FolderView: Rhythmbox Plugin To Browse Your Music By Folders

I've recently discovered a new Rhythmbox plugin called FolderView. Like the name suggests, this plugin allows you to browse the music in Rhythmbox by folders.

Unfortunately the plugin doesn't work like I would have expected: it only allows you to browse the music already in the Rhythmbox database. So if you don't want to add your music to the Rhythmbox library, you can't use this plugin to simply browse the music by folders like it is with Exaile for instance.


Even so, the plugin is very useful if your music collection is well organized in case of folder structure (by artist / album / genre or whatever). For example, if your music is not tagged or badly tagged, Rhythmbox won't be of too much help in finding the music you want to play but with FolderView, you should easily be able to find any track you want to listen to (of course, you need a decent folder structure for that). Another use for FolderView is when you don't remember a song name but you know the folder it's in or simply want to listen for some music in a certain directory.

Installation

Update: WebUpd8 reader zedtux has created a PPA for FolderView so you can install it in Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04 and 10.10 using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zedtux/rhythmbox-folderview
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-folderview

For manual installation (don't worry, you don't have to compile anything!) which works on any Ubuntu version or Linux distribution, do the following:

1. You'll need SVN to be able to download FolderView so install that first:

sudo apt-get install subversion

2. Then install the plugin:

mkdir -p ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins/ #in case it doesn't exists already
cd ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins/
svn checkout http://folderview.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ folderview

Then simply start Rhythmbox, go to Edit > Plugins and enable FolderView.

When I first discovered this plugin, it didn't work with Rhythmbox 0.13.1. The bug has now been fixed but there is still one small bug that needs fixing: if you're playing a song and pause it, when changing folders, Rhythmbox will start playing the first song in that new folder. It's not a big issue, but still a bit annoying. Must have something to do with the fact that Rhythmbox does not have a stop button. Hopefully this bug will be fixed soon (I've already reported it).

Note: I've tested the plugin with Rhythmbox 0.13.1 only (on both Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10)!


See also: Nautilus "Enqueue In Rhythmbox" Plugin Updated, Can Now Add Folders Recursively

Thanks to iBentu for the FolderView link and to sunshine1985115 for fixing the Rhythmbox 0.13.1 issue so fast!