Exaile

Exaile is upgrading to GStreamer 1.x / GTK3!

2015-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

GStreamer 0.10 has been obsolete for a long time now, and with the impending removal of 0.10 from Debian we decided that it would make sense to upgrade. PyGI for GStreamer 1.x is not compatible with GTK2, so we’re upgrading to GTK3 at the same time. We’re optimistic that the Exaile experience will be better than ever after these upgrades.

Due to the amount of work required, we’re suspending work on non-critical bugs on the 3.4.x series until we’ve merged this into master.

Right now, we need people interested in playing around with gtk/gstreamer to poke at Exaile interface, see what breaks, record bugs, and issue pull requests to fix bugs. A lot of the heavy lifting has been done already and it sorta works, but there’s still a lot left. Every little bit helps. If you want to mess with it, check out the ‘gi’ branch on github.

At the moment, we’re tracking things using this wiki page. We’re also hanging out on IRC at various times.

Once the bugs become much harder to find, we’ll make a release candidate available for users to try it out, and track bugs using the github issue tracker. With your help, optimistically we can get this done in a few weeks.

Thanks for continuing to support Exaile!

Exaile 3.4.5 released

2015-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Exaile development team is happy to announce the latest release of Exaile. This release fixes the following bugs, and contains a number of translation updates as well:

#64 - Errors loading Smart Playlists that filter based on a playlist
#65 - Missing icon issue
#75 - Disable equalizer by default

Exaile 3.4.4 released

2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Exaile development team is happy to announce the latest release of Exaile. This release fixes the following bugs, and contains a number of translation updates as well:

#54 - If you installed Exaile by makefile, or in slightly nonstandard ways, translations wouldn’t actually work
Various minor bugs

And of course, you can look at the commit log on github too.

Exaile 3.4.3 released (translations update)

2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

This is a significant translations update for Exaile, with close to 100% translations available now for several languages. If you would like to contribute to the Exaile translation effort, translation tools are now being generously hosted by hosted weblate.

Additionally, one minor bug was fixed:

#19 - Smart Playlists with criteria involving timestamps do not work

Special thanks to @strebski for pointing out the translation problem, and providing a polish translation for Exaile. Additional thanks to the many translators who contributed to this release.

Exaile 3.4.2 released (semi-critical bugfix release)

2014-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

Fixes the following bugs:

#11 - Exaile did not always update individual files when changed externally
#12 - Add an option to ‘force rescan’ of files for users with misbehaving external tagger programs
#13 - GroupTagger plugin: Potential tag loss when using externally modified files

All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this release, particularly users of the GroupTagger plugin.

Exaile 3.4.1 released!

2014-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

For those of you wanting to use Exaile on OSX Mavericks or Yosemite, this release is for you! Prior releases of Exaile did not work properly because of font issues in GTK. This release contains workarounds for that.

There are other minor fixes too, check the commit log for details.

Exaile 3.4 "we're not dead yet" released!

2014-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

After a year of work and 60+ bugfixes and improvements, the Exaile developers are happy to announce that Exaile 3.4.0 “we’re not dead yet” has been released!

About the codename

Exaile has existed since 2006, and had a lot of rapid development until 2010 or so. At that point, development slowed down considerably, but since 2012 development has continued at a slow but steady rate. A number of you have asked whether the project is dead yet – and the answer is a resounding NO. Exaile is a mature, stable audio player, and does much of what we want it to do, and does it well. The current development team uses Exaile on a regular basis, and will continue to add improvements and fix bugs as needed. To reflect this reality, the codename for this release is “we’re not dead yet”.

Major new features/bugfixes

This release has fixed a lot of really annoying bugs and improved overall usability, while adding new plugins with new features. The full list of bugfixes/features can be viewed on launchpad.

