Amarok 2.2.1 Preview

Amarok 2.2.1 hasn't been yet released but it's developers posted a preview which sounds interesting. Among the improvements in Amarok 2.2.1:

Optional support for KNotify.

• New toolbar with nicer looks (you will also be able to select a "slim" version for small screens).
• "Jump To" feature for quick playlist navigation.
• Better Podcast support.
• Enhanced playlist inline editor.
• Full screen mode toggle, allowing to show Amarok without window decorations.

But what I like the most is the way collection scanner now adds new files: it uses incremental recursive scan, so Amarok will now no longer scan subdirectories whose mtimes have not changed:

For instance, in a setup like 3,000 files in your main folder, plus a few thousand files each in a few subfolders for a total of 10,000 tracks, if you added a single file to the top-level folder and had incremental recursive scanning turned on (the default), you'd cause a rescan of your entire music collection -- all 10,000 tracks or so. Now, if you add a single file to the top-level folder, you'll only cause a rescan of 3,000 tracks...which is still a lot, but even more of a reason to use a hierarchy.

[via Amarok blog]