spotblock

spotblock is a minimal spotify ad blocker daemon for GNU/Linux.

Installation

Dependencies

spotblock depends on the following libraries:

• libsystemd
• libpulse

Note that, while libsystemd is a dependency, you can use spotblock even if you're not using systemd as your init system.

spotblock only works if you're using pulseaudio or pipewire and requires a running dbus daemon.

Building

It's best to install spotblock via packages tailored to your distribution. For example:

• Arch Linux

Otherwise you can use the following commands:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
$ make
$ sudo make install

This installs spotblock under /usr/bin/spotblock. Note that using the /usr prefix is required if you want to use spotblock as a systemd service.

Using

As a systemd service

If you've installed spotblock under /usr, you can use it as a systemd service. To start the service use

$ systemctl --user start spotblock

To make spotblock run automatically on login use

$ systemctl --user enable spotblock

As a standalone binary

If you don't want to use spotblock as a systemd service you can also simply start it by running the spotblock binary. How to make the binary run on login depends on the distribution you're using.

Troubleshooting

spotblock mutes chromium

spotblock mutes some spotify ads which run inside of chromium processes. Pulseaudio thinks that your chromium browser and those ads are the same kind of process and so it carries the "muted" property over to your browser. To fix this you have to give the spotify client a "module-stream-restore.id" that is different from the one used by chromium. You can do this by writing a small wrapper around spotify:

#!/bin/bash

export PULSE_PROP="module-stream-restore.id=spotify"
exec /usr/bin/spotify "$@"

Failed to start dbus.service: Unit dbus.service not found.

spotblock depends on D-BUS as a systemd user service. This requires you to also run the D-BUS server as a systemd service. While this is the default in all newer versions of systemd and D-BUS, older version still run D-BUS through dbus-launch or other means when starting the Desktop environment (e.g. the version that Ubuntu 16.04 uses).

To run D-BUS as a systemd service you will need to create the following two files. A dbus socket /etc/systemd/user/dbus.socket:

[Unit]
Description=D-Bus User Message Bus Socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=%t/bus

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target
Also=dbus.service

... and the associated dbus service /etc/systemd/user/dbus.service:

[Unit]
Description=D-Bus User Message Bus
Documentation=man:dbus-daemon(1)
Requires=dbus.socket

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dbus-daemon --session --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation
ExecReload=/usr/bin/dbus-send --print-reply --session --type=method_call --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus / org.freedesktop.DBus.ReloadConfig

[Install]
Also=dbus.socket

You will also be required to make sure that the environmental variable DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS is set properly. You can check if it is set by running echo $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS in your shell. To use systemd to do this as well, write the following into /etc/systemd/system/user@.service.d/dbus.conf

[Service]
Environment=DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/%I/bus

All that is left to do after this is to enable the dbus service for all users:

systemctl --global enable dbus.socket

To avoid having systemd and your desktop enviorment compete for how will get to start dbus will have to disable or remove your desktop environment's call of dbus-lauch. Depending on your ~/.xinitrc or your systems /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc this has to be done in diffrent ways. On Ubuntu 16.04 for example is enough to remove use-session-dbus from /etc/X11/Xsession.options.

Notifications

If you want to be notified whenever spotblock mutes or unmutes spotify, you can use the dbus service provided by spotblock.

spotblock is reachable under the org.spotblock name and provides the /org/spotblock object. This object in turn provides the org.spotblock interface which has the Muted property. This property is true if spotify is muted, false otherwise. spotblock sends a signal whenever this property changes.

The following Ruby script listens to this signal and prints the status change:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'dbus'

bus = DBus::SessionBus.instance
proxy = bus.service("org.spotblock")
           .object("/org/spotblock")
proxy.introspect
props = proxy["org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties"]

puts props.Get('org.spotblock', 'Muted')[0]

props.on_signal("PropertiesChanged") do
    puts props.Get('org.spotblock', 'Muted')[0]
end

loop = DBus::Main.new
loop << bus
loop.run

License

spotblock is free software licensed under GPLv3.