Can the Rhythmbox interface be improved?
That is one of the reasons why I developed my alternative-toolbar plugin. For Ubuntu users, back came the compact toolbar that was lost when Rhythmbox moved to v2.99 and later.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been working with Ozon and Georgi Karavasilev to see if we could just go that little bit further.
What do you think?
Rhythmbox in this design has morphed into something new – something refreshed – but still the same brilliantly extendable media-application that it has always been.
Play-controls are now at the bottom. The header-bar is used to control filtering.
… as well as searching …
There are a number of options to play with – look in the plugin preferences.
To install you can use my PPA and add the alternative-toolbar plugin
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox-plugins
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar
If you don’t like PPA’s – or are not using Ubuntu – full manual instructions are on my project page.
The new look is the standard (automatic) for gnome-shell users. Don’t worry – other desktop environments can use this via the preference – choose “Client Side Decoration”.
If you don’t like this – use the “Toolbar” option. Don’t forget – choose “Show compact toolbar” for the slim-line play-controls.
I would love some feedback and most importantly help with further development – please drop by the project page (link above) or feedback in comments here.
xpress-ubuntu 
Thanks for your great job ! Rhythmbox is much more modern now.
However I often use internet radio. Would it be possible to add a radio button in the header bar in order to hide the lateral pannel which is not very useful anymore.
Thanks!
Hi,
thanks for the feedback. Its an interesting idea. Please can you create an issue on my project page so that this can be discussed fully – its easier there rather in comments here.
thanks
Designer guy talking – currently the headerbar is used for switching tacklist views. A Radio is a source, not a view. Adding it to the headerbar would break one of the basic UI principles – one placeholder hosts only elements from one and the same type.
Rhythmbox is such a beautiful project. A true champion of stability and incremental improvement. This work seems to follow suit.
I would love to see such work implemented, and from where it origins, I trust that the authors are in full control of which APIs or plugins would be broken by a UI change.
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Reblogged this on and commented:
I really like the looks and feel this team have come up with for Rythembox and I’ll proabably try it out on my new box when jessie is released…