How to install Clementine Music Player on Ubuntu 20.04

Clementine is a free and open-source multiplatform music player focusing on a fast and easy to use interface for searching and playing your music. You can listen songs from removable devices (CDs, DVDs, USB Drives), cloud Platforms (Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive), radio stations (SKY.fm, rockradio.com, Last.fm) and other online sources.

It’s an cross-platform application (inspired by Amarok 1.4) available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux. The user interface boasts a Up-to-date and minimal design. It consists of a several shortcut buttons, menu bar, Navigation panel and a pane to display your playlist.

Clementine is written in C++ (Qt) and is particularly popular with people who manage large music collections and one of my favorite feature of this app is it automatically detect and remove duplicate files, repeat audio track, playlist or album, shuffle songs and use a powerful search tool, so as to find music on your computer or the Internet.

Key Features of Clementine music player:

• Free and Open-Source
• Cross-platform – works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
• Lyrics and artist biographies and photos.
• Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organise your music.
• Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
• Discover and download Podcasts.
• Search and play your local music library.
• Transfer of music to some iPhone, iPods, MTP or any USB storage player.
• Many more..

This article explains two methods of installing Clementine Music Player on Ubuntu 20.04.

Choose the installation method that is most appropriate for your environment.

Method 1: Installing Clementine as a Snap Package

The easiest way to install Clementine on Ubuntu 20.04 is by using the snap packaging system.

A snap package is a type of universal Linux package that you can enjoy irrespective of the distro. Its an self-contained software packages that include the binary all dependencies needed to run the application.

All you need is the snap service pre-configured, In the case of Ubuntu 20.04, it comes with snap pre-installed.

If snapd package is not already installed then you can install it by running following command.

$ sudo apt install snapd

Note: Snap packages can be installed from either the command-line or via the Ubuntu Software application.

This is actually the Snap version of the Clementine. It can be used on any Linux distribution that has Snap support.

Open your terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type the following command to install the Clementine Music Player package.

$ sudo snap install clementine

At this step, you have successfully installed Clementine Music Player on Ubuntu 20.04 system.

If you are not comfortable with the command line, open Ubuntu Software, search for “Clementine” and install the application.

Type the following command to update Clementine package.

$ sudo snap refresh --list

Method 2: Installing Clementine via PPA Repository

If you want to install the most recent version of Clementine, you can use the PPA repository.

Personal Package Archives (PPA) are software repositories designed for Ubuntu users and are easier to install than other third-party repositories. PPAs are often used to distribute pre-release software so that it can be tested.

Step #1

First of all open the terminal from system application launcher and type the following command to add the Clementine PPA to your system.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine

Step #2

Then, execute the following commands to install Clementine package on your Ubuntu system.

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install clementine

Once installed, launch it from your system application menu.

Starting Clementine Music Player

Clementine can be launched from the command line by typing clementine or by clicking on the Colorpicker icon (Activities -> Clementine).

Clementine User Interface:

How to Uninstall Clementine from Ubuntu 20.04

For some reason, If you want to uninstall Clementine Music Player, refer following methods.

Method #1

If you have installed Clementine via Snap type the following command:

$ sudo snap remove clementine

Method #2

If you have installed the appication via PPA then uninstall by running the below commands.

Step #1

It’s most likely that you added the PPA using add-apt-repository command. You can use the same command to remove the PPA as well. Just give it --remove option in the command.

$ sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine

Step #2

As of now we removed the PPA. What about the applications installed using these PPAs? Will they be removed as a result of removing the PPA? The answer is NO.

So this is when ppa-purge comes in picture. It not only disables the PPA but also uninstalls all the programs installed by the PPA or revert them to original version provided by your distribution.

So type the following command to install the ppa-purge package and uninstall the Clementine package.

$ sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine

Conclusion

I hope that now you have a good understanding of How to install Clementine Music Player on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

If anyone does have any questions about what we covered in this guide then feel free to ask in the comment section below and I will do my best to answer those.