How To Find Song Lyrics On Linux With Lyrics Finder
Modern Linux music applications are great at a lot of things though most still fail at this fundamental task: displaying lyrics as the song plays. Not having quick access to lyrics isn’t the end of the world, but if you’re a fan of following along with the lines to your favorite song, it may be hard to live without this feature. If you can’t live without lyrics in your MP3 library, consider checking out the Lyrics Finder app. The app can find and add song lyrics on Linux in supported media players.
SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.
Ubuntu
There are multiple ways that the developer allows Ubuntu users to install Lyrics Finder. Fans can grab the package from the website, or install via a PPA.
Though a PPA is nice and allows for direct developer updates, we discourage it as downloading a package is faster and supports more Ubuntu-like distributions.
To install on Ubuntu, open a terminal and grab it with wget.
wget https://www.mediahuman.com/download/LyricsFinder.amd64.deb
or, for 32-bit:
wget https://www.mediahuman.com/download/LyricsFinder.i386.deb
Install Lyrics Finder with the dpkg command.
sudo dpkg -i LyricsFinder.*.deb
Debian
Lyrics Finder has indirect support for Debian, as DEB packages work it. To install the program, download with wget, and install with dpkg.
wget https://www.mediahuman.com/download/LyricsFinder.amd64.deb
or, for 32-bit:
wget https://www.mediahuman.com/download/LyricsFinder.i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i LyricsFinder.*.deb
Fedora/OpenSUSE
Lyrics Finder does have Linux support, though it’s only in the form of a downloadable DEB package file. There’s no source code, generic binary file, RPM package, AppImage or anything of the sort.
Though there is no official support for Redhat Linux distributions but in our testing, we’ve been able to convert the official DEB package to an RPM file with Alien. Use it at your own risk!
First, install Alien on your PC with:
sudo dnf install alien
or
sudo zypper install alien
Grab the latest version of Lyrics Finder using wget
wget https://www.mediahuman.com/download/LyricsFinder.amd64.deb
or, for 32-bit:
wget https://www.mediahuman.com/download/LyricsFinder.i386.deb
Convert the package with Alien.
sudo alien -rcv LyricsFinder.*.deb
Finally, install the RPM file.
sudo dnf install lyrics-finder-1.4.4-2.x86_64.rpm
or
sudo zypper install lyrics-finder-1.4.4-2.x86_64.rpm
Conversion method not working? Check out our tutorial to learn how to extract and run any DEB package on any Linux distribution!
Using Lyrics Finder
To find lyrics for music in your library, open the Lyrics Finder app. Once open, click the file icon to import an audio file. Lyrics Finder supports importing multiple audio files at once. To import multiple audio files, select the “folder” icon, rather than the “file” icon and browse for the music directory you’d like to import.
Selecting the “file” icon opens up an “open file” dialog window. In the “open file” dialog, browse for an MP3 file you’d like to add to Lyrics Finder and click the “open” button to import it.
Clicking the “open” button should instantly import the song. At this point, look in Lyrics Finder and click on the MP3 file you need lyrics for.
Be patient and let the Lyrics Finder app search for the correct lyrics for the song you’ve selected. When it completes the search process, lyrics will load into Lyrics Finder.
Force Search
Lyrics Finder is pretty accurate, and can usually find lyrics for even the most obscure songs. Sometimes, however, it fails to search (for whatever reason). One way to get around errors where the program fails to search or gives up, etc is to use the “force search” option.
Using “force search” won’t magically make the program find lyrics. Still, it will help if a search times out or refuses to go through. To force a search, go to Lyrics Finder, right-click on a song in the list and select the “force to search” option in the menu.
Export Lyrics
Lyrics Finder has the ability to save lyrics it finds to an external text file. To do this, import your music file, and search for lyrics as usual. Then, go back to the file and right-click on it.
In the right-click menu, find the option to “export to TXT” and select it. Selecting this option will automatically export a lyrics file in the exact location of the music file you’ve loaded into Lyrics Finder.
Clear Lyrics
Not happy with the lyrics that Lyrics Finder loaded? Go to the app, and highlight the song file. Right-click on the file, and select the pen and paper icon underneath the lyrics.
Press Ctrl + A to highlight all of the text. When everything is highlighted, right-click with the mouse and select “delete” in the menu that appears.
After clicking the “delete” option, the lyrics will be gone. To save your changes, click the checkmark icon.
