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KDE released Amarok 3.0 “Castaway” on April 29, 2024. It was the music player’s first stable release since Amarok 2.9.0 in 2018, and its defining change was a long-awaited move to Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5—not a ground-up redesign. Amarok 3.0 is now a historical milestone, not the current version: as of August 18, 2026, KDE lists Amarok 3.3.3 as the latest release.
Why Amarok 3.0 mattered
Amarok is KDE’s free, open-source music player and collection manager. It is built for people who organize and play local music libraries, with features such as collection management, ratings, dynamic playlists, cover management and ReplayGain. It also offers device support and integrations with internet services, but those integrations can depend on third-party services that change over time. KDE lists the software under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. See the official Amarok page for its feature overview.
Before 3.0, the last stable release was Amarok 2.9.0, released in 2018 and based on Qt 4. The transition to Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5 had been underway for years; an alpha appeared in 2021, but the stable release took until April 2024. That makes 3.0 a significant modernization and project-revival milestone. It gave Amarok a more maintainable foundation for further development, but did not mean every old feature or workflow had been reinvented or fully restored.
The announcement and its technical details are in the Amarok 3.0 release notes.
#1 Best Overall
- Richly Pre-loaded & Flexibly Customizable-The Mp3 player comes pre-installed with popular music, audiobook, and reading apps like Spotify, Pandora, Audible, and Kindle for out-of-the-box convenience. Built on the Google Play Store, MP3 also allows you to freely install, update or uninstall apps, adapting its functionality to your needs and truly fitting your personal usage habits.
- Parental Controls for Granular Management-The built-in Parental Control app allows you to set overall device rules (such as usage time, schedules, and functions), as well as apply precise restrictions to individual applications, effectively guiding your child's digital entertainment experience.
- Stream Online & Play Local Music-Enjoy the best of both worlds: stream millions of songs from services like Spotify and Apple Music, or play your personal music library stored on the device with the built-in local music player. Access all your music, online or offline, seamlessly in one player.
- Powerful Local Playback-The built-in local music player offers extensive compatibility with various audio formats, including MP3, FLAC, APE, OGG, M4A, AAC, WMA, MP2, and WAV. It provides multiple ways to sort your library (by Title, Artist, Album, Folder, etc.) and flexible playback modes (Shuffle, List loop, Sing loop, Sequential play), enabling professional-grade management and playback of your local music collection.
- A Pocket-Sized Cinema-The built-in video player smoothly handles 720P and 1080P HD videos. Paired with the 4-inch IPS touch screen and a dedicated HIFI audio module, the mp4 player delivers an immersive, high-quality viewing experience right in the palm of your hand.
What changed in Amarok 3.0
The changes were mostly practical refinements, bug fixes and improvements to existing features rather than a new interface or a long list of major additions.
- Clearer context-view editing: When editing context-view applets, the interface now indicates that they can be resized.
- Improved Wikipedia applet behavior: The applet reports missing metadata, offers a control to stop automatically updating the Wikipedia page, and presents a more relevant context menu. Searches for composer and album information were also fixed for local files.
- A different lyrics provider: Amarok replaced LyricWiki with lyrics.ovh. This changes the provider, but does not guarantee that lyrics will be available for every track.
- Cleaner dynamic-mode controls: Play-mode controls that do not work in dynamic mode are hidden.
- Polish and fixes: The release improved Flickr photo loading in the photos applet, inline playlist play controls, high-DPI rendering and collection removal when folder names overlap. It also switched to a symbolic system-tray icon to improve tray colors in Plasma 6.
These changes address specific rough edges; they should not be mistaken for a wholesale redesign. Nor should later features be attributed to 3.0: Qt 6/KF6 support and the move from Phonon to GStreamer arrived in the later 3.3 release line.
What Amarok 3.0 did not guarantee
Amarok’s developers flagged limitations that matter particularly to users returning from 2.x:
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- 【Smart MP3 Music Player】The Android MP3 player come with an 8-core MTK chip to make the music player respond faster and run more smoothly. This bluetooth MP3 player comes pre-installed with many of the most popular online music Apps, including Spotify, Omnia, Deezer, Amazon music, Play store, etc.
- 【3GB RAM & 16GB storage】Our android MP3 player built in 3GB RAM and 16GB storage, supports to expand external storage up to 512GB, which can easily hold thousands of music, this can greatly satisfy your need to store more songs, videos, audiobooks.
- 【Bluetooth 5.0 & WiFi Function】This WiFi MP3 player supports wireless network connection, allowing you to download APP, listen music, videos playback online and surf the web. Feature with stable and fast two-way Bluetooth connection technology, which supports stereo and dual-channel audio for a latency-free connection to headphones, speakers or other playback devices.
- 【Android 13 MP3 Music Player】The Android MP3 player powered by the Android 13 OS and MTK 8-core processor, you can enjoy a seamless user experience, access a vast collection of apps, provides a much better experience in interface personalization, control performance and battery life. Pre-installed with many of the most popular Apps, including Spotify, Omnia, Audible, Amazon music, Play store, FM Radio, etc.