General

Audio output device can now be switched while playing songs
Official support for OSX!
Improved unicode support
An option has been added to disallow playback while another song is playing (great for DJs)
Linux: UDisks/UDisks2 support
Covers: cover manager improvements, saving to disk

UI

Playlists can be shown in multiple panes
The left tab panels are now closable
BPM counter plugin has better UI integration

Enhanced smart playlists

Create playlists based on other playlists
Support for filtering over 20 different tag types

Plugins

A simpler plugin API is available (but the old one still works!)
Plugin manager doesn’t show users potentially broken plugins anymore
New plugins: console, Icecast Radio, lyricsmania, mono output, playlist analyzer, Soma.FM
Broken/old plugins removed: lyricsfly, shoutcast
Fixes/improvements for various plugins

Windows

Improved bootup times for Windows
Installer has support for 64-bit python
Exaile restart doesn’t break
Improved multimedia keys plugin

Exaile 3.4 is in our opinion the best release of Exaile yet, and we hope that you like the new features as much as we do. Exaile is a truly cross-platform audio player, with downloads available for Linux, Windows, and OSX. User and developer documentation is available at http://exaile.readthedocs.org/en/latest/.

Moving to github

As of today, the launchpad repositories are deprecated and source code in bazaar will no longer be updated. Our new home is on github, at https://github.com/exaile/exaile. Please file all new bugs on the issues tracker on github. In the near future, we will try to move relevant bugs from launchpad to github, close out all the bugs on launchpad, and close the launchpad bug tracker. We look forward to your pull requests

Exaile 3.4.0 Release Candidate Available!

2014-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

All of the bugs targeted for Exaile 3.4 have been closed, and 3.4.0 RC0 is now available for download from Launchpad. This has been a really stable beta release so far, and we’re really excited about getting this out! A final release will be done on Monday if there are no issues found.

Updated plugin development guide (and more!)

2014-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Exaile now has a read the docs site! The docs include API information, an updated plugin development guide, and user installation notes. A lot of information has been migrated + updated from synic’s old bitbucket site for Exaile, and now lives with the Exaile source. We would love help updating this information, or any feedback you may have. Thanks!

Exaile 3.4.0 beta (codename "We're not dead yet!") released!

2014-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

An exaile 3.4 release has been a long time coming. There are a TON of new features and fixes that are present in this release – we’ll provide a highlights summary for the official 3.4 release. However, you can see the launchpad page for a complete list of the bugs fixed in 3.4.

Despite being labeled a ‘beta’, this release should be stable for most users. The main reason for labeling it a ‘beta’ is that there are still a number of important fixes/features we’d like to get out there, but there’s already so many features in that we want others to use.

Please try it out and report any bugs that you may find! We’re hoping for a 3.4 final release by the end of the summer.

Exaile 3.3.2 Released!

2013-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Exaile developers are happy to announce that Exaile 3.3.2 has been released!

Highlights

Tracks were sometimes selected incorrectly when searching a playlist
Sometimes the main window wouldn’t appear when minimizing to the system tray
More tags supported for MP4/M4A/FLAC/OGG files
Locale bugs when executing –help
Updated Windows installer dependency download versions
Fixed plugins: librivox

A source release + windows installer is available now at Launchpad.

Look for a 3.4 release to also happen later in Fall 2013.

Exaile 3.3.1 Released!

2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Exaile developers are happy to announce that Exaile 3.3.1 has been released!

Highlights

Accessibility related fixes
Dynamic playlists are now working correctly
WMA files are properly supported now
Playlist import is now more robust
Internal tags (those starting with __) were clobbered when being restored to playlists, so things like ratings and other such things would disappear mysteriously. This is no longer the case.
Fixed plugins: ContextInfo, mini-mode, osd, last.fm

A source release + windows installer is available now at Launchpad.

Music categorization using Exaile

2012-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

One of our developers has written a blog post about quickly categorizing your music using one of the new plugins for Exaile 3.3.0 called ‘GroupTagger’. Go check it out if you haven’t already.

Exaile 3.3.0 released!

2012-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

After a very long time we are very excited to announce that it is finally here: Exaile 3.3, code name “jump”. This release brings hundreds of fixes as well as a lot of new features.

