Banshee Plugins

Many plugins are available for Banshee. Most of the well-known plugins are now (as of Banshee 0.13.2) packaged in the core of Banshee. The All About Plugins chapter of the Banshee Guide is also be worth reading.

Core Plugins

These plugins are included with Banshee core, however, your distribution may package them separately.

  • Audioscrobbler - Uploads your music listening habits to your audioscrobbler profile where AS provides many services based on your profile.
  • Music Sharing - Provides DAAP music sharing functionality. Stream your library to (and from) iTunes, Rhythmbox or other Banshee users.
  • Metadata Searcher - Automated Cover Art Fetching and Metadata Supplementing through MusicBrainz
  • MultiMedia Keys - Adds GNOME-configured multimedia key support to Banshee.
  • Notification Area Icon - Adds a Banshee icon to your panel's notification area which can control Banshee and show notification of track changes.
  • Podcasting - Podcast listening plugin, by Mike Urbanski.
  • Mini Mode - Allows controlling Banshee through a simplified interface.
  • Music Recommendations - Recommends new artists, tracks and albums based on the playing artist using Last.FM.
  • Internet Radio - Listen to internet streaming radio.

Unofficial Plugins

These plugins are in various stages of development, and aren't ready for official inclusion in core or official plugins. Your mileage may vary.

  • Alarm Clock - Allows Banshee to serve as an alarm clock. 
svn co http://banshee-unofficial-plugins.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/banshee-alarm-plugin
  • Cleanup - Cleanup the song library. For those times when you get rid of songs or move them to other locations, this plugin will cleanup the changes so banshee doesn't keep trying to play things that aren't there. 
svn checkout http://banshee-cleanup-plugin.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ banshee-cleanup-plugin
  • Fleow - Flip through your album covers in 3D. Further information including screenshots and video of fleow in action can be found on the Fleow website (http://fleow.berlios.de/) or the mailing list announcement (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/banshee-list/2006-December/msg00019.html). 
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/fleow/trunk fleow
  • Mirage - Mirage is a ready-to-try implementation of the latest research in automatic playlist generation and music similarity. Mirage analyzes your music collection and computes similarity models for each song. After your music has been analyzed, Mirage is able to automatically generate playlists of similar music. Website (http://www.hop.at/mirage/)
  • AlbumArt - Display's Album Covers on the screen corresponding to the current song. More info can be found at the website (http://www.den-4.com/node/5) or its GoogleCode site (http://code.google.com/p/album-art-plugin/issues/list). 
svn checkout http://album-art-plugin.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ album-art-plugin
  • ShowTrackOnChange - displays a configurable popup on the screen when a new track begins playing. Releases can be found on the project's site (http://www.den-4.com/node/27). Subversion source is also available: 
svn checkout http://showtrackonchange.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ showtrackonchange

Unmaintained Plugins

These plugins were started, led out into the wilderness of some sort of functionality, and then left to bitrot. They may or may not even compile. The Your Mileage Will Vary. If you aren't a developer looking for a project, then you should ignore these plugins.

  • Beagle Importer - Integrate Beagle and Banshee. 
svn co svn://svn.banshee-project.org/trunk/banshee-beagle-plugin
  • iTunes Music Store (iTms) - Purchase music from the iTunes store. 
svn co svn://svn.banshee-project.org/trunk/banshee-itunes-plugin
  • MP3tunes - by Jon Lech Johansen, of MP3Tunes.com employ, has been working on an MP3tunes music locker plugin. 
svn co svn://svn.banshee-project.org/trunk/banshee-locker-plugin
  • Wikipedia - Looks up artist information on Wikipedia within Banshee; can also search for lyrics from autolyrics.com (http://www.autolyrics.com). 
svn co svn://svn.banshee-project.org/trunk/banshee-wikipedia-plugin

How to Download, Compile and Install

You need to have Subversion installed to run the svn commands listed above.

Installing plugins from the source is relatively simple.

First check to make sure that you have all the build dependencies for Banshee. Each distribution packages things differently, so if you're not familiar with how to make sure that you have all development libraries that you will need, consult with documentation from your distribution. If you recieve errors during compile about missing packages, then you need to sort this out first. On Ubuntu Dapper, make sure you have the build-essential package installed.

Once you have checked out the source you want, go to the directory where it was checked out to (eg cd banshee-official-plugins) and run 

./autogen.sh

Some flags you may want to set:

  • --enable-user-plugins: this flag will direct the plugin to be installed to ~/.gnome2/banshee/plugins
  • --prefix={your_prefix-here}: If you are adding a plugin to a Banshee install that was shipped with your distribution, use --prefix=/usr unless you know better. Users who have installed Banshee from source will want to use the same prefix (the default is /usr/local).

If you are satisfied with the output of autogen, then run 

make

Check that there were no build errors. If none, run (as root, or sudo'd) 

make install

As long as make install did not yield any errors, your plugin should now be installed. Restart Banshee, and enable the plugin!

Retrieved from "http://www.banshee-project.org/Plugins"