[Suggention] Control incoming music via Bluetooth

[DJkefo]

I just realized you can connect your phone to your steamdeck and play the music from your phone on the steamdeck. If you would have the ability to control the music player on your phone with the plugin, that would be really nice.

[moraroy]

yes please!

[mirobouma]

Not sure how the bluetooth control works in linux, but theoretically an application that recognizes the bluetooth device and mpris should work. Maybe you can try running mpris-proxy in the background? I don't have availability to look into it at the moment but will keep the ticket open for the future.

[moraroy]

@mirobouma @DJkefo so.. I was able to get this working but I have good news and bad news.

1. I downloaded and installed Bluez package and Bluez-utilz following this guide.

https://denzveloper.github.io/BT-MPRIS/

Once I enabled the mpris-proxy.service, I turned my Bluetooth on my phone and went into game mode on the steamdeck.

Once they were connected to each other I played a spotify song on my phone.

it works! Except the only buttons that work are "Skip Left and Skip Right" the "Play/Pause" button works but is reversed for me. The volume control inside of "Music Control" doesnt work nor does the "fast forward bar". The songs also do not display meta info on the current song playing... that's as far as I got but it does work somewhat and I don't even have to have spotify open it just plays which is nice.

[moraroy]

@DJkefo @mirobouma

I'm making a new comment here to also let you know using KDE Connect in game mode works with music control alot nicer.

It recognizes the phone name instead of just "player" and all of the controls work and Metadata shows.

The caveat here though is you have to keep KDE Connect on your android phones screen in order for this to work and you have to turn it on in game mode and if you restart your steam deck you have to go into desktop mode in order to turn it back on which is annoying. That's all the testing I was able to do though. Haha

[moraroy]

@DJkefo @mirobouma

Update

It turns out once I started that service there ended up being 2 "mpris-proxy.service" running in game mode. This was causing the errors I was getting.. now everything works except the volume control and the progress bar and I'm getting meta data as well.. I suspect I should not have updated my Bluetooth package and just installed "bluez-utils" only. In any case I can control the music now without Spotify on the steam deck but there is still things to fix.

[DJkefo]

Good Job, I can work without a progress bar or volume control, my phone should be close by when I'm playing on the deck.

Really well done, I'm looking forward to see your work in action, that's really impressive :D

[DJkefo]

Hey, I'm looking back to this realizing, that I've never got this to work. I might make use of a step by step guide on how to make it work, I'm clueless in terms of Linux still and I also don't code in python, so I don't know how to update the code in case I wanted to. How can I use the controls from here to control my phones music?

[moraroy]

@DJkefo hey bro, long time no talk. I actually didn't even realized you commented back 2 years ago, I'm sorry :( but this whole time I stopped using the plugin because I thought maybe decky laoder or the plugin itself no longer supported the phone haha... looking back now I can't believe I got it working the way I did lol I'm down to try again though!

[DJkefo]

Thank you. Mainly I have issues even installing packages and I'm not that down to install another OS on my Steam Deck, as I am pretty fine with SteamOS imo. The plugin itself works, just not with my phone (or tidal, which would also be awesome to support, but I'd actually welcome the phone controls more). If you get it to work, maybe try and describe the installation process as stupid as possible, because I'm actually a noob at this

[moraroy]

@DJkefo believe it or not bro, I already got it working just now haha I can actually do a pull request maybe tomorrow, not sure if the creator of this plugin is still active but I'll try

[moraroy]

@DJkefo I can't do a pull request but I can send you the file I made to run it and do it automatically , let me know how I can send it to you

[DJkefo]

If the original Author would be fine with that, you could upload it to another Repo. But if not, just send it to me via email. github.briskly085@passmail.net

Otherwise suggest something yourself.

[moraroy]

@DJkefo oh its cuz github won't let me upload the python file

[moraroy]

@DJkefo I'll email it to you, just right click it and go to properties. And set as executable, and then right click it again to run in kosnole so you can see what it does. From there restart your deck/system and then bluetooth your phone, from there just load the music control plugin like normal and then play something on your phone!

[moraroy]

@DJkefo let me know when you got it

[DJkefo]

Got it to work, many thanks, this is actually very useful

[moraroy]

@DJkefo might want to keep the issue open in case he wants to add in that feature still, I'm glad you got it working though!