FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Strawberry does not start
If you are on Linux or macOS, try starting Strawberry from a terminal window, you should then see more output.
Try starting with a new database, rename strawberry.db to strawberry.db.bak. See https://wiki.strawberrymusicplayer.org/wiki/Database_integrity_check for database location.
Strawberry does not respect Qt style, KDE theme or icons on Linux.
This isn't a bug in Strawberry, it's because Strawberry uses Qt 6 and KDE is still using Qt 5. Any settings configured in KDE won't apply to Qt 6 programs. So you need to specifically configure Qt style and icon theme for Qt 6. You need the qt6ct utility (https://github.com/trialuser02/qt6ct) for this. You should ask your Linux distribution for help with setting this up as this can be different on different distributions. Once a Qt 6 release of KDE is ready this won't be a problem anymore.
For icon themes that only provide SVG icons, you need the Qt svg imageformat plugin (libqsvg.so).
Your GStreamer installation is missing a plug-in
This is a general error message from GStreamer, which is the framework Strawberry uses for playback. So there could be different reasons why you get this message.
Possible reasons:
- Missing a GStreamer plugin, the plugin you need depends on the audio format you are trying to play, see GStreamer plugins.
- The file you are trying to play is not a audio file, or it might be corrupt.
- GStreamer / Strawberry does not currently support the audio format, see the audio formats supported.
- You need to clear the gstreamer plugin cache, delete ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.x86_64.bin
Album covers in JPEG are not showing.
Check that you have the Qt JPEG plugin (libqjpeg.so).
sudo find /usr/ -name 'libqjpeg.so'
Strawberry does not integrate natively with Wayland.
Check that you have the Qt Wayland plugin (libqwayland-generic.so and libqwayland-egl.so).
sudo find /usr/ -name 'libqwayland-generic.so' sudo find /usr/ -name 'libqwayland-egl.so'
Could not open audio device for playback. Device is being used by another application.
If you are using ALSA with the hw plugin, no other programs can use the same device as Strawberry. Either select PCM as ALSA plugin, or close any other application using the same device.
Setup or installed files being detected as virus on Windows
This is a false-positive. Strawberry is open-source and all source code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/strawberrymusicplayer).
We do not have resources to report all false-positives to each and every anti-virus company each time they occur.
Please report this directly to your anti-virus software company (google i.e: mcafee report false positive) to find the page with information on how to do it.
An option is to use the MSVC version instead of MinGW which is more unlikely to be flagged as virus in the future.
Strawberry is using the NSIS installer which is commonly misidentified as virus by antivirus companies, see: https://nsis.sourceforge.io/NSIS_False_Positives
Buffering is stuck at 0% when playing HTTP streams
This could be issues with HTTP/2 if you have libsoup 3.0 or higher. As of Strawberry version 1.0.8 there is a setting to explicitly turn on HTTP/2 in the backend settings, make sure it is not checked.
For older versions, you can set the SOUP_FORCE_HTTP1 environment variable manually to 1, or start strawberry with: SOUP_FORCE_HTTP1=1 strawberry
SQL errors like "Unable to execute SQL query", "Unable to open database file", "Unable to fetch row", "Failed query" or similar errors
For database location, see Accessing the database.
1. Check the permissions to the database file.
ls -la ~/.local/share/strawberry/strawberry/strawberry.db
2. Check free disk space.
df -h
3. A common issue for this fault is the database being corrupted.
Integrity check the database to find out if there are issues:
sqlite3 ~/.local/share/strawberry/strawberry/strawberry.db "pragma integrity_check"
4. Start with a new database.
Close Strawberry, rename the strawberry.db to .bak. Start Strawberry and see if it resolves the issue.
Can you take my feature request?
No. Strawberry is a community project and most contributions (such as bug-fixes, improvements and features) need to come from the community. There are currently few contributors and no-one who can commit to take feature requests from users. Strawberry is mainly maintained by one person, and fixing bugs and keeping the project alive with the current features is a lot of work on it's own. I currently have too many features I want to add, but not enough time to do it all.
The stereo balancer or equalizer is not working
The stereo balancer and equalizer needs to be enabled before starting playback, once enabled, you can adjust it while playing.
Can you provide AppImages?
We know from previous experience that AppImages require a lot of time to maintain and support, they also need to be frequently released, because they contain all libraries used by Strawberry bundled inside. Therefore we will only provide AppImages based on sponsorship. See https://forum.strawberrymusicplayer.org/topic/1094/appimages-for-linux for more information.
Apple Music opens when pressing media shortcuts on macOS
To disable the annoying Apple Music opening when using the media keys:
Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Enter the following:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
to revert:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
Choppy and/or stuttering audio on Windows with the MSVC release
Some users have reported that the audio can be choppy and/or stuttering on Windows using the WASAPI2 output (this is the default with MSVC, so it will be picked when set to auto). Try slecting WASAPI or Direct Sound as output instead in Tools / Settings / Backend.
strawberry.app is damaged and can't be opened
This is the macOS security not allowing the program to execute.
To fix this, open a Terminal and type:
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/strawberry.app
"strawberry" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.
See https://support.apple.com/en-gu/guide/mac-help/mchleab3a043/mac
There are ampersands "&" characters in text
This is a known issue on KDE 6, not a Strawberry bug. There is a bug report for it here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483488 A workaround is to disable AutoCheckAccelerators in KDE.:
kwriteconfig5 --file kdeglobals --group Development --key AutoCheckAccelerators "false"
Can't close sponsorship window on Windows 11
We are still not sure why this happens, try pressing the ESC key. If that does not work, you can disable it manually through the registry under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Strawberry\Strawberry\MainWindow, add String Value do_not_show_sponsor_message with value true.
There is a reg file here that disables it: https://files.strawberrymusicplayer.org/do_not_show_sponsor_message.reg