mpris-ctl

Is a minimalistic cli tool for controlling audio players exposing a MPRIS DBus interface, targeted at keyboard based WMs.

Its only build/run dependency is on the C dbus library.

Build

To build from source just clone the repository and run make. By default the binary is installed in /usr/local/bin, but you can provide your own DESTDIR and INSTALL_PREFIX.

$ git clone https://git.sr.ht/~mariusor/mpris-ctl
$ cd mpris-ctl
$ make release
# make install

Usage

An example of configuration for i3/sway:

bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec "mpris-ctl --player active --player inactive pp"
bindsym XF86AudioStop exec "mpris-ctl --player active stop"
bindsym XF86AudioNext exec "mpris-ctl --player active next"
bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec "mpris-ctl --player active prev"

The --player flag supports passing multiple player names, or the values active or inactive. The active players are considered to be the ones which have the play_status be Playing, and the inactive ones are the ones with the play_status Stopped or Paused.

Eg:

mpris-ctl --player Rhythmbox play
mpris-ctl --player active pp
mpris-ctl --player inactive play

A more advanced example could be (this requires a notify daemon to be running):

set $mpris_notify notify-send "$(mpris-ctl info "%play_status")" \
    "$(mpris-ctl info "%artist_name: %track_name\nOn album '%album_name'")"
bindsym $mod+XF86AudioPlay exec $mpris_notify
# or even:
bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec mpris-ctl pp && $mpris_notify

Supported format specifiers for mpris-ctl info command:

Format specifiers:
    %player_name     prints the player name
    %track_name      prints the track name
    %track_number    prints the track number
    %track_length    prints the track length (seconds)
    %artist_name     prints the artist name
    %album_name      prints the album name
    %album_artist    prints the album artist
    %play_status     prints the playback status
    %shuffle         prints the shuffle mode
    %volume          prints the volume
    %loop_status     prints the loop status
    %position        prints the song position (seconds)
    %bitrate         prints the track's bitrate
    %comment         prints the track's comment
    %full            prints all available information

Example:

$ mpris-ctl info "%track_name"
Song 42
$ mpris-ctl info
Song 42 - Bloor - The Best of Bloor

Resources

For discussions related to the project without requiring a Github account please see our mailing list: https://lists.sr.ht/~mariusor/mpris-tools.