Note on Installing Amarok on OS X

First of all, Amarok is not something you’ll get straight out of the box on OSX (sadly), but it’s not hard to install if you have Fink and are ready to spend a few minutes here and there interacting with the installation process.

9 June 2007, by Mortimer

In total, it took me two days to compile, but I didn’t really spend two days in front of my computer. It was compiling all alone in the back, day and night, stopping sometimes to tell me that I had to do something.

HOWTO: Install and run Amarok on OSX probably gives the nicest walk through on how to install Amarok.

Note: I couldn’t install gstreamer [1] when I tried, so when you are asked for it, select amarok-xine as package to install, you’ll save a lot of time trying to find what’s wrong.

When you are done compiling, you can launch your X11 and start Amarok from its terminal. This is not very handy, so I used Platypus to make a "fake" OSX .app that will launch Amarok for you and ensure that X11 is running correctly [2]. Note: this application does not contain Amarok and you still need to install it first via Fink.

Amarok.app

this is only a launcher app, be sure to also install Amarok.

935 download(s) since 25 July 2007

Date of online publication: 9 June 2007
last-update: 9 June 2007
Forum messages 16
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notes

[1] at the time I write this, there is a known bug in the Fink distribution that makes it impossible

[2] I based my script on the XEmacs Wrapper.

P.S.

I also tried the KDE/Mac Amarok distribution, but it was very unstable for me, so I kept to the fink installation.

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16 Forum messages

Note on Installing Amarok on OS X
14 June 2007 15:08

Any chance to upload your amarok package somewhere so we could use that instead of compiling 2 days?

thanks

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- Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 15 June 2007 15:58, by Mortimer
  
  Well, I have no idea how to do that specifically, and what took 2 days was compiling the dependencies, done automatically by Fink.
  
  I think fink is the safe way to go, you’ll get a clean install, easily updated and that you can reuse for other programs if you ever which.
  
  If you can point me to an easy way to package everything, I might consider doing it thought
  
  Reply to this message
  - Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 17 June 2007 23:35, by Mike
    
    Well, I did get it to compile, and Amarok started once, walked me through the wizard, then Xdarwin simply quit. Now any time I try to run Amarok, it spins it’s wheels for a few minutes and then Xdarwin quits again. Any pointers?
    Reply to this message
    - Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 19 September 2007 11:20, by Mike
      
      2 months and no reply? On any of the places I posted asking for help when the instructions everyone says to use didn’t result in a stable, usable app?
      
      Figures.
      
      I am *so* done with Macs. I’m sick of this. I can’t believe there isn’t even a decent MP3 player/librarian available for this crappy platform.
      
      Reply to this message
      - Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 19 September 2007 13:10, by Mortimer
        
        Sorry Mike,
        
        I am neither responsible for the OS X platforn nor for Amarok, I was just reporting on how I got it to work.
        
        Now, for pointers, here is what I can give you: 1- I don’t use XDarwin, but Apple’s X11.app, never crashed on me with Amarok 2- sometimes, Amarok will crash, without apparent reasons. It usually starts without problems afterwards, but sometimes, the window is not here, but there are still processes attached to Amarok, a ps -A | grep amarok (usually, there is a amarok or amarokapp lurking) and then some kill -9 on these processes are very helpful. 3- you can try songbird, it’s quite good too, even if it’s not yet perfect either...
        
        I agree with you, I can’t find a good player, I really dislike iTunes. Amarok is greaat but has a lot of drawbacks when running in X11 and using novel iPods.
        
        Reply to this message
        
        Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 15 October 2007 02:38, by Kirby
        
        The instructions you link to above say to install Xdarwin to use Amarok.
        Reply to this message
        
        Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 16 October 2007 15:59, by Mortimer
        
        well, it’s not an obligation, they are both easy to use and install. I already had X11.app from the OS X CDs installed, and that was enough.
        Reply to this message
Note on Installing Amarok on OS X
20 June 2007 21:09

I have modified the script for the Amarok.app in this way to make amarok be displayed as opened when it’s open: this way it works like iTunes.

The last line of the used script was:

$cmd "$@" &

The last part of the script is now:

$cmd "$@"

_var=$(ps -A | grep amarok | grep -v grep)

while [ -n "$_var" ]; do

sleep 3

_var=$(ps -A | grep amarok| grep -v grep)

done

I think "sleep 3" is a good compromise between system overload and usability...

Thanks this article was very informative for me.

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- Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 28 June 2007 17:14
  
  It’s again me.
  
  I found it is not really a good idea: if I set amarok to remain "in system tray" when I close it I am not able to remaximize it any more with this approach...
  
  Thanks again.
  
  Reply to this message
  - Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 28 June 2007 18:31, by Mortimer
    
    I have to check out how gimp.app does it.
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Note on Installing Amarok on OS X
15 October 2007 02:17, by Kirby

I’ve been through every page on the net about getting Amarok to run on OS X. I’ve posted a how-to on the only way non-programmers can get Amarok to run on a Mac at http://www.mikeycosm.org/amarokonosx.html . Hopefully this will save some other people the frustration that I had to go through.
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- Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 16 October 2007 16:03, by Mortimer
  
  well, I am sorry if that’s how you feel.
  
  I am not responsible for Amarok, so I can’t help you much more. I don’t think any of the things described here are very programmatic...
  
  But think of it, installing Amarok on a PC would imply installing Linux, which would require a lot more hasle than poping the OS X cd in you mac, installing X11, downloading Fink or MacPorts and clicking 3 buttons to launch an install...
  
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Note on Installing Amarok on OS X
2 February 2008 12:16, by schmidt-schnauze

Unfortunately the HOWTO-Link is broken. Does anybody have the HOWTO on his computer? Thank You
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- Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 2 February 2008 18:21, by Mortimer
  
  check out the runthrough on the Amarok wiki: http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/On_OS_X
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Note on Installing Amarok on OS X
7 February 2008 13:51, by holr

Just wanted to drop by and say thanks for all your hardwork. Amarok is such a great music player and its fantastic to get it running on the mac. I even used your growl + amarok.app to get a really nice setupI just hope they update libxine1 on fink for leopard, as this doesn’t compile for me (therefore no Amarok on leopard) and is the sole reason why I’m still using tiger!
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- Note on Installing Amarok on OS X 7 February 2008 15:44, by Mortimer
  
  Ok, I haven’t tried that yet, and I don’t happen to have tiger. But the new KDE4 "native" builds for OS X might be a better choice for you.
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