kew 3.7.3

3.7.3

New Features

• Added support for USLT lyrics tag including USLT with embedded synchronized lrc content. Suggested by @gzemlevskiy17.

Bugfixes

• Change makefile and kew.c so that locale install dir derives from PREFIX. Found by @yurivict.

kew 3.7.2

3.7.2

New Features

• kew play <filepath> , plays a file or a the contents of a directory. By @Overionised.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug with running 'kew song' on macOS. Reported by @spacetime-labs.

kew 3.7.1

3.7.1

• Fix screen was not getting cleared when switching views if hidesidecover was set to 1. Found by @bholroyd.

3.7.0

Biggest news in this release: Optimisations for large music collections/slow disks and a key binding/input handling overhaul.

• Optimisations: Faster loading of previous playlist. So if you are used to running 'kew all' for instance this will be significantly faster, especially for people with large collections. The new method should be up to 20 times faster for loading a big last used playlist.

• The library is now always cached. It scans the library only if the files have changed, which it checks at the top level. This will be much faster if you have music on a slow disk. But it's all still very simple, no database dependencies or anything, just a flat binary file with the bare essentials. It's not a lot of data: 1k songs = 60KiB on disk.

• Key binding overhaul: This allows for more advanced key bindings. You can now bind more keys and key combinations. The new format was suggested by @jaoh.

Som examples:

bind = +, volUp, +5%
bind = Shift+s, stop
bind = mouseMiddle, enqueueAndPlay

The old format config files will still work for the most part, but to see examples of the new style, delete your kewrc file.

• The help page will now fully reflect the keys you have bound.

• Handle both synchronized and unsynchronized vorbis lyrics. Suggested by @hiruocha.

• Auto-scrolling lyrics in the lyrics page for synced lyrics. Also added the ability to scroll lyrics manually. By @noiamnote.

• The app and readme has been translated into japanese and chinese. Thank you for help with the chinese translation @hiruocha.

• New theme: catpuccin mocha by @pixel-peeper.

• New theme: neutral, uses only the default foreground color.

• The cover is now visible on the left side on most views. Can be disabled by setting hideSideCover=1 in the config file.

• Reverted to being neutral in album color mode when no music is playing.

Bug Fixes

• Don't enqueue the .m3u files themselves when mass enqueueing.

• Fixes a bug related to certain types of mp3 files, where the song metadata wasn't switching in the UI. Found by: @Chromium-3-Oxide.

• Fixes a bug in library view where under some conditions, the position of the selected row could jump upwards.

• Made the path validation function less strict to avoid false positives. Reported by: DimaFyodorov.

• Removed hardcoded paths in Makefile to avoid conflicting paths. Found by @hpjansson.

• Fixed a few minor bugs with the library UI. Found by @bholroyd.

• Fixed full width characters not displayed in notifications. Found by @Chromium-3-Oxide.

Contributors

Thank you also especially to contributors @LeahTheSlug, @jaoh, @bholroyd, @Chromium-3-Oxide and @hpjansson, @Vafone for reporting many issues and helping out.

Thank you to @bholroyd for making the kew theme editor: https://bholroyd.github.io/Kew-tip/

Thank you to all the beta testers!

Sponsors

Thank you to Christian Mummelthey, imalee.sk and @sandrock. for their donations.

kew 3.7.0

3.7.0

Biggest news in this release: Optimisations for large music collections/slow disks and a key binding/input handling overhaul.

• Optimisations: Faster loading of previous playlist. So if you are used to running 'kew all' for instance this will be significantly faster, especially for people with large collections. The new method should be up to 20 times faster for loading a big last used playlist.

• The library is now always cached. It scans the library only if the files have changed, which it checks at the top level. This will be much faster if you have music on a slow disk. But it's all still very simple, no database dependencies or anything, just a flat binary file with the bare essentials. It's not a lot of data: 1k songs = 60KiB on disk.

• Key binding overhaul: This allows for more advanced key bindings. You can now bind more keys and key combinations. The new format was suggested by @jaoh.

Som examples:

bind = +, volUp, +5%
bind = Shift+s, stop
bind = mouseMiddle, enqueueAndPlay

The old format config files will still work for the most part, but to see examples of the new style, delete your kewrc file.

