Listening to songs, like chads
#shellscripting #linux #automation
I use Arch Btw.
For context, I have this ancient laptop, and I love listening to random songs on YouTube while coding. However, my computer tends to get pretty toasty, hitting around 70°C, especially if I try to have YouTube open while doing something else. So, I’ve decided to do some shell scripting.
The Script
First of all, I got all YouTube video IDs from the playlist I listen to. (it has 1161 songs)
yt-dlp --flat-playlist --print id "<playlist url here>" > ids.txt
the playlist URL I used, https://youtu.be/kJQP7kiw5Fk?list=PL15B1E77BB5708555. you can use your favorite.
now I wrote a very simple shell script to download the songs (using yt-dlp) and play them (using mpv). you can choose a different media player. make sure to check out yt-dlp if you haven’t already.
#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -f "./current_id.txt" ]; then
echo "1" > ./current_id.txt
mkdir playing played
fi
while true
do
current_id=$(cat ./current_id.txt)
expr "$current_id" "+" 1 > ./current_id.txt
song_id=$(head "-$current_id" < ids.txt | tail -1)
echo "$song_id"
yt-dlp -f wa "$song_id" -o "./playing/%(title)s.%(ext)s"
mpv playing/*
mv playing/* played/
done
after saving the script in a file, run it
sh script.sh
Explanation
We are keeping track of the last video played using the current_id.txt file, we increment it every time by one using expr command. head and tail commands are to get the nth line from the ids.txt file
the -f wa option for yt-dlp selects the worst quality audio-only format (because I have shitty internet).
yt-dlp downloads the song in the playing directory, after mpv plays the song, it is moved to the played directory.
Conclusion
Shell scripting is the best skill I have learned, and would highly encourage you to give it a try, it's seriously awesome.
also here is my github.
I later upgraded the script to do things like handle multiple playlists, caching of downloaded songs, and much more, you can find it here.
Liked the script, check out my local bin.
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Listening to songs, like chads