The version

For this release the Exaile developers have agreed to finally drop the leading „0“ which has haunted us for a long time without apparent reason. And the sheer amount of changes which have gone into this release are reason enough for the version “jump” to 3.3. But aside from that our version scheme will not change, so don’t expect version 21 anytime soon like with some browsers. ;-)

Fixes, improvements and lots of new features

A lot of bugs have been fixed which have partially existed since ages. Aside from that improvements have happened throughout the whole player. And last but not least the new release spurs a considerable amount of new features. Among the most notable changes are:

General:

Lots of threading issues which resulted in hangs during playback and upon startup
Sanitize passwords from stream URLs to keep them from being displayed, submitted and stored
Asynchronous cover fetching
Escape XML-critical characters for ASX and XSPF playlist export
Improved import of media from drag drops
Tracks and playlist import from and export to arbitrary locations (like network locations)
Tracks are moved to the Trash by default if possible instead of directly deleting them
Lots of improvements for running Exaile on Microsoft Windows including an installer
Various other small changes to make things behave more natural

GUI:

Revamped cover chooser (spinner as loading indicator¹, thumbnail bar, cover details like source and size) and cover manager (better threading, faster, more progress indication, facelift)
Implement automatic scrolling during drag operations
Facelift and small improvements for the track properties dialog
New button in the playlist notebook¹ (click for new playlist, drop something on it to pre-fill the new playlist)
Ability to add arbitrary markers to the playback progress bar for jumping
Ability to restore closed playlist tabs
Completely new, provider-based menu system, some places not yet ported (allows for easy customization and extension of menus like e.g. rating and Last.fm Love/Unlove menu items)
Playlist columns ported to the provider system
Comments tag in the track properties and as playlist column
New playlist column: scheduled playback time of tracks
Add icons to the preferences dialogs and categories to the plugins list
Option to hide the main track info pane or only the cover widget within

Playlists:

Completely rewritten playlist API (cleaner, more flexible and extensible, move and copy tracks arbitrarily between playlists)
Intelligent playlist default naming (no duplicates, always takes free name slots)
Allow for randomizing a selection of tracks instead of only the full playlist
Playlist importers/exporters ported to the provider system (more flexible, easily extendable with additional formats)
Enhanced playlist recognition upon import (fast type detection, file extension and slow type detection)
Support relative paths in playlist import/export

DBus:

Method/CLI option to export the current playlist
DBus service activation enabled
Added method for pausing
Added method/CLI option for formatted playback queries

Tag handling:

Support albumartist for MP3/MP4
Properly read tags from files with non-ASCII names
Properly read all available covers embedded in tags and keep their information
Proper handling of an arbitrary amount of covers embedded in tags (cover fetching and track properties)

Plugins:

A-B Repeat: repeat segment of a track by placing two markers on the playback progress bar
BPM Counter: manually set BPM per track
Group Tagger: add custom labels to tracks and gather tracks by these labels (via smart playlist filters)
History: keep history of played tracks and export them to a playlist
Inhibit Suspend: prevent suspend on e.g. notebooks during playback
Last.fm Loved Tracks: love/unlove tracks, see loved state of tracks
Main Menu Button: moves the main menu into a single Chrome-like button
Multimedia keys for Windows
MusicBrainz Covers: adds MusicBrainz as cover source option
OSD: formerly core, now completely rewritten with new options
Preview Device: allows playing audio over a secondary device, useful for DJs
Wikipedia: information about the current artist
Various fixes and improvements for other plugins

As usual, you can browse the full list including all details on Launchpad. We hope you like the new release as much as we do. Don’t wait any longer and download 3.3 from our Launchpad downloads page. The Windows installer will be added today or tomorrow.

You are welcome to drop comments on #exaile or report bugs or feature requests. We always strive to improve Exaile even further to make it one of the lightest and most usable players out there.

Enjoy version 3.3.0 and watch out for even more hot stuff in future releases!

¹ Requires GTK 2.20 and PyGTK 2.22

Exaile 3.3.0-rc2 released

2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Due to some important Windows changes, especially the installer, the release of 3.3.0 is delayed for one week. Have fun with the RC2 instead.

You can download the release candidate from our Launchpad downloads page. Please report any bugs you find and help us make this a great release!

