i3blocks-spotify-persist

A persistent i3blocks blocklet for the Spotify desktop app.

Click the image above to watch a screencast.

Features

• near-immediate updates thanks to the event-driven model: the blocket is a constantly running process receiving D-Bus signals
• configurable output
• configurable mouse click actions (i3blocks version 1.5 or later is required)

Installation

Python version 3.5 or later is required.

The blocket can be installed from PyPI using pip:

python3 -m pip install [--user] i3blocks-spotify-persist

Once the package is installed, there will be a blocket script named i3blocks-spotify-persist somewhere depending on the presence of a --user pip flag (e.g., /usr/local/bin/i3blocks-spotify-persist or ~/.local/bin/i3blocks-spotify-persist).

To avoid dependecy hell, pipx can be used:

pipx install i3blocks-spotify-persist

In this case the blocket script will be placed in ~/.local/bin directory.

Dependencies

Required (installed automatically):

• PyGObject
• dbus-python

Optional (installed manually):

• Font Awesome (for status icons)

Usage

Add the following lines to your i3blocks config:

[spotify]
command=/path/to/bin/i3blocks-spotify-persist [-c /path/to/config.json]
interval=persist

Configuration

The blocket can be configured using a JSON config file. The config itself and all its options are optional.

Config options

format

Type: string

Default value: {status:icon} {artist} — {title}

A template string with placeholders. Placeholder formats are {field} and {field:filter}.

Supported fields:

• status, one of enum values: Playing, Paused, Stopped
• artist
• title

Supported fitlers:

• upper — converts a string to uppercase
• lower — converts a string to lowercase
• capitalize — converts the first character of a string to uppercase and the rest to lowercase
• icon — for status field only: converts a textual status to an icon (see the status_icons option below)

markup_escape

Type: boolean

Default value: true

This option specifies whether to escape special characters (such as <, >, &) using corresponding XML entities. Set to true if Pango markup is used (markup=pango in your i3blocks config), false otherwise.

status_icons

Type: object

Default value: {"Playing": "\uf04b", "Paused": "\uf04c", "Stopped": "\uf04d"}

This option provides a mapping for the icon filter (see above). The default value uses icons from Font Awesome.

mouse_buttons

Type: object

Default value: {"1": "PlayPause"}

This option provides a mapping of X11 mouse buttons numbers to MPRIS methods. You can use the xev program to determine button numbers.

Config example

{
    "format": "<span font_family='monospace' color='#ffa651' weight='bold'>{status:icon} {status:upper}</span> <span color='#72bf44' weight='bold'>{artist}</span><span color='#ffa651'>᛫</span><span color='#b2d235'>{title}</span>",
    "status_icons": {
        "Playing": "|>",
        "Paused": "||",
        "Stopped": "[]"
    },
    "mouse_buttons": {
        "1": "PlayPause",
        "9": "Previous",
        "8": "Next"
    }
}

License

The MIT License.