lastplayer

Simple program that keeps track of the last used MPRIS2 players.

How?

It prints the order of the players, from most recent to last recent, on a single line on stdout any time a player appears or disappears. The most recent list of players is also written at /tmp/lastplayer.

Why?

You can use this program to control from keybinds the most recently opened multimedia player, using for example a program like playerctl.

Using the same technique, you may control another player based on the order of when it was started.

Example

Start lastplayer beforehand:

lastplayer &

Toggle the playing state of the most recent player:

#!/bin/sh

player="$(cat /tmp/lastplayer | head -n 1)"
playerctl -p $player play-pause