gnome-shell-extensions-mediaplayer

gnome-shell-extensions-mediaplayer is a gnome-shell extension for controlling any MPRIS v2.1 capable media player.

This extension will monitor D-Bus for active players and automatically display them in the GNOME Shell's system menu by default.

Screenshot

Features

• 3 positions: center or right in its own menu, or in the system menu
• support multiple players
• interactive indicator icon: scroll (next/previous), middle click (play/pause)
• playlist support (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Playlists interface)
• tracklist support (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.TrackList interface)
• rating support (see notes below)
• and more...

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gnome-shell-extensions-mediaplayer can be easily configured through http://extensions.gnome.org or Tweak Tool as well as command-line (all settings are listed below).

Installation

Via extensions.gnome.org

• https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/55/media-player-indicator/

Packages

• Arch Linux - AUR package by Alucryd
• Ubuntu - webupd8 PPA
• Frugalware - package by Baste

Manual installation

Git branch master works with GNOME Shell 3.16 up to 3.22.

Other branches: gnome-shell-3.0, gnome-shell-3.2, gnome-shell-3.8 (for g-s 3.4 up to 3.8), gnome-shell-3.14 (for g-s 3.10 up to 3.14)

Prerequisites: automake, gnome-common, gettext, glib2 devel files

System-wide:

./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

In your ~/.local directory:

./autogen.sh
make install-zip

Restart the shell and then enable the extension.

Settings

Most of the settings can be changed from within the gnome-shell-extension-prefs tool. Others can be changed from the command line with the gsettings cli.

If the extension is not installed from a package of your distribution, add the --schemadir .local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/schemas/ option to gsettings.

• Position of the indicator: (default: 'volume-menu')

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer indicator-position 'center'|'right'|'volume-menu'
  

• Show the default media player in the menu if no other player is running: (default: false)

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer rundefault true
  

  You can configure the default media player in GNOME System Settings, under Details → Default Applications.

• Indicator appearance: (default: 'icon')

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer status-type 'icon'|'cover'
  

• Hide the position slider: (default: true)

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer position false
  

• Show the volume control slider of the media player: (default: false)

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer volume true
  

• Show the playlists of the media player: (default: false)

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer playlists true
  

• Show the rating of the current track: (default: false)

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer rating true
  

  Players supported (get: show the rating, set: set a rating):

  • Banshee (get/set)
  • Rhythmbox (get/set)
  • Guayadeque (get/set)
  • Clementine (get)
  • Amarok (get)

  Warning: Ratings are not part of the MPRIS specification thus specific code must be written for each player to set or get the current track rating. Note that for some players there will be no support to get/set the rating from this extension. For example, Clementine does not offer any way to set the rating of a song except from the Clementine GUI (http://bit.ly/INFEon).

• Indicator status text template: (default: '')

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer status-text '<span color="#76B0EC" font="9">{trackTitle}</span>'
  

  The status template text can be formatted with the Pango markup syntax. Placeholders will be replaced with the actual value of the playing track.

  Common placeholders to use: trackAlbum, trackArtist, trackNumber, trackTitle...

  You can also append text to the placeholder only if it has a value. For example with the template {trackAlbum| - }{trackTitle} the - will be displayed only if the current track has an album defined.

• Menu track informations template: (default: '[{"template": "{trackArtist}", "style_class": "track-info track-info-big"}, {"template": "{trackTitle}", "style_class": "track-info track-info-medium"}, {"template": "{trackAlbum}", "style_class": "track-info"}]')

  The track informations (title, album, artist) that are displayed in the menu can be customized with this setting. The value must be a valid JSON string. The value is a list of objects with two attributes: template and style_class. template is the text of the line containing placeholders that will be replaced by the current track values. style_class is the CSS classes applied to the line.

  For example, if you wish to include the number of the track before the track title, you can do:

   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.mediaplayer trackbox-template '[{"template": "{trackArtist}", "style_class": "track-info track-info-big"}, {"template": "{trackNumber|. }{trackTitle}", "style_class": "track-info track-info-medium"}, {"template": "<span color=\"#aaa\">{trackAlbum}</span>", "style_class": "track-info"}]'
  

  See the previous setting for more information about template formatting.

Compatible players

Any player that implements the MPRIS v2 Player and optionally the Playlists and/or Tracklist interface(s) spec correctly is supported.

Note: Many players will require you to enable the MPRIS v2 support manually. If your player is listed but still doesn't work, look for words "MPRIS" or "D-Bus" in the player's plugins.

This extension has been tested with:

• Amarok
• Audacious (≥ 3.2, with "MPRIS 2 Server" plugin)
• Banshee (with "MPRIS D-Bus interface" extension)
• BeatBox
• Clementine
• DeaDBeeF (with third-party deadbeef-mpris2 plugin)
• Dragon Player
• Exaile (with third-party Sound Menu plugin)
• GMusicBrowser
• GNOME MPlayer (≥ 1.0.7)
• GNOME Music
• Guayadeque (≥ 0.3.2)
• JuK
• mpd (with mpDris2 daemon)
• Nuvola aka Google Music Frame
• Pithos
• Pragha (with MPRIS2 enabled under "Internet Services")
• Quod Libet (with "MPRIS D-Bus support" plugin)
• Rhythmbox (with "MPRIS D-Bus interface" plugin)
• Spotify
• Tomahawk
• Totem (≥ 3.1.91, with "D-Bus Service" plugin)
• VLC (≥ 2.0, with "dbus" control interface)
• XBMC (with "MPRIS D-Bus interface" add-on)
• Lollypop
• and more...

Known bugs

Track position is not updated correctly

Some players do not send the MPRIS "Seeked" signal so the extension can't update the position slider when the song is seeked from the extension or the player.

• Banshee (bug report, issue #34, issue #183)
• Exaile – fixed in 3.3.0 (bug report)
• VLC – fixed in 2.x? (bug report)
• Spotify

GNOME Music crashes if the GoTo method on the Tracklist interface is called.

• Until this is fixed users will not be able to switch songs via the track list with GNOME Music, since the GoTo method has been blacklisted for GNOME music.
• bug report

GNOME Music does not provide complete metadata for the Tracklist interface.(No cover art for upcoming songs)

• bug report

Clementine claims to support the Tracklist interface but due to internal errors always returns an empty tracklist.

Not supported players

• Nightingale 1.11 – no native MPRIS support, only a third-party v1 plugin

Authors

• eonpatapon (Jean-Philippe Braun)
• grawity (Mantas Mikulėnas)

Based on the work of horazont (Jonas Wielicki).