Media Player watcher
This watcher sends information the media which is playing now to ActivityWatch. It supports any player which can report its status to the system and be controllable by tray or standard multimedia keys, such as Spotify, Foobar, browser-based players, and others. Most media players are supported.
| Environment | Support |
|---|---|
| Linux | :heavy_check_mark: Yes (MPRIS) |
| Windows | :heavy_check_mark: Yes |
| MacOS | :hourglass: Not yet supported |
Examples of reported data
Spotify in Linux: ```json { "album": "How to Measure a Planet? (Deluxe Edition)", "artist": "The Gathering", "player": "Spotify", "title": "My Electricity", "uri": "https://open.spotify.com/track/1cSWc2kX4z39L5uFdGcjFP" } ``` Firefox in Linux (no plugins): ```json { "artist": "Eileen", "player": "Mozilla Firefox", "title": "🇺🇦 🇵🇱 Гей, соколи! / Hej, sokoły! – Ukrainian/Polish folk song" } ``` MS Edge in Windows: ```json { "artist": "Bel Canto Choir Vilnius", "player": "MSEdge", "title": "Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells) – Bel Canto Choir Vilnius" } ``` Default Windows player ```json { "album": "Zemlya", "artist": "Okean Elzy", "player": "Microsoft.ZuneMusic_8wekyb3d8bbwe!Microsoft.ZuneMusic", "title": "Obijmy" } ```Installation
-
Linux:
- Run
sudo unzip -j aw-watcher-media-player-linux.zip aw-watcher-media-player-linux -d /usr/local/binin the console to allow ActivityWatch to detect its presence. - Optionally, to use visualizations, run
sudo unzip -d /usr/local/share/aw-watcher-media-player/visualization aw-watcher-media-player-linux.zip 'visualization/*'. - Or install the attached .deb file.
Windows:
- Run the attached installer executable.
- To install manually and make it available for ActivityWatch,
unpack the executable from
aw-watcher-media-player-windows.zipinto any new folder, right-click on "Start" -> "System" -> "Advanced system settings" - "Advanced" tab -> "Environment Variables..." -> upper "Edit...", add the new folder path.
- Run
- Optionally, add
aw-watcher-media-playerto autostart ataw-qt/aw-qt.tomlin config directory.
Configuration
Configuration file aw-watcher-media-player.toml is located in user's local configuration directory.
It's created on the first run, or it may be created manually before running the binary.
CLI arguments override the file configuration.
Example:
port = 5600
host = "localhost"
poll_time = 5
include_players = ["Spotify", "firefox", "chrom"]
exclude_players = ["chromium"]Filter options for including and excluding players for reporting look for a case-insensitive substring.
Use -vv to see what's reported.
Note that normally browsers report the currently playing media to the system even in a private mode/tab/window.
Custom Visualization
This watcher has a visualization which attempts to do its best to display the sorted list of artists with the overall play time for each artist. Note that ActiveWatch UI gives no abilities for the widget to control its sizing, so it may appear smaller than builtin visualizations.
- Add the following section to your
aw-server/aw-server.tomloraw-server-rust/config.tomlfile in config directory:[server.custom_static] aw-watcher-media-player = "/path/to/aw-watcher-media-player/visualization" # aw-watcher-media-player = "/usr/share/aw-watcher-media-player/visualization" # .deb installation # aw-watcher-media-player = "/usr/local/share/aw-watcher-media-player/visualization" # Linux installation from archive # aw-watcher-media-player = 'C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\aw-watcher-media-player\visualization' # Windows installer - Restart ActivityWatch
- Add custom visualizations from the Activity Watch GUI:
Activity > Edit View > Add Visualization > Custom Visualization - Enter
aw-watcher-media-playerfor the watcher name.
The visualization is not customizable from ActivityWatch UI. In order to change, the output, open index.html:
- Find
getAggregationfunction and changeevent.data.artisttoevent.data.playerto aggregate by players. - Change
MAX_AGGREGATIONSto determine the maximum number of entries (default is 50).
Build
cargo build --release on any platform. See release.yml for details.