Elisa Music Player Sees More New Features And A Beta Release

KDE Music Player Elisa Issues Beta, Moving Towards 0.4 Release

Well, what can I say? Another day, more news about KDE's Elisa Music Player.

Pushing forward from the previous announcements regarding this up-and-coming music application, the lead developer has again posted news about more new features in a move towards an official release.

Elisa looks great, with blurred backgrounds
that are taken from the album cover and it's colors

What's new?

 

Here's the scoop on what's been added this time around:

• Displays embedded lyrics in the Now Playing view
• Displays album covers, either embedded or in the album's folder (i.e. cover.jpg)
• Displays a warning and an 'undo' feature if someone accidentally tries to delete a playlist
• Initial support for Android integration (this is separate than the media integration via KDE Connect)
• Clickable headerbar to navigate to the album or artist from the Now Playing view
• Easy installation of the beta candidate via a Flatpak install option

I gave this version of Elisa a spin by uninstalling my native KDE Neon 0.3 version and installing the beta from the now-available Flatpak.

I can tell you it has come a long way in a short time. Great having the lyrics there along with excellent playlist support and also the ability to use my embedded cover art.

Elisa Music Player now shows embedded song lyrics
and has clickable artist / album links

Where does Elisa go from here?

 

Once the 0.4 release is made, I can safely say that what we will have on our hands as a solid music player for KDE and for Linux. Which is great, because frankly, the 'Tux universe is over-filled with crappy and bit-rotting ones today.

The developer has stated that there have been a slew of incoming feature requests, and that it would take him a rather long time to implement by himself. So the request was made for additional help and for additional contributors to the project.

Lots of ideas and requests have been identified, such as visualizations, high DPI support, radio steams, a complete move to Kirigami framework, DLNA support, etc.

So if you'd like to jump on board participation is welcome.

Installing the Beta

Installing the beta release is simple, and consists of a simple terminal entry. First, I would recommend uninstalling any version of Elisa you have previously installed on your system. Next, simply open Konsole or your terminal of choice and paste the following:

flatpak install https://flathub.org/beta-repo/appstream/org.kde.elisa.flatpakref

That's it.

You can view mgallien's blog post on the beta here.

Check it out, and do let us know what you think via the comments below, or ping us on Twitter.