Background Music, an OS X audio utility | Hacker News Reader

Background Music, an OS X audio utility

github.com

160 pointsdhruvbhatia37 comments

Off topic, check out the uninstall instructions. Uninstallation is bad on OS X, and it would be amazing if someone could come up with a nice, general answer (like Sparkle did for updates).

On topic, this is great work.

This app seems to have a bit more complication than most, due to tapping into the operating system more deeply (I presume).

But for most apps I've found AppCleaner to work very well for uninstalling all related files (regardless of where they're scattered about): https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

AppCleaner works great. I also recommend it.

OS X apps installed via Homebrew Cask can have a "zap" command defined that will automate a deep uninstall:

`brew cask zap <app_name>`

It isn't an acceptable answer for the average Mac user, but it at least solves the issue for a subset of users.

Probably inspired by AppZapper which does a great job of addressing the problem

The majority of MacPorts programs I installed over the years uninstalled cleanly.

Also I could be wrong but isn't/wasn't the whole "fat binaries + static binaries + app binary and its associated assets live in a magic folder that the OS-X GUI displays as 'the app' + other past Mac app trickery such as resource forks etc" all meant to make both app install and UN-install painless and easy ?

I know and used a few commercial apps that were a damn pain to scrub completely off the Macs I owned but that was expensive proprietary commercial software that felt the need to take my money and also saddle me with DRM to enforce their licensing.

Not all Mac apps are of the "drag to your /Applications folder" variety. Some still come with an installer they expect you to run, and prompt you for admin rights.

I think Steam installs a daemon that watches for game aliases being dragged into the Trash, and then deletes their locally installed content.

Maybe Apple could provide a builtin mechanism in MacOS (as I assume/hope it's about to be called) that watches for a .app bundle being dragged into the Trash, and offers the user a chance to remove any auxiliary files created by that app, and run its uninstallation scripts if any, when the Trash is being emptied?

Of course it will have to be seamless and resistant to developer abuse (or malice) and not make everything too Windows'y.

That facility sort of exists for sandboxed Mac apps, since all incidental files related to the app are under a single container that iirc is deleted if the corresponding app is removed.

Ah then "uninstallation" isn't needed at all, unless it pumps a lot of stuff into ~/Library/Application Support or somewhere, kind of like what Xcode does (I think it forgets about outdated and huge documentation downloads sometimes.)

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10051/uninstaller is the best solution I've found so far. With Uninstaller you scan the whole system drive before installation. After installation is ready you do a "compare" scan. You will now see all the new and modified files. This is list saved as a file for later removal of the installed software.

Too bad it is abandoned software, but it still works terrific.

A general mixer was the one thing I really missed from my windows machine when I bought my first Macbook. I wasn't a programmer back then and assumed that since there were practically no apps that allowed you to mix app volumes it was technically very difficult to do on OSX.

I'll be interested to see how you develop this.

Rogue Amoeba do a good collection of audio apps: http://rogueamoeba.com -- it's possible to add effects, mix, etc.

Nothing as simple + dedicated as Background Music tho.

No, but I pair Audio Hijack 3 which is just amazing (Audio Hijack Pro was great, the renamed "3" drops the "Pro" and adds gorgeous) with an external Schiit Modi 2 DAC and Vali amp (and some nice Seinheisser headphones) and have fantastic music for sub $500.

Background Music could totally slip into this setup!

What did you use Audio Hijack for?

Mostly a series of equalizers, and volume control. The amp provides amazing volume control (not much distortion even at high high volume) so I pull it back a bit before sending it through. I have different equalizers so I can turn on and odd discrete passes based on the music.

AH's ability to send the sound across multiple output paths is also really nice and I use that (less often) as well.

It's a great feature, but Microsoft appears to have crippled it in Windows 10 - none of the Windows 10 native applications (not sure of the correct term, but stuff like MS Store applications and the built-in music/video players) are shown in the volume mixer.

Great work! This could be even better by quickly fading in the audio like iOS. It a bit abrasive for it to just drop, especially on larger speakers.

And obviously having a dmg would be better too.

Feature request: figure out how to make the pause button on my Mac keyboard pause a YouTube video.

Would someting like Streamkeys [ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/streamkeys/ekpipjo... ] work?

I'm using Keysockey Chrome extension for YouTube (and many other websites):

https://github.com/borismus/keysocket

(I use Keysocket it every day. However, media key handling breaks when I have apps like VLC running at the same time on OS X. As far as I know, it's a Chrome bug, because it ignores SPMediaKeyTap, defacto standard library to handle media keys on OS X.)

There is also BeardedSpice which is a Mac native menubar app, works with lots of websites, YouTube included.

http://beardedspice.github.io/

There's also Volume Mixer for Mac : http://volumemixer-app.com

I've been using this GNOME extension for a while and couldn't be happier: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/858/volume-mixer/

It's only the mixer though (with the volume boost) - no automatic pause or recording system audio (not that I ever missed these).

Hoping Apple would be sherlocking this for MacOS 12 :)

Surprised to just have realised this wasn't built into os x. I seem to remember Spotify pausing itself when I received a Skype call. But maybe that was just my imagination or a dream or something.

Felt like per app audio volume was standard in operating systems, I didn't even think about it.

I'm 100% sure iTunes pauses itself when receiving Skype call, without any custom software. Not sure about other players though.

It's also 100% possible that Skype is the one pausing iTunes in that case.

Someone needs to build this into a DMG

...or homebrew

Woah. I've recently tried to do something similar in userspace, but came to the conclusion that it's not possible without a kernel driver. I'm impressed, and tempted to use this soon :)

It's possible. See Volume Mixer (http://volumemixer-app.com).

Looks great! Could be better with a "how it works" section, as it seems it shunts things off into a background music channel?

Wow, thanks for this!

Does anyone know of anything similar for Linux?

This is perfect and so easy to use. Thanks!

Would buy

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