Rhythmbox

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Free and open source audio player

title: "Rhythmbox" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["2001-software", "applications-using-d-bus", "audio-player-software-that-uses-gtk", "free-audio-software", "free-media-players", "free-software-programmed-in-c", "gnome-applications", "jukebox-style-media-players", "linux-media-players", "online-music-database-clients", "software-that-uses-gstreamer", "tag-editors-for-linux", "tag-editors-that-use-gtk", "software-using-the-gnu-general-public-license"] description: "Free and open source audio player" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmbox" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Free and open source audio player ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

Field	Value
name	Rhythmbox
logo	Rhythmbox logo 3.4.4.svg
screenshot	File:GNOME Rhythmbox 3.4.4 with its preferences.png
screenshot size	300px
caption	GNOME Rhythmbox 3.4.4 with its preferences (using Alternative Toolbar plug-in)
developer	The GNOME Project
released
latest release version
latest release date
latest preview version
latest preview date
programming language	C (GTK)
operating system	Linux, Unix-like
language	Multilingual
genre	Audio player
license	GPL-2.0-or-later
website
::

Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems.

Rhythmbox is designed to work well under GNOME, but can function on other desktop environments. It is very scalable, able to handle libraries with tens of thousands of songs with ease. It provides a full feature set including full support for Unicode, fast but powerful tag editing, and a variety of plug-ins.

Rhythmbox is the default audio player on many Linux distributions including Fedora, Ubuntu since v12.04 LTS, and Linux Mint as of version 18.1.

Features

Rhythmbox offers a significant number of features, including:

Music playback

Playback from a variety of digital music sources is supported. The most common playback is music stored locally as files on the computer (the 'Library'). Rhythmbox supports playing streamed Internet radio and podcasts as well. The ReplayGain standard is also supported. Rhythmbox also supports searching of music in the library.

Playlists may be created to group and order music. Users may also create 'smart playlists,' ones that are automatically updated (like a database query) based on a customized rule of selection criteria rather than an arbitrary list of tracks. Music may be played back in shuffle (random) mode or repeat mode.

Track ratings are supported and used by the shuffle mode algorithm to play higher-rated tracks more often.

Gapless playback

Enabling the crossfading backend option with a duration of 0.0 switches Rhythmbox into gapless playback mode for music formats that support it. Gapless playback is not enabled by default.

Music importing

Audio CD ripping
Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer
iPod support
Android support

Audio CD burning

Since the 0.9 release, Rhythmbox can create audio CDs from playlists.

Album cover display

Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can display cover art of the currently playing album. The plugin can search the internet to find corresponding artwork, and as of 0.12.6, can read artwork from ID3 tags. If an image file is saved in the same directory as the audio track this is used instead.

SoundCloud

Rhythmbox can browse and play sounds from SoundCloud, via built-in SoundCloud plugin.

Song lyrics display

Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can provide song lyrics of the currently playing song by pressing [ctrl + L], as long as the lyrics are stored in a lyrics database.

Audio scrobbling

Rhythmbox can submit played songs info to a remote scrobbling service. This information is used by the remote service to provide user specific music recommendations. Rhythmbox currently supports three scrobbling services:

Last.fm
Libre.fm, the open-source drop-in replacement
ListenBrainz

Music can be scrobbled to all services at the same time.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Rhythmbox_web_remote_control.png" caption="Control remote rhythmbox via GNOME web browser"] ::

DAAP music sharing

Rhythmbox supports sharing music and playing shared music on local network via DAAP sharing plugin. The plugin uses libdmapsharing to provide this feature.

Devices

Rhythmbox uses the Linux udev subsystem to detect player devices.

Podcasting

Rhythmbox can subscribe to podcasts from the iTunes Store, Miroguide or by manually providing a podcast feed URL. Subsequently, new podcasts are automatically downloaded and available from the Library under the section Podcasts.

Web remote control

Rhythmbox can be controlled remotely with a Web browser, via inbuilt Web remote control plugin.

Plug-ins

Rhythmbox has a plug-in API for C, Python, or Vala.

There are nearly 50 third party plug-ins for Rhythmbox. including a 10 Band audio Equalizer, and many official plug-ins including:

Cover art search
Audio CD Player
Last.fm / Libre.fm / Listenbrainz
DAAP Music Sharing
FM Radio
Grilo media browser
IM Status
Internet Radio Streaming
Song Lyrics
Magnatune Store
Media Player Keys
Portable Players (generic, iPod)
Android devices (via MTP)
Notification
Power Manager
Python Console (for debugging)
LIRC
Send tracks
Replay Gain
MediaServer2 D-Bus interface
MPRIS D-Bus interface
Browser to integrate Rhythmbox with iTunes
CD/DVD burning based on Brasero

Integration

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/GNOME_Music-Applet_screenshot.png" caption="Rhythmbox displaying a pop-up notification from the GNOME notification area"] ::

Rhythmbox has been extensively integrated with a number of external programs, services and devices including:

Built-in support for Multimedia Keys on keyboard
Nautilus file manager context-menu integration, "hover mode" playback in Nautilus
HexChat, via a HexChat plugin.
Pidgin-Rhythmbox automatically updates the Pidgin user profile with details of the currently playing track
Gajim and Pidgin include options for automatically updating the user status with details of currently playing track
aMSN and emesene can change the user's personal message to current track via the "music" plugin (aMSN) and the "CurrentSong" plugin (emsene), similar to Messenger Plus! Live
Music Applet (previously known as the Rhythmbox Applet), a GNOME panel applet that provides Rhythmbox playback controls from within the panel. Music Applet has since been superseded by Panflute
Rhythmlet, another gDesklet that retrieves album art locally or from Amazon.com, has configurable display strings, playback controls, editable ratings and a seek bar
SideCandyRhythmbox, a gDesklet-based Rhythmbox control and SideCandy display
Rhythmbox XSLT allows the music library to be viewed as a web page
Drivel inserts the name of the track Rhythmbox is currently playing into a LiveJournal blog entry
Rhythmbox Tune Publisher publishes the currently playing Rhythmbox track to XMPP via the User Tune protocol (used by the Jabber World Map)
FoxyTunes, a Mozilla Firefox extension that provides Rhythmbox playback controls from within the web browser
Plugins for browsing and listening to Creative Commons licensed albums from Jamendo (via grilo plugin) and Magnatune.
Rhythmbox Remote helps to remotely control Rhythmbox through an Android powered device.
Rhythmbox WebMenu is a fully personalizable plugin that integrates Rhythmbox with several music websites.

References

"Apps/Rhythmbox - GNOME Wiki!".
"12.3. Rhythmbox Music Player".
(25 February 2010). "Fedora Bible 2010 Edition: Featuring Fedora Linux 12". John Wiley & Sons.
"PrecisePangolin/TechnicalOverview/Beta2 - Ubuntu Wiki".
Drifter, Carlos Porto of Design. "New features in Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon - Linux Mint".
"Apps/Rhythmbox/FAQ - GNOME Wiki!".
"Last.fm Scrobbling: How is it Used For Music?".
"Apps/Rhythmbox/Plugins - GNOME Wiki!".
"Apps/Rhythmbox/Plugins/ThirdParty - GNOME Wiki!".
"rhythmbox - Music playback and management application".
"Debian -- Details of package rhythmbox-plugins in jessie".
"Debian -- Details of package rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder in jessie".
[//code.google.com/p/pidgin-musictracker/ musictracker on Google Code]

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::