Clementine is a free, open-source cross-platform music player forked from Amarok. See features, pros, cons, and FAQs for 2026.
Clementine began in February 2010 when developers David Sansome, John Maguire, and Arnaud Bienner forked Amarok 1.4, the beloved KDE 3-era music player, after many users felt the rewritten Amarok 2 had removed familiar features and workflows. Built on Qt 4 and the GStreamer (later also Xine) multimedia backend, Clementine kept the classic three-pane library browser and playlist-centric interface that longtime Amarok users wanted.
The project reached a stable 1.0 release and grew a loyal following on Linux, Windows, and macOS through the mid-2010s, becoming one of the most widely packaged third-party music players in Linux distribution repositories.
Clementine's last stable release before a long hiatus was in 2016, and active development largely paused. Community interest kept the codebase alive on GitHub through release candidates, and on 15 October 2024 the project published version 1.4.1, its first non-release-candidate stable build since 2016, showing the project remains maintained by volunteers rather than abandoned.
In 2018, a contributor created Strawberry Music Player, a more actively maintained fork of Clementine focused on Qt 6 compatibility, gapless and high-resolution audio playback, and trimming legacy dependencies. Many users who want ongoing updates now choose Strawberry, while Clementine remains popular with users who prefer its original, unmodified interface and are comfortable with a slower release cadence.
At its core, Clementine indexes a local music library and lets users build smart and dynamic playlists, tag and organize files, and browse by artist, album, or genre. It also connects to a range of internet radio and streaming services, supports podcast search and download, can transcode audio between formats, and can sync music to iPods and other portable devices. A visualization engine and lyrics/song-info panel round out the listening experience.
Yes, though slowly; a stable 1.4.1 release arrived in October 2024 after an eight-year gap, and the project continues on GitHub with volunteer maintainers.
Yes, Clementine is free, open-source software released under the GNU General Public License with no paid version.
Strawberry is a 2018 fork of Clementine built for Qt 6 with more active development, gapless playback improvements, and fewer legacy dependencies, while Clementine retains the original codebase and interface.
Clementine has historically supported streaming integrations including Spotify, SoundCloud, and Last.fm through API keys, though availability of specific integrations can change as third-party APIs evolve.
Clementine runs on Windows, macOS, and Unix-like systems including most Linux distributions.
Yes, Clementine includes built-in podcast search and download functionality.
Clementine was created by David Sansome along with contributors John Maguire and Arnaud Bienner, forking it from Amarok 1.4 in 2010.
Yes, Clementine can interact with iPod devices to transfer and manage music, similar to iTunes.