Rhythmbox
Simple music player for a collection of files on your own disk. Often already installed on GNOME systems.
Our verdict
Rhythmbox is for people whose music lives in folders on their own computer rather than in a subscription. It scans your music folder, builds a list by artist and album, and plays it. That is nearly the whole story.
Coming from Windows Media Player or an old iTunes library, the shape is familiar: a sidebar of playlists, a list of tracks, controls along the top. Internet radio stations and podcasts are handled too. On many GNOME systems it is already installed, so there is nothing to do.
If your collection has scrappy tags and missing cover art, Rhythmbox will not help you fix that, and it looks its age. Strawberry is the better choice for a large or untidy library. For a modest, well-named collection, this is enough.
What's good
- Frequently preinstalled, so your music folder is playable straight away
- Plain and quiet, with none of the streaming clutter
- Handles internet radio and podcasts as well as your own files
- Free and light on resources
What to know first
- Dated look, closer to old iTunes than to anything current
- Weak at fixing messy tags and missing album artwork
- Development is slow and new features are rare
- The Flathub build is community maintained rather than official
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), .deb installer, .rpm installer, Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
Last checked . Sources: