[Request] AirPlay

[smirky]

2 hours ago, vitor said:

By the way, would it be a good time to change the name of the workflow to “Music Airplay Toggle”? It doesn’t have to change, but it occurred to me as a possibility.

 

I've thought about that and tend to land on not changing the name, although I'm 100% open to anyone's thoughts on best practices and improved clarity.

 

My main reason for not changing it is because "Music" could be potentially confusing in regards to the workflow's scope. Unfortunately, "Music" might imply that the workflow can affect any music software that you're running instead of specifically "Apple Music". By that same logic, a better name might be "Apple Music Airplay Toggle" or similar. That had previously seemed too lengthy of a name for such a simple workflow, but now I'm starting to warm to it.

 

I'll make the requested update, possibly with the new name, and post to the other thread shortly. Thanks again!

[vitor]

Yep, I agree with your reasoning regarding the name. Even “Apple Music” could be misconstrued as the service rather than the app. “iTunes” was a strong enough brand name to not have that issue.

[smirky]

Thanks again, Vitor, really appreciate the input. I've created a new thread here:

 

[esceef]

The tooggle mode works fine and is helpful.

But when I switch to my HomePodMinis, I can no longer change the volume on the keyboard. I then still have to switch to Airplay in the settings and the Sound option. Only then will it work.
Unfortunately I don't know how to add this.

[smirky]

On 7/17/2023 at 2:16 PM, esceef said:

The tooggle mode works fine and is helpful.

But when I switch to my HomePodMinis, I can no longer change the volume on the keyboard. I then still have to switch to Airplay in the settings and the Sound option. Only then will it work.
Unfortunately I don't know how to add this.

Hi esceef, thanks for this info. I may have to do some research on this use case and possibly ask for your help in troubleshooting since I don't have a HomePod to test with. Can you confirm that when you select HomePod using only the Airplay button in iTunes (attached image) and not changing the system Sound option, you're able to change the volume using just the keyboard?

 

I have a feeling there's an issue with how the iTunes Airplay setting interacts with the system Sound setting that might be outside of the current functionality of this workflow to handle without a huge re-write. I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

 

[esceef]

Using "Musik" and selecting Airplay I can't control the volume with the keyboard. That is the issue :-(.

[smirky]

13 hours ago, esceef said:

Using "Musik" and selecting Airplay I can't control the volume with the keyboard. That is the issue :-(.

Thanks, I'll do a little more research but it sounds like you're describing a limitation within Airplay, Music, and Mac OS not something related to the workflow itself. Happy to try and fix something related to the workflow if that turns out to be the issue. I'll follow up when I find more info on the topic.

[smirky]

On 7/28/2023 at 5:59 AM, esceef said:

Using "Musik" and selecting Airplay I can't control the volume with the keyboard. That is the issue :-(.

As suspected, this is an issue with how the Mac OS restricts interactions between iTunes/Music, Airplay devices, and the keyboard buttons. I found a Github project that appears designed to address this exact issue but I've not had a chance to test it out. Hopefully this will help you!

 

https://github.com/alberti42/Volume-Control

 

From the project's ReadMe:

[esceef]

Many thanks for your effort! There are then obvious hurdles of macOS.
But shouldn't it be possible to record the steps that I have to carry out manually on the Mac as sequences one after the other and then call them up again using keyboard shortcuts?

[smirky]

On 8/4/2023 at 9:07 AM, esceef said:

Many thanks for your effort! There are then obvious hurdles of macOS.
But shouldn't it be possible to record the steps that I have to carry out manually on the Mac as sequences one after the other and then call them up again using keyboard shortcuts?

Generally yes, although it's not a great solution for a released tool (assuming you're just an amateur coder like me). My understanding is that there are ways to do this via GUI Scripting, but that's an unreliable way to program things for use by other people. It's susceptible to breaking suddenly and very difficult to keep updated for anyone outside of the person who creates it. Any time Apple makes even the slightest change to their UI, the steps are broken. It's also difficult to maintain across multiple versions of OSes because I think you'd need to have every major OS version available on a testing machine to ensure that you cover everyone's needs. My old workflow for syncing devices via iTunes got killed off because of this - Apple moved that function to Finder and now it's not scriptable other than via GUI scripting.

 

If you wanted to build something that was specific to your local machine, I think that Automator might get you there. I haven't used it in a long time, but that's where I would start.