Electron Media Service

This is an easy way to get OS level media integration cross-platform in Electron, it hooks into the following system API's.

Platform	API	Requirements
darwin	MPRemoteCommandCenter and MPNowPlayingInfoCenter	macOS 10.12.1+
win32 Coming Soon	MediaTransportControls	Windows 10+
linux Coming Soon	DBus	Well... DBus :D

All you have to do to get all this awesome for you is

import MediaService from 'electron-media-service';

const myService = new MediaService();

myService.startService();
myService.on('play', () => playSomething());
myService.on('pause', () => pauseSomething());
myService.setMetaData({
  title: 'Never Gonna Give You Up',
  // Other track meta data here
});

What does it look like?

macOS

Methods

myService.startService()

Starts the media service my registering the application with the system, no other methods or events will work until this method is called. It's a good idea to give users an option to not start the service as it can be annoying for some users especially on Windows 10.

myService.stopService()

Attempts to unregister the service from the system, sometimes a full relaunch is required to unregister an application but this method tries it's hardest.

myService.isStarted()

Returns Boolean, whether the service is started yet or not. If you forget whether you started it or not you can always call this method to check.

myService.setMetaData(meta)

• meta Object - The current tracks MetaData
  • title String - The title of the track
  • artist String - The name of the artist
  • album String - The name of the album
  • albumArt String - HTTP url to an image for the album art
  • state String - One of playing, paused or stopped
  • id Number - A unique ID for this track, can be randomly generated as it doesn't really affect anything
  • currentTime Number - Progress through the track in milliseconds
  • duration Number - Total length of the track in milliseconds

Events

myService.on('play')

Fired when the user or the system requests the track to start playing

myService.on('pause')

Fired when the user or the system requests the track to pause

myService.on('playPause')

Fired when the user or the system requests the track to toggle between playing and paused

myService.on('next')

Fired when the user or the system requests the player to skip to the next track

myService.on('previous')

Fired when the user or the system requests the player to skip back to the previous track

myService.on('seek')

Fired when the user or the system requests the player to seek through the track to the given time.

The target time will be given in milliseconds as the first argument to the event like so.

myService.on('seek', (to) => {
  console.log(`We should seek to ${to}ms`)
})

What happens on unsupported platforms?

We automatically give you a noop MediaService class, all methods do nothing and no events are ever fired. This allows you to not worry about supported platforms and just write code. Call whatever methods you want and nothing will break.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Samuel Attard

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.