The modern GNOME desktop hasn't had a core application to playback audio files although many different audio/multimedia players exist. But now for the upcoming GNOME 48 desktop release, there is now a promoted core app for audio playback: Decibels.

The GNOME Decibels project has been promoted to being a Core App for handling playback of audio files on the GNOME desktop. Decibels will be branded as the GNOME "Audio Player" and address a shortcoming ever since Totem stopped handling audio files on the GNOME desktop long ago. Up to now Decibels had been developed as a GNOME Incubator project.

[1]

Per [2]this release engineering ticket , Decibels is now promoted to being a GNOME core app.

Though the programming language of choice may lead to GNOME Decibels not widely appearing on some Linux distributions in the near-term... As a rather unique choice, Decibels is written in TypeScript. Decibels though does use the GTK4 toolkit and libadwaita. But the use of TypeScript has been expressed as a potential near-term blocker for getting GNOME Decibels within the Debian/Ubuntu repositories and possibly elsewhere. In any case there is a Flatpak of the Decibels app for those interested.

[3]

Trying out the Flatpak version of the Decibels app myself today, it works and it's indeed a very simple audio player. So look for this official audio player app as part of the core apps for the GNOME 48 release in March.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=gnome_decibels_1_lrg

[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/AppOrganization/-/issues/25

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=gnome_decibels_2_lrg