Quod Libet (software)

Quod Libet

Screenshot of Quod Libet's paned main browser window (dark theme).
Developer(s)	Quod Libet Team[1]
Initial release	30 October 2004[2]
Stable release	3.6.1[3] (5 April 2016) [±]
Repository	github.com/quodlibet/quodlibet
Development status	Active
Written in	Python (PyGObject)
Operating system	Linux, Unix-like, OS X, Windows
Size	3 MB (Plugins 90 KB) 48 MB – Mac OS X 27.3 MB – Windows[4]
Available in	Multilanguage
Type	Audio player
License	GNU GPL[5]
Website	quodlibet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Quod Libet is a cross-platform free and open-source audio player, tag editor and library organizer. The main design philosophy is that the user knows how they want to organize their music best; the software is therefore built to be fully customizable and extensible using regular expressions. Quod Libet is based on GTK+ and written in Python, and uses the Mutagen tagging library. Ex Falso is the stand-alone tag-editing app (no audio) based on the same code and libraries.

Quod Libet is very scalable, able to handle libraries with tens of thousands of songs with ease. It provides a full feature set including support for Unicode, regular expression searching, key bindings to multimedia keys, fast but powerful tag editing, and a variety of plugins.

Quod Libet is available on most Linux distributions, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows as well, requiring only PyGObject, Python, and an OSS or ALSA compatible audio device. The Xfce desktop disk image provided by the Debian project installs Quod Libet as the default audio player.

Features

The tag editor interface, used by both Quod Libet and Ex Falso, that allows any tag to be changed as well as any file to be renamed or moved.

Audio Playback

• Can deal with various audio back-ends via the plug-in architecture of GStreamer
• Supports Replay Gain with smart selection based on either single track or full album, based on current view and play order
• 'Real' shuffle mode- entire playlist played before repeating
• Ratings weighted random playback setting
• Play queue

Tag editing

• Complete Unicode support
• Changes to multiple files at once, even if files are in different formats
• Ability to tag files based on filenames with fully configurable formats
• Customizable renaming of files based on their tags and a user-supplied format
• Human readable tag references, e.g. <artist> or <title> rather than %a or %t, with support for "if not-null x else y" logic (e.g. <albumartist|albumartist|artist>)
• Fast track renumbering

Audio Library

• Audio Feeds / Podcast support
• Can save play counts
• Can download and save lyrics
• Fast refreshing of entire library based on changed files
• Internet Radio / SHOUTcast support
• Scalable song rating from 1 start to 10 stars, with keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-[0-4] - Rate the selected song(s) with 0-4 stars for default rating scale^[6]

User Interface

Screenshot demonstrating Quodlibet's capabilities to organize and display audio files with custom tags.

• Configurable interface to suit user preferences; Pango markup is used so that user can display tags in any way desired in the player
• Drag-n-drop support throughout interface.
• Tray icon with full player control
• Automatically recognize and display tags from many uncommon tags
• Multiple ways to browse library:
  • Progressive search - library is filtered as searches are typed
  • Queries support boolean logic, numerical / date-based expressions, and regular expressions, and synthetic tags, that are derived internally (e.g. play count, rating, inclusion in playlist).
  • Playlists with integration throughout the player
  • Paned browser, using any fully customizable tags (e.g. genre, date, album artist...), allowing the user to [drill down] through their library as they prefer
  • View by album list with cover art
  • View by file-system directory, which includes songs not in your library

File Formats

Include MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, FLAC, Musepack, MOD/XM/IT, WMA, Wavpack, MPEG-4 AAC

Unix-like control and query mechanisms

• Status information available from the command line^[7]
• Control of player using named pipe (FIFO) is possible^[8]
• Text-based files available with current song information.

Plugins

Quod Libet is currently bundled with over 60 Python-based plugins, including:

• Automatic tagging via MusicBrainz and CDDB
• Download and preview album art from a variety of online sources
• On-screen display pop-ups
• Last.fm/AudioScrobbler submission
• Tag character encoding conversion
• Intelligent title-casing of tags
• Finding duplicate or near-duplicate songs across the entire library.
• Scan and save Replay Gain values across multiple albums at once (using GStreamer)
• D-Bus-based Multimedia Shortcut Keys
• Integrate with Logitech Squeezebox.
• Export playlists to common formats

See also

• Comparison of free software for audio#Players
• Exaile

References

1. "Quod Libet Team page". Retrieved 20 August 2011.
2. "Changelog".
3. http://quodlibet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/changelog.html
4. "Quod Libet download page". Retrieved 3 November 2011.
5. "Quod Libet License page". Retrieved 21 May 2013.
6. https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/quodlibet-3.2/guide/shortcuts.html#song-lists
7. "Quod Libet feature page". Retrieved 21 May 2013.
8. "Quod Libet extending guide".

External links

• Official website
• quodlibet on GitHub
• Quod Libet on Bitbucket
• Screenshots
• User Guide
• FAQ
• Debian Package information page
• Quod Libet - A Different GTK Music Player
• Article on Quod Libet