Now playing/media controls missing in sound indicator applet

2024-10-03_10-32

I upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04. I'm using MATE and in the area shown in the screenshot I used to see information about whatever is currently playing, e.g. a track on spotify or a video on youtube, along with pause/play/next buttons.

Can I get this feature back?

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Hi, @Timothy_Hayes and welcome to the Ubuntu MATE Community!

Hmm that is strange - I am on 24.04.1 and I have the ability to see all that info albeit it won't let me printscreen while it's open

Have you tried updating and upgrading system and rebooting ?

Only thing I can think of is something happened during the upgrade since I installed my version fresh from usb ISO so I know it does work on the 24.04

What I would suggest is that you try and 1. reset the panel 2. If that didn't work then right click on the applet of the sound and tick off "lock to panel" and after that "remove from panel" 3. After you've removed it then right click the panel and click "add to panel" in that menu search for "Indicator Applet Complete" because that should be the whole package including shot-down and date and time indicators

Hope it helps because it might just be reset via delete and restore as applets on panel

Then you probably need to review this tip on timer-based countdown before auto-snapshot. :slight_smile:

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Thank you sooo much! If I could I'd give you solution checkmark for this - this explains a lot! A really good information to have - might even be worthy to put as separate into "Tips, Tricks and Tutorials" because I don't know if all the people will read this thread and this in my opinion is really useful to a lot of users on MATE :open_book:

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Hi, @Timothy_Hayes!

When you first use a media player, the ayatana-indicator-sound module registers it and displays in its menu.

Each media player which abides by the MPRIS2 spec will automatically appear in the menu.

The dconf-editor tool is helpful to check or edit the media player list.

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Thanks. Neither Firefox nor VLC are listed in interested-media-players. I wonder if it has something to do with them being snaps rather than debs.

{ Answer previously posted was found to be incorrect. Inappropriate to leave that here. EAJM }

{ Answer previously posted was found to be incorrect. Inappropriate to leave that here. EAJM }

Firefox is supporting MPRIS starting version 81 (September 2020).

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A likely reason, because the snap infrastructure provides an extra isolation level. So, the problem narrows down to "MPRIS with snaps".
It will be faster to install vlc and firefox as .deb packages.

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