How can I prevent Banshee from remembering what files I have played? I really hate the way it keeps surprising me by automatically playing, after the current track, the previous file it had played. I really HATE that. I was just listening to a beautiful piece of music and in a nice mood when Banshee, without asking me, immediately afterwards, started playing a really annoying answerphone message from earlier.
My solution so far is to manually delete all files in the playlist, but obviously that's not a long term solution. I cannot find an option anywhere that says "Do not remember my history"
(Did I mention I hate the way Banshee plays my files without asking me?)
Take a look and see where playback or smart mode is in preferences and change it or switch off smart-mode. Or check playback repeat or shuffle is off.
Sounds like that file ended up in your play queue from having been opened earlier. Banshee relies on its own library in your Music folder (which it assumes is all music), and while it tries, its design doesn't cope well with opening audio files outside that library. It's still a really nice application for playing music in the background, though!
If you'd like, you can keep Banshee but change this behaviour. Open System Settings, choose the Details panel and then "Default applications." Here you can set your music player to something other than Banshee. I set mine to the default Movie Player, and VLC is a fine choice as well.
Now when you open an audio file it will be played in that application you selected. When you wish to use Banshee, you can start it from the dash or the sound menu :)
I have filed a bug on this behavior, and am determined to fix it!
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=699961