Encore

Encore is a fullscreen now-playing display for Linux. It follows MPD or any MPRIS player (Spotify, Firefox, VLC, mpv, Rhythmbox...) and shows the current song with its album art, colours drawn from the cover or the artist image behind it, time-synced lyrics and three layouts, plus a lyrics manager and lyric clip export. It displays and controls playback (play/pause, seek, previous/next); it is not a full player or MPD client.

Screenshots

Encore Classic	Classic	Vibrant

Features

• Three layouts: Encore Classic, Classic and Vibrant, with a moving album-art backdrop and an "Up next" card
• Album colours for text, icons and bars, drawn from the cover, or from the artist image when it is the background
• A switchable display font for titles, lyrics and the clock: the bundled Figtree, any installed font or a font file
• Time-synced lyrics from local files, a cache, LRCLIB or KuGou
• A lyrics manager for searching, importing, editing and re-timing lyrics, with a tap-to-sync view
• Lyric clip export as share-ready MP4s in 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1
• Artist background images from a local folder, TheAudioDB or Deezer
• Works with MPD or any MPRIS player, switching between them as they come and go and reconnecting automatically
• Native Wayland and X11 windows that rescale to any size
• Configuration file and environment variables

Installation

Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian

1. Download the .deb file (encore_<version>_amd64.deb) from the latest release.
2. Double-click the downloaded file to open it in the package installer, then click Install.
3. Start Encore from the applications menu.

MPRIS players such as Spotify, Firefox and VLC work with no further setup. MPD users also install mpc (sudo apt install mpc), which fetches MPD's album art. To remove Encore, uninstall the encore package from the package manager, or run sudo apt remove encore.

Other distributions

Download encore-<version>-x86_64-linux.tar.gz from the latest release, unpack it and run the install script:

tar -xzf encore-<version>-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
cd encore-<version>-x86_64-linux
./install.sh

The script installs the binary to ~/.local/bin/encore and a desktop entry to ~/.local/share/applications/encore.desktop, without root access. ./install.sh --uninstall removes both. Each release also lists a SHA256SUMS file for checking the downloads (sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS).

An AUR package is planned.

Requirements

• Linux, on Wayland or X11, with a GPU driver that provides Vulkan or OpenGL (rendering uses wgpu).
• For the prebuilt .deb and tarball: x86_64 and glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Linux Mint 21, Debian 12 or newer).
• A playback source: an MPD server, or any MPRIS-capable player. MPRIS needs a D-Bus session bus, which desktop sessions provide. MPD needs mpc, which fetches its album art.
• Rust and cargo, only to build from source. rustup installs them.
• Optionally ffmpeg with libx264 and aac, for exporting lyric clips.

Distribution	MPD and mpc (MPD only)	ffmpeg (optional)
Arch	sudo pacman -S mpd mpc	sudo pacman -S ffmpeg
Debian/Ubuntu	sudo apt install mpd mpc	sudo apt install ffmpeg
Fedora	sudo dnf install mpd mpc	sudo dnf install ffmpeg (from RPM Fusion, which provides the full codec set)
openSUSE	sudo zypper install mpd mpclient	sudo zypper install ffmpeg (from Packman, which provides the full codec set)

MPD itself is configured in Players.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/Baguma03/encore
cd encore
cargo build --release

The binary is target/release/encore. Artist background images are downloaded automatically; images added by hand go in ~/.local/share/encore/artists/ (see Artist backgrounds). Local lyric files go in ~/.local/share/encore/lyrics/ (see Lyrics). To install the binary, run:

cargo install --path .

Install with cargo

cargo install --git https://github.com/Baguma03/encore

The binary lands in ~/.cargo/bin, which must be on PATH.

Desktop entry

The .deb package and install.sh install a desktop entry. For a build from source or cargo install, install the desktop entry from the repository to start Encore from a desktop launcher such as GNOME's, KDE's or Cinnamon's:

install -Dm644 encore.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/encore.desktop

The entry runs encore, so ~/.cargo/bin must be on PATH (as it is after cargo install with a standard Rust setup).

The window's class (app id) is encore, for use in compositor window rules.

Quick start

1. Start MPD (see Players) or any MPRIS player.
2. Run encore.

Encore starts fullscreen. Esc or q quits, f toggles fullscreen and ? shows the keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
f / F11	Toggle fullscreen
c	Toggle cursor visibility
d	Toggle debug window
Space (or click)	Play/pause
← / →	Seek 5 seconds back / forward within the song
< / > (Shift+, / Shift+.)	Previous / next track (, and . alone do nothing)
l	Cycle layouts (Encore Classic → Classic → Vibrant)
h	Cycle layouts backwards (Encore Classic → Vibrant → Classic)
y	Toggle lyrics
Shift+y	Open/close the lyrics manager
t	Toggle date/clock overlay
b	Toggle the moving backdrop
a	Toggle the artist background for the current layout
k	Toggle album colours
u / Shift+u	Cycle the display font forwards / backwards through display_fonts
s	Toggle the previous/next buttons beside the Encore Classic layout's progress bar
j	Cycle the Encore Classic layout's lyric alignment (left → centre → right → right column, left-aligned)
o	Cycle the Encore Classic layout's lyric flow (classic → stacked → scrolling)
e	Open/close the lyric clip export panel
[ / ]	Mark the clip in-point / out-point at the current playback position
?	Show/hide the keyboard shortcuts overlay
Esc / q	Quit (Esc closes the shortcuts overlay first when it is open; q always quits)

Keyboard shortcuts overlay

? opens a "Keyboard shortcuts" cheatsheet over a dimmed backdrop: a dark card with the keys grouped into Playback, Lyrics, Display, Export and App across three columns, each key drawn as an outlined monospace key cap beside its description, with alternative keys separated by a / and the keys of a combination joined by a +. Press ? again, press Esc, click the × in the card's corner, or click outside the card to close it; the click does not toggle play/pause. Other keys keep working while it is open. While the export panel or the lyrics manager is open, ? does nothing.

Documentation

• Layouts and appearance: the three layouts, album colours, up next, moving backdrop and backgrounds
• Configuration: the configuration file and environment variables
• Players: MPD setup, MPRIS players, choosing a source and player, album art
• Lyrics: lyric sources, online lookup, the lyrics manager and the sync view
• Exporting lyric clips: formats, the export panel, quality and output
• Artist backgrounds: artist images and artist name parsing
• Releasing: building and publishing the .deb and tarball release packages

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE. The bundled Figtree and Lexend Deca fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 — see assets/font/OFL-Figtree.txt and assets/font/OFL-LexendDeca.txt.

Credits

Encore began as a fork of mpd-display-rs by Allison Linhart, original repository has since been taken down.

Built with eframe/egui, the mpd crate and zbus. Online lyrics come from LRCLIB and KuGou, and artist images from TheAudioDB and Deezer. The now playing display is set in Figtree by Erik Kennedy (licence) unless another display font is chosen, and the interface in Lexend Deca by the Lexend Project (licence), both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.