Mapping Media Keys to Seek Forward and Back in Spotify

Question

I'm running Ubuntu, and I like to use the media keys on my keyboard to control Spotify. For basic functions such as Play, Pause, Skip to Next, and Skip to Previous, this is easy, since I can use dbus [1].

However, I'd also like to be able to seek forward and backward within a song. Spotify can't handle the dbus commands for this [2]. Spotify does have built-in keyboard shortcuts, but this requires that the window has focus, something that the dbus commands don't need. I tried fiddling around with various options to switch to Spotify, run the shortcut, and switch back to the previous window. I finally settled on AutoKey [3] with the following script:

# and xdotool doesn't seem to be working, 
# so we have do do seeking this way

spotifyClass = "spotify.Spotify"
thisWindowTitle = window.get_active_title()
thisWindowClass = window.get_active_class()

#Switch to spotify if it's not already active
if thisWindowClass != spotifyClass:
    window.activate(spotifyClass, False, True)
    window.wait_for_focus("^Spotify")
    time.sleep(0.1)  # Necessary or else Spotify sometimes doesn't register the shortcut  
    
keyboard.send_keys("<shift>+<right>")

# Switch back to the previous window
window.activate(thisWindowTitle)

Unfortunately, it's buggy, especially if I seek forward/back multiple times in a row, since I lose the "last window" state due to overlapping calls.

I'm hoping there's a more reliable and elegant solution out there. I welcome any thoughts the community may have. Thanks!

[1] ex. https://blomsmail.medium.com/take-the-bus-how-to-control-spotify-with-the-terminal-43f7bd44aed1

[2] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Basic-controls-via-command-line/td-p/4295625

[3] https://github.com/autokey/autokey

Answer 1

IDK anything about Spotify, but I can "debounce" your script by making it wait for any other instances to terminate before proceeding. This is a little tricky, so I'm just going to detail the approach rather than attempting to code it on the fly.

The trick is to create an AutoKey global variable. First try: to read the variable. If it's < 1 (or doesn't exist, hence the try: block) increment it and store it and proceed with the rest of the script. When the script is done, decrement it and save it.

If it's > 0 go into a while loop periodically fetching it until it becomes zero. Then increment it and proceed with the rest of the script. Decrementing it when done.

This is almost right. I screwed up the incrementing logic, but you get the idea.

I could have used an AutoKey local stored value for this instead of a global one, but just in case it gets stuck in a loop, you can write another script that sets the global stored value to zero, etc. to break the loop manually.

Obviously, the bits about where and when to increment/decrement the variable and how to avoid problems exiting a broken /stuck loop need work, but that's just a normal coding problem.