remove, and then you have two methods:

- Choose Edit Delete.

- Right-click over the selection and choose Delete.

This operation deletes the track only from playlist and not from the Library.

#### Delete a static playlist

To delete a static playlist, select the playlist to delete, then you have two ways to delete it:

- Choose Edit Delete.

- Right-click over the playlist and choose Delete.

This operation deletes only the playlist and not the tracks stored in the playlist deleted.

### Smart Playlists

Smart Playlists are playlists built from criterias, so their content is build dynamically; all the tracks matching criterias will be added in the playlist.

#### Create a smart playlist

To create a new playlist:

1. Choose Music Playlist New Automatic Playlist....

2. Edit the playlist criterias through the query editor.

3. Once your criterias chosen, click New to create the query.

#### Edit a smart playlist

Edit a smart playlist let you modify the criteria set for this playlist. To edit a smart playlist, select the smart playlist, choose Music Playlist Edit..., and edit the criterias. Once done, choose Close.

#### Delete a smart playlist

To delete a smart playlist, select the playlist to delete, then you have two ways to delete it:

- Choose Edit Delete.

- Right-click over the playlist and choose Delete.

#### Use the query editor

Choose the criteria to apply to the rule. If you need one more criteria click on the button Add, a new line appears, and you can set a new criteria.

If you want to limit the number of tracks in the playlist, tick Limit to:, and choose how to limit. You can limit by tracks, by total size (in MB or GB), or by duration (expressed in Minutes).

Once you finish to set criteria for the playlist, choose New; the playlist query editor window closes, and the playlist display the tracks matched by your criterias.

## Audio CD Source

&app; can also handle Audio CDs; it can play it, but it lets you also burn your own compilations.

### Playing

When an Audio CD is inserted to the CD drive, it will appear in the Source list, and the tracks on it can be displayed in &app;'s main window. If you are connected to Internet, the tracks name will be retrieve and displayed.

To play and pause playback, or to skip forward or backwards, use the same controls as used for playing from the library.

### Importing Audio CD

If you wish to keep the tracks of your Audio CDs on your computer, you can import them; the tracks will be saved as music files.

To import Audio CD tracks, choose Music Import Audio CD..., it will start Sound-Juicer, a GNOME application dedicated to Audio CD import. To know more about Sound-Juicer, you can read the Sound-Juicer manual.

To get imported tracks from Sound-Juicer automatically added to you Rhythmbox Library, you will have to configure Sound-Juicer to extract tracks into your Rhythmbox Library location and the Rhythmbox watch library feature has to be activated; refer to Sound-Juicer preferences and Rhythmbox Library preferences.

### Creating Audio CD

Rhythmbox enables you to create you own Audio CDs with the music stored in the Rhythmbox Library.

To create an Audio CD:

1. Create a playlist, static or smart (see ) and add tracks.

2. Choose Music Playlist Create Audio CD...

3. Insert a blank CD.

4. Click the button Create, the burning process starts.

## Portable Audio Player Source

Rhythmbox can detect when an portable audio player is plugged to your computer, and is able to read tracks stored on it. &app; should be able to deals with most of portable audio players like Apple iPod.

At this time, Rhythmbox can only read information but cannot write (like tags modification, tracks deletion or copy track from &app; to your player).

When you plug in a portable audio player, an icon for the Portable Audio Player is added to the Source List. This source works in the same way as the Library source.

If &app; do not detect your device as an portable audio player, you can create an empty file `.is_audio_player` at the top level hierarchy of the filesystem of your player.

## DAAP Share Source

DAAP is a network protocol that allow to share the music stored in Rhythmbox. DAAP stands for Digital Audio Access Protocol.

As DAAP is a standard protocol for music sharing, you can listen and share music not only with others Rhythmbox users, but also with other users who uses DAAP compatible software like iTunes.

When you will start Rhythmbox, it will look for all DAAP shares published on your local network (your home or your office, not the whole Internet) by other users and will display them in the Source list. If sharing is enabled, at the same time Rhythmbox will publish your library and your playlists. In this way, you can listen to music stored on your friend's computers and they can listen your music.

To disable Rhythmbox DAAP sharing feature, see in the preferences.

## Notification Area

### Overview

The Notification Area is a GNOME feature that adds a small icon to the panel while the program is running; this allows you to control &app; from your tray, and receive information when the &app; interface is not visible.

#### &app; in the Notification Area

### Get information

#### Tooltip information

When you move the mouse cursor over the &app; icon, you can see the track artist, the track name and the time position.

#### Notification window

Each time the track has changed or a podcast episode was downloaded, the &app; can inform you; it displays a notification window on the desktop, containing the information.

##### The notification window of &app;

The notification window can be disabled by deselecting the Show Notifications option from the context menu of the icon in the notification area. .

### Control Rhythmbox

Using the &app; icon in the notification area, the following commands can be sent to the application:

#### Notification Area (showing menu)

- Play — If selected, plays the currently selected song.