• The help page will now fully reflect the keys you have bound.

• Handle both synchronized and unsynchronized vorbis lyrics. Suggested by @hiruocha.

• Auto-scrolling lyrics in the lyrics page for synced lyrics. Also added the ability to scroll lyrics manually. By @noiamnote.

• The app and readme has been translated into japanese and chinese. Thank you for help with the chinese translation @hiruocha.

• New theme: catpuccin mocha by @pixel-peeper.

• New theme: neutral, uses only the default foreground color.

• The cover is now visible on the left side on most views. Can be disabled by setting hideSideCover=1 in the config file.

• Reverted to being neutral in album color mode when no music is playing.

Bug Fixes

• Don't enqueue the .m3u files themselves when mass enqueueing.

• Fixes a bug related to certain types of mp3 files, where the song metadata wasn't switching in the UI. Found by: @Chromium-3-Oxide.

• Fixes a bug in library view where under some conditions, the position of the selected row could jump upwards.

• Made the path validation function less strict to avoid false positives. Reported by: DimaFyodorov.

• Removed hardcoded paths in Makefile to avoid conflicting paths. Found by @hpjansson.

• Fixed a few minor bugs with the library UI. Found by @bholroyd.

• Fixed full width characters not displayed in notifications. Found by @Chromium-3-Oxide.

Contributors

Thank you also especially to contributors @LeahTheSlug, @jaoh, @bholroyd, @Chromium-3-Oxide and @hpjansson, @Vafone for reporting many issues and helping out.

Thank you to @bholroyd for making the kew theme editor: https://bholroyd.github.io/Kew-tip/

Thank you to all the beta testers!

Sponsors

Thank you to Christian Mummelthey, imalee.sk and @sandrock. for their donations.

kew 3.6.4

3.6.4

• Fixed 'kew theme' command.

• Add support for vorbis lyrics for FLAC/Ogg/Opus files. We now have .lrc file support, SYLT mp3 lyrics support and now these. Should cover most cases.

kew 3.6.3

3.6.3

• Fixed issue on termux for people who don't have faad installed.

• If run with song arguments starts in track view like it's supposed to.

• Fixed song loading instability with flac and mp3.

kew 3.6.2

3.6.2

My apologies to everyone for the botched 3.6.0 release. We are slowing down the release cycle for new functionality, but will release bug fixes to this release.

• Fix kew not exiting cleanly on android.

• Fix update library from cache resulting in error.

3.6.1

• Fixed build issue on termux.

3.6.0

• kew now has a real logo and a tagline: "MUSIC FOR THE SHELL".

• We now also have a color associated with kew, which is red: #de2b4d.

• This color is now the default if you are not playing anything and are using album colors.

• The welcome screen that appears when the path is not set has been given much love.

• Song lyrics support through .lrc files. These need to already be on your computer. By @Rioprastyo17

• Song lyrics support through SYLT id3 tags. By @dandelion-75.

• Watch timestamped lyrics in track view or press 'm' in the same view for full page lyrics. By @ravachol.

• Bumped miniaudio to version v0.11.23 which among other things fixes a bug with some versions of mp3. By @hypercunx.

• Code cleanup, improved internal structure by A LOT and removed all globals among other things. There are still a bunch of little inconsistencies to work on, naming conventions and so on, but for the most part, I'm very pleased with the progress.

• There's now a diagram of kew's architecture included for devs who want to know how the internals are laid out.

• You can now finally set collaped paths such as ~/Music and they will be set that way in config. Suggested by @danielwerg.

• The config file is now respected and no longer changed by kew, only if you run kew path <path>. Instead there is a kewstaterc file in ~/.local/state that keeps the variables that can change in-app, these override what's in kewrc. Suggested by @danielwerg.

• Dropped Nerd Fonts in favor of ⇉,⇇,↻,⇄ which are all unicode symbols. While Nerdfonts is neat it's too much trouble for users to install things and troubleshoot for just 4 slightly better symbols.

• kew now restarts if it's already running in a different window. This replaces the ugly message that instructs the user to run 'kill'. Suggested by @amigthea.

