And another…

Lastly, some art from my new comic project, Meager Panic

I think what I’ve offered was different. But not because I drew better than anybody, or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody.

- Maurice Sendak, June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012.

Taken from a transcript via Drawn. Wise words, especially since I’ve been wrestling with trying to be more honest with my drawings.

Udpate: I hadn’t thought about this looking like “piss on Facebook” until now… That wasn’t the intent. This was drawn to go with a podcast that joked about Facebook buying companies they didn’t need, and that soon they would even own a urinal cake factory. Although looking at this drawing now, I don’t know “piss on Facebook” didn’t occur to me.

There is a little app out there called Smuteify that tries to automatically mute Spotify ads, but it doesn’t work on OSX Lion.

I wrote a little Applescript and combined it with a neat command line script called Audiodevice. Audiodevice runs on the command line to tell your system which output device to use for sound. It can toggle from headphones to internal speakers and so on. This works for Spotify by changing your output source to a device that won’t output any sound. My Applescript invokes Audiodevice, listens to what it returns and toggles your sound output accordingly.

The Setup

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Soundflower – you’ll need this installed if you want to use this applescript as-is. Otherwise, you can modify my Mute Spotify script to use another output source of your choosing.
• Audiodevice – this is the command-line script that does all of the real work.
• Mute Spotify - my Applescript (also see the update here)

1. Install Soundflower (or skip this if you plan to use another output source)
2. Unzip Audiodevice and place it in your home directory. For example, mine is in /Users/jeff/
3. Unzip my Mute Spotify applescript and place it in your Applications folder (or anywhere else you like)

Now when you want to mute Spotify ads you can either click the Mute Spotify script, or (as I do) invoke it with Quicksilver. Alfred or Spotlight will work just as well. When you run Mute Spotify it will toggle your output source and thus mute your audio. Run it again to unmute. Since Spotify uses Growl notifications to tell you which song (or ad) is playing, it will also tell you when an ad is over and a new song starts.

Thanks to @whosawhatsis and his Audiodevice script that makes this all possible. There are a few other methods out there for toggling audio via Applescript, but they all open your System Preferences window, navigate to Sound and then select the source. It’s a lot slower and needs to focus the System Preferences window so you have to stop whatever you’re doing. My method is quick and runs in the background. It should also work on all versions of OSX – please let me know if it doesn’t.

To be very clear – this is not intended to screw over Spotify. This is intended to stop the shitty practice of breaking your computer’s mute button. Mute is not pause. You will still see ads in the app window, audio ads will still play and are not automatically blocked (unlike Smuteify).

Tip: If you need to manually reset your sound source for any reason, Option-click on your sound icon in the menubar and choose “Internal Speakers.”

 
UPDATE: I’ve revised the Applescript to intelligently switch between Internal Speakers and Headphones so that you can use a single script whether or not you’re plugged in. Here’s the new version: Mute Spotify v2

Also, a nice trick – you can invoke either script with just one key by using Quicksilver Triggers. I used F6 for this, which isn’t used by anything else, so I now have a “mute spotify” key.

Here’s the video. Just don’t blame me – I warned you.