itunesnp

Print the currently playing Music.app track in Now Playing: <artist> - <track> format. Handy for IRC /np commands.

Installation

Install globally and run itunesnp.

yarn global add itunesnp
# or
npm install --global itunesnp

Usage

itunesnp

Sample output:

Now Playing: Daft Punk - Around the World

Nothing is printed when Music is not running, paused, or stopped. The command still exits successfully so it can be used unconditionally in shell-out hooks.

IRC clients

For IRC clients that support shelling out, point the /np (or similar) command at itunesnp. As an example, for X-Chat Aqua you can either add a user command from the menu or edit ~/.xchat2/commands.conf:

NAME NP
CMD exec -o itunesnp

Then restart the client and type /np. The command name can be anything (upper-case).

Quassel

Quassel invokes scripts in ~/Library/Application Support/Quassel/scripts/ via its /exec command. The Linux build ships an mpris script there, so installing itunesnp under that name lets a single client-side alias work on both Linux and macOS.

mkdir -p "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Quassel/scripts"
cp "$(yarn global bin)/itunesnp" \
    "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Quassel/scripts/mpris"
chmod +x "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Quassel/scripts/mpris"

In Preferences → Aliases, add an alias named np (or any name you like) that expands to /exec mpris. Arguments after mpris are ignored. Type /np in a chat and the metadata is broadcast publicly. This replaces the older quassel-itunes-np CoffeeScript shim.

Quassel Aliases preferences pane showing an np entry that expands to /exec mpris.

Development

yarn               # install dependencies.
yarn test          # run vitest with coverage.
yarn webpack       # bundle src/index.ts to dist/index.js.
yarn qa            # lint, spell-check, and prettier check.

The CLI is written in TypeScript and bundled with webpack. JXA global types come from jxa-types.