Bodging around in the Budgie desktop for the past few days I’ve become used to the (rather ace) music player integration shown in the ‘Raven’ sidebar.
Like the Sound Menu you’ve probably used on Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, the media player controls shown in the Raven sidebar appear only when compatible media player apps (i.e. those that support the MPRIS spec) are active.
So I felt a trite adrift after logging back in to GNOME Shell on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It has no music controller feature available out of the box (in GNOME 3.18, the most recent version available in the archives).
As an aside, GNOME 3.20 introduces a media player controller that uses MPRIS.
Rewinding my mind back a few weeks I also couldn’t recall any sort of “Sound Applet” extension making (y)our list of the ‘5 Best GNOME Shell Extensions‘.
So, with British pop-punkers Roam on repeat, I went on the hunt for a music controlling extension. Where? The official GNOME Extensions website, of course.
At first few extensions I looked at were listed as compatible. Undeterred, a few choice keywords later I found a GNOME Shell music extension that matched my needs.
I figured I’d give it a shout-out on this site as since this desktop bolt-on scratched my itch it may, depending on how sensitive you are, itch yours too!
‘Media Player Indicator’ GNOME Extension
The Media Player Indicator GNOME extension is customisable, offering a set of options that allow you to control its positioning, appearance and behaviour:
- 3 positions: middle; right; embedded in the Status Menu
- Interactive applet icon: mouse over and scroll to change track
- Toggles to hide/show: Ratings, Player Volume, Seekbar, Playlists in applet
- Set a custom menu label
A word of note about the ability to see a seek bar (and or volume, if you toggle it on) in the status.
Some players will show a progress bar (assuming you have the option enabled):
But not all players support this feature. If you see a player without a progress bar, despite the option being enabled, it’s not a bug:
Support Multiple Music Players
My favourite ‘bit’ of this extension is the way it handles multiple music players.
Unlike the similar applet in the Unity desktop, which lists all compatible music players, open or closed thus requiring you to manually remove players from the Ubuntu Sound Menu, this ‘Media Player Indicator’ extension only shows music players if open.
So if you only have one media player open you only see one media controller in the applet:
And if you have more than one player open, you see all with MPRIS support:
Even better: players are collapsible so even if you do have multiple media players open at the same time —why?!— you won’t end up an endless list of them.
Of course, if no compatible media player is open at all you don’t see the applet icon.
Also Integrates with the Status Menu
Now, at this point you might be thinking: “It looks great, but I’d rather it integrated in to the main GNOME Status Menu.”
Well, as noted above, it can.
Just head to the extensions’ preferences (using a tool like GNOME Tweak) and change the position setting to ‘combined’ to make it part of the Status Menu:
If you think this applet will be music to your ears — collective groan -the world — you can install the Media Player Indicator via the GNOME Extensions website.