- 【Great Solution to Stream Music】Built-in powerful audio decoding chip and superb circuit optimization technology, which can better convert the source code into the most original sound, providing HIFI-level sound effects close to the original. Compatible with most music formats, including MP3, WAV, FLAC, APE, OGG, M4A, AAC, WMA, etc.
- Older scripts may not work. The move from QtScript to QJSEngine was incomplete, and Amarok 2.x scripts were not guaranteed to be compatible. KNewStuff script downloading was disabled because of incompatibilities and other issues.
- Online services may be incomplete or unavailable. Some services had changed their APIs. Lyrics, Wikipedia information and other network-dependent features can vary with the provider and service status; the release announcement does not promise that every integration works reliably.
- Not every historical workflow was exhaustively tested. The developers noted the breadth of Amarok’s more-than-20-year history. Treat 3.0 as a substantial platform port, not proof that every old behavior was covered.
If you are testing 3.0 against an existing Amarok setup, back up important playlists, configuration and any scripts first. The available release information does not establish a universal migration path for every library database or customization, so do not assume those items will transfer unchanged.
Amarok 3.0 in the context of later releases
The 3.0 release began a continuing modernization, and version numbers matter when checking compatibility:
| Date | Release | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| April 29, 2024 | 3.0 “Castaway” | First stable Qt 5/KF5 release since 2018. |
| June 2, 2024 | 3.0.1 | Bug-fix release with changes including Wikipedia applet, playlist generation and collection-filtering improvements. KDE’s Amarok release archive lists the release history. |
| August 2, 2024 | 3.1 | Added updated token-based Last.fm authentication, restored the Similar Artists applet and continued Qt 6 compatibility work. Release announcement. |
| December 29, 2024 | 3.2 | Made experimental Qt 6/KF6 builds possible; Qt 5/KF5 remained the recommended tested configuration at that point. Release announcement. |
| February 15, 2025 | 3.2.2 | Described as likely the final version with Qt 5/KF5 support. Release announcement. |
| July 8, 2025 | 3.3 | Dropped Qt 5/KF5 support, moved to Qt 6/KF6 and replaced Phonon with GStreamer. Release announcement. |
| June 17, 2026 | 3.3.3 | KDE’s latest listed release as of August 18, 2026, with fixes including suspend inhibition, layout restoration, Wikipedia parsing and playlist duplication. Release announcement. |
In short, Qt 5/KF5 describes 3.0; Qt 6/KF6 and GStreamer describe 3.3. Do not use 3.0’s dependency information to judge the current release.
Rank #3
- Richly Pre-loaded & Flexibly Customizable-The Mp3 player comes pre-installed with popular music, audiobook, and reading apps like Spotify, Pandora, Audible, and Kindle for out-of-the-box convenience. Built on the Google Play Store, MP3 also allows you to freely install, update or uninstall apps, adapting its functionality to your needs and truly fitting your personal usage habits.
- Parental Controls for Granular Management-The built-in Parental Control app allows you to set overall device rules (such as usage time, schedules, and functions), as well as apply precise restrictions to individual applications, effectively guiding your child's digital entertainment experience.
- Stream Online & Play Local Music-Enjoy the best of both worlds: stream millions of songs from services like Spotify and Apple Music, or play your personal music library stored on the device with the built-in local music player. Access all your music, online or offline, seamlessly in one player.
- Powerful Local Playback-The built-in local music player offers extensive compatibility with various audio formats, including MP3, FLAC, APE, OGG, M4A, AAC, WMA, MP2, and WAV. It provides multiple ways to sort your library (by Title, Artist, Album, Folder, etc.) and flexible playback modes (Shuffle, List loop, Sing loop, Sequential play), enabling professional-grade management and playback of your local music collection.
- A Pocket-Sized Cinema-The built-in video player smoothly handles 720P and 1080P HD videos. Paired with the 4-inch IPS touch screen and a dedicated HIFI audio module, the mp4 player delivers an immersive, high-quality viewing experience right in the palm of your hand.
Where to get Amarok, and what to check first
KDE’s Amarok application page points Linux users to distribution package managers, Discover or another AppStream software store, Flathub and source tarballs. Which version you receive depends on the distribution or package channel, so check the version before installing. If you specifically need the historical 3.0 release, use its announcement and linked KDE download information; for a new installation, check the current release instead.
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- Keep a backup before switching. Preserve important playlists and configuration, especially if moving from Amarok 2.x or relying on scripts.
- Check the integrations you rely on. External services can change independently of Amarok, and the developers documented limitations in 3.0.
- Do not assume Plasma is required. Amarok is a KDE application, but the official page’s Linux availability does not establish that the Plasma desktop itself is mandatory for every package.
Who should consider Amarok?
Amarok suits listeners who want a collection-oriented desktop player with tools for organizing a substantial local library, managing ratings and playlists, and working with music information. Its breadth is a strength for that use case, but can feel like unnecessary complexity if you only want a minimal player. It is not a streaming subscription service, and its online integrations should not be treated as guaranteed substitutes for dedicated services.
For current users, the practical choice is to evaluate the version offered for your Linux system—especially the current 3.3.x line—rather than installing 3.0 on the assumption that it is still the newest. Amarok 3.0 is best understood as the long-delayed stable Qt 5/KF5 foundation that helped make subsequent development possible.
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