MPRIS D-Bus Interface Specification

Interfaces (Compact) | Full Index

Version 2.2

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About (Permalink)

The Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification is a standard D-Bus interface which aims to provide a common programmatic API for controlling media players.

It provides a mechanism for discovery, querying and basic playback control of compliant media players, as well as a tracklist interface which is used to add context to the active media item.

Changes (Permalink)

From 2.1 to 2.2:
  • Added the optional Fullscreen and CanSetFullscreen properties to the org.mpris.MediaPlayer2 interface.
  • The path /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2/TrackList/NoTrack now represents "no track" where required in the org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.TrackList interface (since empty paths are not allowed by D-Bus).
  • The suggested unique instance identifier no longer violates the D-Bus specification by begining with a digit.
From 2.0 to 2.1:
  • Added the optional org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Playlists interface.

Corrections (Permalink)

Bus Name Policy (Permalink)

Each media player must request a unique bus name which begins with org.mpris.MediaPlayer2. For example:

This allows clients to list available media players (either already running or which can be started via D-Bus activation)

In the case where the media player allows multiple instances running simultaneously, each additional instance should request a unique bus name, adding a dot and a unique identifier to its usual bus name, such as one based on a UNIX process id. For example, this could be:

Note: According to the D-Bus specification, the unique identifier "must only contain the ASCII characters '[A-Z][a-z][0-9]_-'" and "must not begin with a digit".

Entry point (Permalink)

The media player must expose the /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 object path, which must implement the following interfaces:

The /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 object may implement the org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.TrackList interface.

The /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 object may implement the org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Playlists interface.

The PropertiesChanged signal (Permalink)

The MPRIS uses the org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.PropertiesChanged signal to notify clients of changes in the media player state. If a client implementation uses D-Bus bindings which do not support this signal, then it should connect to it manually. If a media player implementation uses D-Bus bindings which do not support this signal, then it should send it manually

Interfaces (Permalink)