chromecast-mpris 0.6.3

📺 Control Chromecasts from Linux and D-Bus

📺 Control Chromecasts from Linux

Control your Chromecast via MPRIS media player controls.

MPRIS is the standard media player interface on Linux desktops. chromecast_mpris allows you to control media playback on Chromecasts, and provides an interface for playback information.

MPRIS integration is enabled by default in Plasma Desktop, and, along with GNOME's volume control widget, there are widgets for GNOME, too. playerctl provides a CLI for controlling media players through MPRIS.

Check out ▶️mpris_server if you want to integrate MPRIS support into your media player.

Screenshots

Controlling a Chromecast via Plasma Desktop's Media Player widget:

Features

• Control music and video playback
• Control app playback
• View playback information in real-time
• Display thumbnail and title
• Display playback position and media length
• Seek forward and backward
• Play, pause, and stop playback
• Volume up and down
• Play next and previous
• Quit current Chromecast app
• Open media from D-Bus
• Play YouTube videos
• Playlist integration

Installation

Requirements

• Linux / *BSD / macOS
• D-Bus
• Python >= 3.6
• PyGObject
• requirements.txt

Installing PyGObject

On Debian-derived distributions like Ubuntu, install python3-gi with apt. On Arch, you'll want to install python-gobject, or install chromecast_mpris directly from the AUR. On macOS, install pygobject3 via brew.

Use pip to install PyGObject>=3.34.0 if there are no installation candidates available in your vendor's package repositories.

PyPI

python3 -m pip install chromecast_mpris

You'll get a chromecast_mpris executable added to your $PATH.

GitHub

Check out the releases page on GitHub for stable releases.

If you'd like to use the development branch, clone the repository.

Once you have a source copy, run python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt, followed by python3 setup.py install.

You'll get a chromecast_mpris executable added to your $PATH.

AUR

If you're on Arch, you can install chromecast_mpris directly from the AUR.

yay -S chromecast_mpris

Upgrading

Stable releases are uploaded to PyPI. You can upgrade your chromecast_mpris installation like so:

python3 -m pip --upgrade chromecast_mpris

See the releases page on GitHub.

Usage

You'll need to make sure that your computer is on the same network as your Chromecasts, and that you're able to make connections to them.

It also helps to know the names of the devices in advance.

Help

$ chromecast_mpris --help
Usage: chromecast_mpris [OPTIONS]

  Control casting devices through MPRIS media controls.

Options:
  -n, --name TEXT         Specify a device name, otherwise control the first
                          device found.

  -h, --host TEXT         Hostname or IP address of streaming device.
  -u, --uuid TEXT         Streaming device's UUID.
  -w, --wait INTEGER      Retry after specified amount of seconds if a device
                          isn't found.

  -r, --retry-wait FLOAT  Seconds to wait between retries to reconnect after a
                          device connection is interrupted.  [default: 5.0]

  -l, --log-level TEXT    Debugging log level.  [default: WARN]
  --help                  Show this message and exit.

Connecting to a Chromecast

Connect to a Chromecast named "My Chromecast" and run chromecast_mpris in the background.

$ chromecast_mpris -n "My Chromecast" &
[1] 1234

After launching chromecast_mpris, you can use any MPRIS client to interact with it. MPRIS support is built in directly to Plasma Desktop and GNOME 3, and you can use playerctl on the command-line.

Retrying until a Chromecast is found

You can use the -w/--wait flag to specify a waiting period in seconds before chromecast_mpris will try find a Chromecast again if one is not found initially.

For example, if you want to wait 60 seconds between scans for Chromecasts, you can run the following:

$ export SECONDS=60
$ chromecast_mpris -w $SECONDS

This is useful if you'd like to start chromecast_mpris at login, and there is a chance that your Chromecast isn't on, or you're on a different network.

Opening a URI on a Chromecast

Get the D-Bus name for your Chromecast using playerctl.

$ playerctl -l
My_Chromecast

Use the D-Bus name to issue commands to it.

$ export URL="http://ccmixter.org/content/gmz/gmz_-_Parametaphoriquement.mp3"
$ playerctl -p My_Chromecast open "$URL"

This will play a song on the Chromecast.

License

See LICENSE. Message me if you'd like to use this project with a different license.