The release of version 3.3.0 is currently slated for ~~September 21st, 2012~~ September 22nd, 2012, another delay due to imminent fixes and other things.

Exaile 3.3.0-rc1 released

2012-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

At long last, a new version of Exaile will be released: 3.3.0.

With this release an unbelievable amount of 236 bugs have been fixed which include fixes as well as new features. A full explanation of the major fixes and releases will be published with the release, so for now refer to the Launchpad bugs page to see what has happened. Here’s a quick glimpse at what’s new:

Completely rewritten playlist views and internals
Improved cover tag handling and cover management
More providers: playlist columns, application menus and playlist import/export
Playlist import from and export to arbitrary locations (including SFTP, etc.)
Vastly improved Win32 support including a Windows installer
Plugin updates and new plugins: A-B Repeat, BPM Counter, Group Tagger, History, Inhibit Suspend, Last.fm Loved Tracks, Main Menu Button, Multimedia keys for Windows, MusicBrainz Covers, OSD (formerly core), Preview Device and Wikipedia
Lots of threading fixes for more stability
Lots of small but highly desired UI changes like the new playlist button and more love for some of the dialogs.

Packagers please note the version upgrade for Python from 2.5 to 2.6. And while PyGTK 2.17 is still fully supported, PyGTK version 2.22 and GTK 2.20 are recommended to have the full feature set available.

You can download the release candidate from our Launchpad downloads page. Please report any bugs you find and help us make this a great release! The release of version 3.3.0 is currently slated for September 14th, 2012.

Update: The windows installer can now be downloaded from our Launchpad downloads page. The installer is still pretty new and may have bugs, but it has been verified to work on Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 SP1. Please, please report any bugs you find so we can fix them!

We found a new team leader!

2012-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

After a few months of deliberating, I have decided on a new leader.

Exaile’s own Mathias Brodala has taken the reigns. I expect good things!

synic

Exaile needs a team leader

2012-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Exaile is currently in need of a team leader. synic no longer has time to run the show, so currently no one is doing it. If you have the time, are a python coder, and use Exaile, please contact synic.

Exaile 0.3.2.2 released

2011-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

Exaile 0.3.2.2 is a bugfix release for 0.3.2. Notable fixes include:

We are now capable of using the external bsddb3 module if distributions disable python2’s deprecated built-in bsddb support, as Arch Linux did recently.
Compatibility with newer Ex Falso releases was restored to the Ex Falso plugin.
Exaile no longer stops scanning when it encounters permissions errors

Exaile 0.3.2.1 released

2011-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Exaile 0.3.2.1 is a bugfix release for 0.3.2. A short list of notable fixes:

The shoutcast plugin has been removed from the default install, as shoucast has changed their API and the new terms of service are not compatible with our license.
The default lyrics provider was changed to lyricwiki, as lyricfly no longer works properly.
A bug that prevented Exaile from running on very recent versions of pygobject was fixed.
A bug preventing files from being added via the CLI was fixed.
A number of additional minor issues were resolved.

Exaile 0.3.2 released!

2010-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

No new features since the rc, just a smattering of minor bugfixes.

Get it from our downloads page.

Exaile 0.3.2-rc1 released

2010-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

This is a release candidate for 0.3.2. It should be stable enough for normal use, and we’ll follow it with the final version shortly.

A quick look at what’s new in the 0.3.2 series:

Improved support for covers embedded in ogg and flac files
Gapless playback by default (via playbin2)
Many dialogs replaced with gtk InfoBars
Preference items that require a restart now prompt for it
Vastly improved lyricsviewer plugin
Drag and drop on the main cover display to set and retrieve covers
Track counts in collection panel
New tooltip for tray icon and minimode that displays cover and progress
Custom playback sink support
Display cover art when dragging from side panels
Read-only support for Matroska tags…and of course, the usual assortment of bugfixes and minor enhancements.

Packagers please note the version upgrades for PyGTK and PyGObject this release, 2.17 and 2.18 respectively are now mandatory.

You can download the release candidate from our Launchpad downloads page. Please report any bugs you find and help us make this a great release!