GNOME Twitch (not an official GNOME app) 0.4.0 was released recently, bringing improved chat moving and resizing, re-enabled notifications, along with improved stability and more.
The application was updated 3 days ago, but there was a bug that prevented it from building in Ubuntu 16.10, so I preferred to wait until it’s fixed so I could update the PPA.
GNOME Twitch is an application to watch Twitch streams on your desktop, without using Flash or a web browser. It requires GTK 3.20 or newer so it only works in fairly new Linux distributions, e.g. Ubuntu 16.10 and newer.
Using it, you can easily search for channels and games, follow streams with or without a Twitch account (it supports logging in to your Twitch account) and more. The application supports 4 player backends (GStreamer Cairo, OpenGL and Clutter, as well mpv) and it ships with a customizable chat.
Changes in GNOME Twitch 0.4.0 include:
- the chat can now be easily moved and resized when it’s undocked (see screenshot above). To do this, select “Move & resize chat” (which will add a red outline around the chat), then drag / resize the chat using your mouse;
- the notifications are enabled again – you can click them to start playing a channel (in Unity, a GTK dialog box is displayed as a notification so you can click it to open the stream – that’s because Unity’s notifications don’t support click actions);
- you can now filter channels by language. To do this, you’ll need to select a language in the Language filter drop-down, available in the GNOME Twitch settings;
- the application now supports searching for offline channels – this can be done by clicking on the drop-down at the right of the search bar;
- display all stream qualities, including special ones like 720p60;
- display all chat badges, including temporary ones;
- dynamic loading of items in containers, which speeds up the startup and refresh times;
- the notification bar can now queue notifications and it can also display errors now;
- the viewer count is now displayed for games (just like channels, this is displayed on hover);
- improved build system.
Even though it includes quite a few enhancements, the latest GNOME Twitch 0.4.0 release is mainly focused on stability and better error handling and reporting. Even so, according to the release notes, there are still bugs and crashes, “but hopefully there will be a significant decrease in both”.
Install GNOME Twitch 0.4.0 in Ubuntu 16.10 or 17.04
GNOME Twitch is available in the official Ubuntu 16.04 and newer repositories, but it’s an older version (0.1.0 for Ubuntu 16.04, 0.2.1 for Ubuntu 16.10 and 0.3.1 for Ubuntu 17.04). To install the version from the official repositories, use the following command:
sudo apt install gnome-twitchTo install the latest GNOME Twitch in Ubuntu 16.10 or 17.04, you can use the main WebUpd8 PPA. To add the PPA and install it, use the commands below:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gnome-twitchIf you don’t want to add the PPA, you can grab the deb from HERE (note: you’ll need GNOME Twitch as well as at least one player backend – make sure both are the latest version).
By default, installing GNOME Twitch should also install the GStreamer Cairo backend. If you want to install the other player backends as well (you can remove those that you don’t plan on using), use the following command:
sudo apt install gnome-twitch-player-backend-mpv-opengl gnome-twitch-player-backend-gstreamer-clutter gnome-twitch-player-backend-gstreamer-openglNote that no player backend is selected by default and enabling one is required to play a stream. To enable a player backend, open the GNOME Twitch Settings and on the Players tab, select a backend:
For other Linux distributions, see the GNOME Twitch package section @ GitHub.
Report any bugs you may encounter @ GitHub.
Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.
