George-lewis / music-caster

Music Caster is a music player that lets you cast your local music files to a Google Cast device. Click the link for screenshots.

Music Caster

Music Caster is a modern music player that lets you cast local music files to a Google Cast Device (Chromecast, Home, etc.).

If you enjoyed this product a lot feel free to donate (ironic) to monero:42hpQgwfvFw6RXpmcXHBJ85cZs9yF97kqfV3JpycnanG7JazfdL4WHkVLuR8rcM64q6LHt547nKeeYaixBdCQYaHSuEnAuj or https://www.paypal.me/elibroftw.

Important information

On the first run, you will need to click the arrow in your taskbar to see the app icon, you can move it for ease of access. If you have music files in folders other than the home music folder, add them in settings (right click tray icon -> settings). If you are able and willing to translate to other languages, click here

Download (Windows)

• VirusTotal scan
• Developer Guide
• Screenshots

Demo

The image below directs to my demo video on YouTube. Note that it is outdated by 6+ months, and does not represent the current state of Music Caster.

Power User Features

• Global media hot-keys are supported
• Web GUI (QR code in Settings window)
• Command Line Arguments

I love keyboard shortcuts, they make us more productive. Aside from the global media hot-keys, Music Caster has its own shortcuts as seen below.

Shortcut	Window	Behaviour
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + M	Global	Activate Main Window
Esc	ALL	Close Window
Scroll	Main	Volume and Progress Bar
A	Main	Decrease Volume by 5%
D	Main	Increase Volume by 5%
#	Main	Set Volume to # * 10%
K	Main	Pause / Resume / Start Playing
J	Main	Rewind 5 seconds
L	Main	Fast-forward 5 seconds
Ctrl + R	Main	Cycle Repeat
Ctrl + M	Main	Mute
Ctrl + 1	Main	Go to Tab 1 (Queue)
Ctrl + 2	Main	Go to Tab 2 (Playlists)
Ctrl + 3	Main	Go to Tab 3 (Timer)
Ctrl + 4	Main	Go to Tab 4 (Settings)

Editing settings.json

• Music Caster will detect changes within 10 seconds of editing settings.json
  • Caveat: any color code changes requires a restart
• The music directories is a list of valid directory paths
  • The first path is the default directory MC opens when you click "Play File"
• The playlist setting follows the convention {'PLAYLIST NAME': ['list of paths to files']}
• Some settings are there for the future and have no effect

Limitations

• Chromecasts only support the AAC version of WMA files
• Lack of emoji support (the GUI might not work). There's always settings.json + WEB GUI though
• Road Map

Data Collection / Privacy Policy

What is sent to me when an error is encountered?

# in handle_exception,
{
  'EXCEPTION TYPE': exc_type.__name__,                  # error name
  'LINE': exc_tb.tb_lineno,                             # error location/line
  'TRACEBACK': trace_back_msg,                          # error message
  'MAC': hashlib.md5(get_mac().encode()).hexdigest(),   # error unqiueness
  'LOG': log_lines,                                     # last 5 lines of log for context
  'FATAL': restart_program,                             # if the error crashed the program
  'CASTING': cast is not None,                          # was user was casting to a chromecast
  'MQ': len(music_queue),                               # queue lengths
  'PLAYING_TYPE': play_uri,                             # what uri type if any was user playing
  'VERSION': VERSION,
  'NQ': len(next_queue),
  'DQ': len(done_queue),
  'OS': platform.platform(),
  'TIME': current_time,
}

In addition, I collect (MD5 hashed) MAC and IP addresses in a Google Excel Sheet. Only I have access to this data, I will NEVER give it to anyone else.

• Hashed MAC so that I know how many users (1900+), without knowing the actual MAC addresses
• IP because I can do something cool