- Previous — Skip to previous song in the selected source.

- Next — Skip to next song in the selected source.

- Show Window Player — Choose whether or not the &app; window is visible or not on the desktop.

- Show Notifications — Choose whether or not the &app; will notify you about track changes and various information.

- Quit — Quit the &app;.

If you are using a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can adjust the volume by scrolling up or down while the mouse pointer is over the panel applet.

You can quickly toggle Play/Pause by pressing the middle mouse button.

## Customizing &app;

You can customize &app; to suit your requirements and preferences. This section describes how to customize &app;.

### Setting Your Preferences

Using the Preferences dialog you can customize how you want &app; to look and behave. To display the Preferences dialog, choose Edit Preferences.

#### General

Choose the Visible Columns you want to display in &app;. This option is global and affects the following sources:

- Library

- Audio CD

- Portable Players

- Playlists

- DAAP Music shares

#### Library

- Choose the way the Browser View will be displayed. You can choose to use three or two panes.

- The Library Location is a folder that &app; will monitor to find new songs. When you add new audio files in this folder or its sub-folders with the file browser (like Nautilus), &app; will detect them and they will be added automatically in the Library.

  Avoid to set your `Home` folder as library location because this feature is CPU consuming.

  To disable the watch functionality deselect Watch my library for new files.

  If you want to add more than one folder to watch, use gconf-editor and add it to the list /app/rhythmbox/library_locations

#### Podcasts

- The Download Location of Podcasts is defined by default to Folder `Podcasts/` in your home directory.

  If this location doesn't fit your needs, select another folder in the drop-down list or choose Other... to make the File Selector appears.

- Choose the frequency that &app; will check for new podcast episodes.

#### Sharing

The &app; can share your Library contents over your Local Area Network, to other &app; and Apple iTunes users.

- Select Share my music to enable the users of your network to see and read your songs.

- Enter the name of you want to appear of the network in the field Shared music name.

#### Last.fm profile

The Last.fm profile plugin collects information about the songs you listen to and sends it to the Last.fm website, building up a profile of your listening habits. With this profile, you can:

- consult statistics, such as most played songs or most played artists.

- receive recommendations about artists that you might like.

In order to use the Last.fm profile plugin, you must have a Last.fm account. If you don't already have one, use the Last.fm signup page to create one. Enter your Last.fm account details in the Username and Password fields in the Last.fm profile plugin configuration window.

The configuration window for the Last.fm profile plugin also displays status information. If your Last.fm profile page shows that your profile is not being updated, the information displayed here may help you to diagnose the problem.

## Shortcuts

### Keyboard Shortcuts

#### Player Shortcuts

Shortcuts | Actions
--- | ---
Alt Space | Play / Pause
Alt Left | Jump to the Previous Track / Back to the beginning of the track
Alt Right | Jump to the Next Track
Ctrl R | Enable / Disable Repeat play
Ctrl U | Enable / Disable Shuffle play

#### General Shortcuts

Shortcuts | Actions
--- | ---
Ctrl A | Select All
Shift Ctrl A | Deselect All
Ctrl E | Extract CD (launch Sound-Juicer)
Ctrl J | Jump to playing song
Ctrl Y | Clear the search field text and remove all filters in the browser
Ctrl N | Create a New playlist
Ctrl I | Add a new Internet Radio Station
Ctrl P | Add a New Podcast Feed
Ctrl O | Add a folder to the library
Alt Return | Display the Track Properties

#### Window Shortcuts

Shortcuts | Actions
--- | ---
Ctrl W | Close the &app; window
Ctrl Q | Quit the &app;
Ctrl B | Show / Hide the browser
Ctrl D | Toggle / Untoggle the small display mode
Ctrl L | Show / Hide the sources list
Ctrl K | Show / Hide the Queue Sidebar
Ctrl S | Show / Hide the Song Position Slider
Shift Ctrl T | Show / Hide the Queue Sidebar
F11 | Toggle / Untoggle the Full Screen mode

### Multimedia Keys

&app; supports the keys on multimedia keyboards, if configured in your desktop environment.

#### Window Shortcuts

Shortcuts | Actions
--- | ---
Stop | Stop
Pause / Play | Pause / Play
Prev | Previous Played Track
Next | Next Track

### Linux Infrared Remote Control

The &app; includes a plugin for Linux Infrared Remote Control (LIRC) support. The following command strings are supported, using the program name 'rhythmbox':

#### Window Shortcuts

Command string | Action
--- | ---
play | Start playback
pause | Pause playback
playpause | Toggle between playing and paused
shuffle | Toggle the shuffle play order
repeat | Toggle the repeat play order
next | Skip to the next track
previous | Skip to the previous track
seek_forward | Skip 10 seconds forward in the playing track
seek_backward | Skip 10 seconds backward in the playing track
volume_up | Increase the playback volume by 10%
volume_down | Decrease the playback volume by 10%
mute | Mute the playback