• Gradients are now enabled when using themes, not just when using album colors. It's the little things that count.

• Playlist max files limit raised to 50k songs. Suggested by: @Saijin_Naib.

Bug Fixes

• Path is expanded correctly when providing it through the first screen that let's you choose a path.

• Don't create ~/.config/kew/themes dir if there are no themes to be copied (user hasn't done sudo make install).

• Fixed a bug with the library cache ids that was introduced in the last version.

• Fixed a build issue on some versions of macOS.

• Fixed an issue with replay gain being calculated in the wrong place.

Sponsors

Thank you to for the generous donation @LTeder!

kew 3.6.1

3.6.1

• Fixed build issue on termux.

3.6.0

• kew now has a real logo and a tagline: "MUSIC FOR THE SHELL".

• We now also have a color associated with kew, which is red: #de2b4d.

• This color is now the default if you are not playing anything and are using album colors.

• The welcome screen that appears when the path is not set has been given much love.

• Song lyrics support through .lrc files. These need to already be on your computer. By @Rioprastyo17

• Song lyrics support through SYLT id3 tags. By @dandelion-75.

• Watch timestamped lyrics in track view or press 'm' in the same view for full page lyrics. By @ravachol.

• Bumped miniaudio to version v0.11.23 which among other things fixes a bug with some versions of mp3. By @hypercunx.

• Code cleanup, improved internal structure by A LOT and removed all globals among other things. There are still a bunch of little inconsistencies to work on, naming conventions and so on, but for the most part, I'm very pleased with the progress.

• There's now a diagram of kew's architecture included for devs who want to know how the internals are laid out.

• You can now finally set collaped paths such as ~/Music and they will be set that way in config. Suggested by @danielwerg.

• The config file is now respected and no longer changed by kew, only if you run kew path <path>. Instead there is a kewstaterc file in ~/.local/state that keeps the variables that can change in-app, these override what's in kewrc. Suggested by @danielwerg.

• Dropped Nerd Fonts in favor of ⇉,⇇,↻,⇄ which are all unicode symbols. While Nerdfonts is neat it's too much trouble for users to install things and troubleshoot for just 4 slightly better symbols.

• kew now restarts if it's already running in a different window. This replaces the ugly message that instructs the user to run 'kill'. Suggested by @amigthea.

• Gradients are now enabled when using themes, not just when using album colors. It's the little things that count.

• Playlist max files limit raised to 50k songs. Suggested by: @Saijin_Naib.

Bug Fixes

• Path is expanded correctly when providing it through the first screen that let's you choose a path.

• Don't create ~/.config/kew/themes dir if there are no themes to be copied (user hasn't done sudo make install).

• Fixed a bug with the library cache ids that was introduced in the last version.

• Fixed a build issue on some versions of macOS.

• Fixed an issue with replay gain being calculated in the wrong place.

Sponsors

Thank you to for the generous donation @LTeder!

kew 3.6.0

3.6.0

• kew now has a real logo and a tagline: "MUSIC FOR THE SHELL".

• We now also have a color associated with kew, which is red: #de2b4d.

• This color is now the default if you are not playing anything and are using album colors.

• The welcome screen that appears when the path is not set has been given much love.

• Song lyrics support through .lrc files. These need to already be on your computer. By @Rioprastyo17

• Song lyrics support through SYLT id3 tags. By @dandelion-75.

• Watch timestamped lyrics in track view or press 'm' in the same view for full page lyrics. By @ravachol.

• Bumped miniaudio to version v0.11.23 which among other things fixes a bug with some versions of mp3. By @hypercunx.

• Code cleanup, improved internal structure by A LOT and removed all globals among other things. There are still a bunch of little inconsistencies to work on, naming conventions and so on, but for the most part, I'm very pleased with the progress.

• There's now a diagram of kew's architecture included for devs who want to know how the internals are laid out.

• You can now finally set collaped paths such as ~/Music and they will be set that way in config. Suggested by @danielwerg.

• The config file is now respected and no longer changed by kew, only if you run kew path <path>. Instead there is a kewstaterc file in ~/.local/state that keeps the variables that can change in-app, these override what's in kewrc. Suggested by @danielwerg.

