📺 Control Chromecasts from Linux and D-Bus
Project description
📺 Control Chromecasts from Linux
Control your Chromecast and casting devices via MPRIS media player controls.
MPRIS is the standard media player interface on Linux desktops.
chromecast_mpris
allows you to control media playback on casting devices, and it 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 casted app
- Open media from D-Bus
- Play YouTube videos
- Playlist integration
Installation
Requirements
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 devices, and that you're able to make connections to them.
It also helps to know the names of the devices in advance.
Launching
Installing the package via PyPI, GitHub or the AUR will add chromecast_mpris
to your pip
executables path:
$ which chromecast_mpris
~/.local/bin/chromecast_mpris
If you have your pip
executables path added to your shell's $PATH
, you can launch chromecast_mpris
like so:
$ chromecast_mpris
You can also launch chromecast_mpris
via its Python module. This can be useful if your $PATH
doesn't point to your pip
executables.
$ python3 -m chromecast_mpris
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 device
Connect to a device named "My Device" and run chromecast_mpris
in the background.
$ chromecast_mpris --name "My Device" &
[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 casting device again if one is not found initially.
For example, if you want to wait 60 seconds between scans for devices, you can run the following:
$ export SECONDS=60
$ chromecast_mpris --wait $SECONDS
This is useful if you'd like to start chromecast_mpris
at login, and there is a chance that your device isn't on, or you're on a different network.
Opening a URI on a Chromecast
Get the D-Bus name for your device using playerctl
.
$ playerctl --list-all
My_Device
Use the D-Bus name to issue commands to it.
$ export URL="http://ccmixter.org/content/gmz/gmz_-_Parametaphoriquement.mp3"
$ playerctl --player My_Device open "$URL"
This will play a song on your device.
Opening a YouTube video
You can cast YouTube videos the same way you can cast a generic URI.
$ export VIDEO="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4nkgJdVZFA"
$ playerctl --player My_Device open "$VIDEO"
License
See LICENSE
. Message me if you'd like to use this project with a different license.
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