Brendan Kidwell brendan@glump.net
10 April 2008
I use Rhythmbox as my primary music player in Ubuntu Linux, but a few months ago I switched from GNOME desktop to KDE. Since Rhythmbox is a GNOME-style program I couldn't find an easy way to setup global hotkeys in the KDE desktop that send commands like Pause and Play to the running instance of Rhythmbox. The command-line tool “rhythmbox-client” provides a solution:
Create a launcher anywhere in your desktop's menu system that runs the command you want, for example
rhythmbox-client --play-pause
And then assign a global shortcut key to that launcher, for example Ctrl+Alt+\.
Here is a list of all the commands rhythmbox-client supports:
--no-start Don't start a new instance of Rhythmbox --quit Quit Rhythmbox --no-present Don't present an existing Rhythmbox window --hide Hide the Rhythmbox window --next Jump to next song --previous Jump to previous song --notify Show notification of the playing song --play Resume playback if currently paused --pause Pause playback if currently playing --play-pause Toggle play/pause mode --play-uri=URI to play Play a specified URI, importing it if necessary --enqueue Add specified tracks to the play queue --clear-queue Empty the play queue before adding new tracks --print-playing Print the title and artist of the playing song --print-playing-format Print formatted details of the song --set-volume Set the playback volume --volume-up Increase the playback volume --volume-down Decrease the playback volume --print-volume Print the current playback volume --mute Mute playback --unmute Unmute playback
Note that the launcher you create will probably NOT open a terminal by default, so any output that might result from your Rhythmbox command (from the –print-playing command, for example) will probably be lost.