Preview sound files in Gnome

Nautilus, the file manager for the GNOME desktop has a cool feature of playing music whenever the mouse is over an icon representing an audio file. To enable sound preview, you will have to install GStreamer Ugly Plug-ins and turn on Preview sound files in Nautilus.

1. Make sure you have installed gstreamer-plugins-ugly

yum install gstreamer-plugins-ugly

GStreamer Ugly Plug-ins is a set of plug-ins that have good quality and correct functionality, but distributing them might pose problems. So, this plug-in probably will not be included in Linux distribution and you will have to install it manually.

2. Turn on “Preview sound files”

Open GNOME file manager and under “Preview sound files” menu set “Always” or “Local Files Only”.

Nautilus -> Edit -> Preferences -> Preview -> Sound Files -> [Always] or [Local Files Only]

If you set “Always” then sound preview will be performed for local files and files on other file systems while “Local Files” setting will perform preview action for local files only.

Now, if you move mouse over audio file like MP3 or OGG on GNOME desktop, playing should start automatically without need to click on file. The same action will be performed in Nautilus file manager but only for Icon and Compact view. Preview sound files does not work for “List view”.

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