empress: MPRIS media controls made simpleThis tool functions as a simple command-line abstraction over the D-Bus MPRIS
specification which
allows for querying and controlling media players. It functions similarly to
playerctl, but features more basic
controls and a more complex method of tracking which player you want to control.
empress uses its own D-Bus daemon to keep track of which players are currently
playing (and which players have been updated the most recently), and uses this
information to decide you want to pause Spotify rather than playing a minimized
YouTube video.
To install empress, simply use Cargo:
sh
$ cargo install empress
Then launch the daemon process in order to use it — you will probably want to put this in an rcfile (or see below for setting up a service):
sh
$ empress server
The server will gracefully shut down if interrupted or signalled with SIGTERM.
Once you have the daemon running, you can communicate with it using one of several subcommands, e.g.:
sh
$ empress play-pause
The current list of commands includes, next, previous, pause,
play-pause, stop, and play, which all function as you would expect. For
more help you can always run empress help.
empress as a Serviceempress can be installed as a service to allow autostarting and lifecycle
management using D-Bus and systemd. To do this, run the following:
sh
$ scripts/install-services.sh -l <path to empress binary>
This will install the D-Bus and systemd service files into ~/.local/share. If
you installed empress with cargo install, the path to the binary will
probably look something like /home/<user>/.cargo/bin/empress.
If you want to make a system-wide installation, simply omit the -l flag. This
will install the session service files into /usr instead (but note that
empress never runs as a D-Bus system bus).
To remove installed service definitions, simply run:
sh
$ scripts/install-services.sh -rl
Like with above, remove the -l to uninstall the service files from the system
folders.