Hi! My name is Pete and I'm a software developer in London. I like music, code, coffee and talking about startups. Find me on Twitter and gmail.

How to mute Spotify adverts Part 3: Playing nicely with Growl

Posted by peter at 22:18 on 12 January 2010

So, it’s been a while since my last post, and what better theme to start the new year than the old favourite? How to remove those bloody annoying Spotify adverts!

Note that this post continues from part two and is an explanation of how to get my mute script playing nicely with Growl.

Basically, I downloaded the Growl source code and recompiled it to automatically re-broadcast all notifications using NSDistributedNotificationCenter, which means the mute script can pick up the notifications while Growl is running.

The recompiled Growl binaries are totally safe to run – no funny stuff included – but If any keen-beans want the actual source-code changes then let me know and I’ll tell you what to change. It’s just too much effort for one post :-)

So, without further ado, this is what you need to get the mute script working with Growl:

  • Modify the mute script in Part 2 by changing this line:

on_notification :distributed=>true, :named=> 'GrowlNotification', :when_suspended=>:coalesce do |note|

to

on_notification :distributed=>true, :named=> 'GrowlNotificationRebroadcast', :when_suspended=>:coalesce do |note|

Also note that if you really, really want to recompile growl yourself, like, from source… then check out my github repo containing the original growl 1.2 source code, plus the changes I made. Caveat emptor :-)

That’s it! Give it a spin and ping me if you get stuck. Bonsoir, and I hope your 2010 is a cracker.

P.

4 comments >>
  1. David R. MacIver 09:24 on 13 January 2010

    > let me know and I’ll tell you what to change. It’s just too much effort for one post :-)

    Hm. If only there were some sort of compact text format that would let you automatically store the “difference” of two source trees. That would be awesome.

  2. Mike 13:48 on 13 January 2010

    @David I detect a note of sarcasm

  3. Joe 19:36 on 21 January 2010

    Beautiful script. Thank you very much. The only way I saw to make it better is to make it switch the input source in Soundflower from system output to line-in on the ipod to avoid manually switching every time an ad come up. Although this doesn’t fade in very well…

  4. Wee Jock Poo Pong Mcplop 16:09 on 23 January 2010

    Idea for future releases… buffer the first 5-10 minutes before Spotify starts playing.
    Well, I guess the main reason you’d want to block out ads (besides them being annoying) is to be able to play awesome play lists at parties. If you buffered the first 5-10 minutes of playback before broadcasting the play list to output, you could theoretically skips the ads altogether (instead of muting them).
    Then again… is all this work a more valuable use of your time than just paying the $10 premium fee? ;-0

This post is closed for comments.