Songbird 1.10 beta adds two-way synchronisation

The Songbird development team has published a first beta of version 1.10 of its open source media player. According to the developers, Songbird 1.10 Beta 1 marks the successful completion of "a full transplant of Songbird’s device sync infrastructure".

Aimed at early adopters and testers, the latest development release add several new features and addresses some of the usability issues found in the application's device sync implementation. The new version allows users to manage the media on their devices with both drag-and-drop actions and the sync button. Using the sync button no longer deletes media from a user's device and the software is now "smart enough" to avoid duplicates when users mix and match their device transfer methods.

Support for two-way synchronisation has also been added in 1.10. In addition to simply sending media to their devices, users can also copy tracks from their portable devices into their Songbird library where the tracks are automatically organised by Artist and Album in the default Music directory.

Before running the beta, users are advised to back up their profiles. Those testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

More details about the first beta, including a list of known issues, can be found in the release notes and in a post on the Songbird blog. Songbird 1.10 Beta 1 Build 2031 is available to download for Windows and Mac OS X from the Songbird wiki. An 'untested' (and unsupported) 32-bit Linux version is also available.

Songbird is licensed under the GPLv2. The latest stable release is version 1.9.3, an update from mid-February that improved performance for large libraries.

See also:

• Songbird 1.9 improves performance for large libraries, a report from The H.
• Songbird drops Linux support, a report from The H.

(crve)