• Dropped Nerd Fonts in favor of ⇉,⇇,↻,⇄ which are all unicode symbols. While Nerdfonts is neat it's too much trouble for users to install things and troubleshoot for just 4 slightly better symbols.

• kew now restarts if it's already running in a different window. This replaces the ugly message that instructs the user to run 'kill'. Suggested by @amigthea.

• Gradients are now enabled when using themes, not just when using album colors. It's the little things that count.

• Playlist max files limit raised to 50k songs. Suggested by: @Saijin_Naib.

Bug Fixes

• Path is expanded correctly when providing it through the first screen that let's you choose a path.

• Don't create ~/.config/kew/themes dir if there are no themes to be copied (user hasn't done sudo make install).

• Fixed a bug with the library cache ids that was introduced in the last version.

• Fixed a build issue on some versions of macOS.

• Fixed an issue with replay gain being calculated in the wrong place.

Sponsors

Thank you to for the generous donation @LTeder!

kew 3.5.3

3.5.3

• Fixes a bug that affects the library cache. This bug has the effect of making startup times for kew be slower on already slow HDDs.

3.5.2

• Fixed line in cover being erased in landscape mode on some terminals. (@hartalex)

• Fixed long names no longer scrolling.

3.5.1

• Fix issue/test on homebrew.

3.5.0

Now with themes and Android support

New in this release:

• Fully customizable colors

• Themes supporting both TrueColor RGB and the terminal 16-color palette

• Theme pack with 16 included themes

• Android support

• Fixed TTY flickering

• Improved search

Themes

Press t to cycle available themes.

To set a theme from the command-line, run:

kew theme themename (ie 'kew theme midnight')

Put themes in ~/.config/kew/themes (~/Library/Preferences/kew/themes on macOS).

Android

I haven't looked at battery life aspects yet, but staying in library view will be easier on the battery than using track view with the visualizer. You can also press v to toggle the visualizer on or off.

TTY problems resolved

The flickering in TTY has been fixed. Btw, if you are on tty or have limited colors and font on your terminal, try pressing i (for other color modes), v (for visualizer off) and b (for ascii cover). That should make it look much more easy on the eye!

Move to Codeberg

We now have a repo on Codeberg and that will be the preferred repo going forward. But people will be welcome to contribute in whichever place they prefer. Except for PRs, PRs need to go to codeberg, develop branch.

OpenSuse

We are now back on openSuse, our package there hadn't been updated in a long time, due to openSuse not having faad lib.

We still need a Fedora package. We already have a RPM spec that @kazeevn added and everything.

Thank you to @Welpyes for bringing up Termux and helping out with that, and @arcathrax for fixing the ultrawide monitor bug. Thank you to mantarimay for updating the openSuse library.

Sponsors and Donations Wanted

Thank you to a new sponsor, @BasedScience!

Please support this effort:
https://ko-fi.com/ravachol
https://github.com/sponsors/ravachol.

• Ravachol

New Features / Improvements

• Theme colors, both TrueColor and 16-color palette theming. Cycle by pressing 't'.

• Android compatibility! Please see ANDROID-INSTRUCTIONS.md for how to get kew on your phone. (@Welpyes)

• Improved the search function so that albums are shown below an artist hit.

• Improved installation instructions for Fedora and openSuse in the README.

• Enabled the detection of FAAD2 (which handles m4a) on Fedora properly in the makefile.

• Made makefile compatible with openSuse Tumbleweed. The kew package has been updated on openSuse for the first time in a long time, thank you mantarimay (maintainer on openSuse).

• Added an icon indicating if the song is playing or paused before the title at the top when the logo is hidden.

• Shows the playlist from the first song (if it's in view), instead of always starting from the playing song. Suggested by @affhp.

• Improved the safety of various functions and addressed potential vulnerabilities.

• Don't make a space for the cover if there is none on landscape view.

• Improved the instructions in the help view.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed visualizer crashing the app on ultrawide monitors.

• Added null check for when exporting an empty playlist to .m3u.

• Prevent flickering when scrolling on TTY and likely on some other terminals as well.

• Search: fixed files being reordered when scrolling on macOS/kitty.