beardedspice

Mac Media Keys for the Masses

beardedspice
2830
279
Objective-C

travis-ci

Before everything

Read this conversation: #899

Common Issues

It’s asked that anyone with an issue check the Wiki Section before posting a new issue.

Users Guide

BeardedSpice

What?

BeardedSpice allows you to control web based media players (Like SoundCloud, and YouTube … List of supported sites to date) and some native apps with the media keys found on Mac keyboards.

How?

All you need to do is just open your favorite supported media site in either Chrome or Safari, then click on BeardedSpice’s Menubar icon and select the website you want to control using your media keys.

Interested in doing it with a keyboard-shortcut?

We’ve got you covered, give the Shortcuts section a look below!

Install

Ready to give BeardedSpice a spin? You can download the latest release here*, or find a full list of all our previously released binaries here.

*Mac OS X 10.10 or greater required.

If you’re using Safari (≥9.1.1), you should enable developer preference. See detailed guide how to do it.

Features

Smart Mode

This feature is a work-in-progress, we are currently working on bringing it to all our supported sites!

BeardedSpice tries to automatically guess which tab it should control for you. When you press any media key or BeardedSpice shortcut with BeardedSpice open, it will automatically control the site currently playing media, if you have no playing sites, it will try to control the currently focused tab (if it is one of our supported sites) if BeardedSpice failed to do either, it will automatically control the first.

Automatic Updates

No more checking for new releases on our website, BeardedSpice will automatically notify you when a new release is available.

Up to Date Media Strategies

First, what is a Media Strategy? This is what we call a template with custom javascript aimed at a specific website, allowing the BeardedSpice program to control it with the media keys.

Second, the Compatibility Updates option allows you to check for added or changed Media Strategies that were contributed since the last official release.

You can also exchange strategies between users in the form of files with the extension bsstrategy. In the application Preferences, in the Controllers section there are corresponding Export/Import buttons. There is a repository with untested strategies.

Keyboard Shortcuts

BeardedSpice comes with a handy list of Keyboard Shortcuts that can be configured under the Shortcuts tab of BeardedSpice Preferences (available through the menubar icon). Here is a table of Default Keyboard Shortcuts:

Default Shortcut Action
⌘ + F8 Set Focused Browser tab as Active Player (effectively directing your commands to that tab)
⌘ + F6 Focus Active Player (Shows the tab currently controlled by BeardedSpice)
⌘ + F10 Toggle Favorite (Add currently playing track to your favorites on it’s site)
⌘ + F11 Show Track information (shows a notification with info about the currently playing tab)

Multimedia keys of non-Apple keyboards

Using a 3rd-party keyboard? Or even a keyboard with no multimedia keys? No problems, BeardedSpice allows you to set your multimedia keys under the shortcuts tab, so you can use any key (or key combination) of your liking.

Disabling certain handlers

From the preferences tab, uncheck any types of webpages that you don’t want BeardedSpice to have control over. By default, all implemented handlers are enabled.

Supported Mac OS X applications

Supported Browsers

Supported Sites

Don’t see your favorite site in the list ?

No Problem, Just submit an issue.

Want to Contribute?

Please do! Contributions are the lifeblood of the project, and yours helps keep us moving forward.

If you just want to add a new website to the list above, checkout the app support request list. The Developer How-To Guide has the information needed to get started (and don’t be afraid to ask questions!).
Websites only need some (easily learned) knowledge of javascript and maybe webpage delving with devtool (also Chrome’s official documentation).

Integrating a new native app (aka Chrome, Firefox, Spotify) in BeardedSpice is a little more complicated and requires NO objective-c experience. Many good examples exist. However, some apps simply aren’t compatible at this time. See the wiki article on getting started importing a Native app.

Unsupported BeardedSpice Strategies

Unsupported BeardedSpice Strategies repository