Daphne is a modern Linux music player that’s built with GTK4 and the giD bindings for D. It’s free and open source software.
Installation
I evaluated Daphne with the Manjaro Linux distribution installing the software using Pamac. That’s Manjaro’s GUI package manager.
As you can see, I chose to install the Flatpak. A Flatpak app can usually run on Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, and others without needing a distro-specific package.
In Operation
You’re first prompted to select the location of your music library. I’ve loaded our CC-licensed small music collection which is used so that valid comparisons can be made between different music players.
Daphne’s core strength is clarity. The interface is organised around artists, albums, and songs, which makes browsing a local music collection feel natural rather than fussy. It also includes a play queue and listening history, so it covers the basics people actually use every day instead of trying to overwhelm them with niche features.
That said, Daphne has a good range of features:
- Intuitive and efficient music library browsing and searching.
- WYSIWYH (What You See Is What You Hear) playback queue with multiple Undo/Redo levels and sorting/randomization.
- Song playback history.
- Supports Internet radio stations.
- Uses GStreamer for the playback engine supporting most popular audio formats.
- Drag and drop from file managers.
- Fast song tag indexing using Taglib and SQLite3 for the library database.
- MPRS2 media player desktop integration.
- Customizable spectrum analyzer. Visualizers are not essential, but they add character. If you’re not a fan of the analyzer it can be turned off in the settings section.
- Named playlists.
- Multiple folders can be chosen.
- Command line player control.
Unfortunately, Daphne doesn’t support gapless playback. Gapless playback is important because some music is meant to flow continuously from one track to the next. It matters less for songs that are completely separate, but for albums built around continuity, it makes a noticeable difference.
Summary
Overall, Daphne is a promising local music player that focuses on usability, clean library browsing, and a polished desktop experience. It seems best suited to users who want a straightforward native Linux player with a modern interface, rather than a giant all-in-one audio management suite.
It’s a little surprising when a project includes extras like a spectrum analyzer before adding something as important to listening as gapless playback. Hopefully, gapless playback and tag editing will be added in a future release.
Internet radio functionality is very limited. Integration with an internet radio database would make a massive difference in usability.
ps_mem reports that memory usage is around 285MB. That’s a big on the high side.
Website: codeberg.org/Kymorphia/daphne-music
Support:
Developer: Element Green, Dejan Lekić
License: MIT License
Daphne is written in D. Learn D with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Graphical Music Players | |
|---|---|
| Tauon Music Box | Python-based music player that's an absolute gem |
| fooyin | Customizable music player similar to foobar2000 |
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| Rhythmbox | Integrated music management application, originally inspired by iTunes |
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| Lollypop | Modern music player for GNOME |
| Amarok | KDE audio player offering a wealth of features, yet intuitive to use |
| Musique | Small but sophisticated graphical music player |
| Cantata | Feature-rich client for Music Player Daemon |
| Quod Libet | GTK+-based music management program |
| GogglesMM | Polished music collection manager and player |
| Aqualung | Advanced, gapless Gtk2-based audio player |
| MusicPod | Music, podcast and internet radio player |
| gmusicbrowser | Music jukebox for large collections |
| Yarock | Qt music player with browsing based on cover art |
| qoob | A foobar-like music player |
| GNOME Music | Simple music player |
| Pragha | Distinguished and resplendent open source music player |
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| Elisa | Simple music player developed by the KDE community |
| QMPlay2 | Video and audio player which can play most formats and codecs |
| Tomahawk | Qt-based music player |
| mtoc | Visually-rich music player and library browser |
| Kalorite | Lightweight audio player |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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