Hello,
I have been working on vibe coding an NVDA add-on for the Apple Music app on windows. I am not sure of the best place to share this sort of thing, as it feels weird to try putting it in the add-on store. I've only tested on two systems (1 Win 10, and 1 Win 11.)
The add-on does the following:
seek left and right now moves in more than the ridiculous default of what feels like 1 second intervals. You can configure the amount in settings. Control alt left and right arrows for small seek, add shift for larger seek.
"""Suppresses speech of track numbers.
Enter plays a song while in a playlist.
Control up and down now adjust volume while in a playlist.
NVDA shift l moves focus to song list if there is one on screen. For example, if you are in a playlist but focus has moved to the play button, press this to jump back to the list of songs
Song name is reported along with the title when pressing insert t
I have added the following hot keys. Apple in theory has hot keys for many of these things, but they stopped working for me a long time ago.
Navigation: alt n
Home: alt h
playlists: alt p (then arrow down to find your playlist)
Radio: alt r
Library: alt l then arrow down to select artists or albums Etc.
Show or hide lyrics: control shift l
Note that some of these hot keys seem to get tripped up if lyrics are on screen.
Things are not perfect, but I feel less angry when using Apple Music, so I'll call it a win. Take it for a spin if you like, but be aware of the risks involved in installing a vibe coded add-on provided by a stranger over the internet.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/46wc00xsubsyzzspa21ak/appleMusicEnhanced.nvda-addon?rlkey=by6iqlngojhsvwfi4auw48t00&dl=1
Keith
Comments
Great idea, you should put it on Github
I still have not transitioned to the apple Music app yet on windows. I don't like that they separate out the playing of music to another process, so if you close it it keeps playing. You should add a global keyboard shortcut to exit that thing.
Great idea
This sounds like a great idea!
I'm still using iTunes mainly because of the simpler hotkeys and stuff (I prefer to just hit enter to play a song).
some shortcuts don't work with a non english windows
Hi Keith,
i've tried your addon, transport shortcuts work nicely, but pressing enter on an artist name returns an error : play button not found .
with alt+r for radios : navigation failed, nulcom pointer access.
an idea to solve that kind of errors?
thanks for this addon it's a good idea.
best
play button not found
I tried the addon very recently (having finally switched over to Apple Music) and I'm getting the "play button not found" error too when pressing enter on a song. My Windows language is English BTW.
Is this still being developed?
Hi,
Just wondering if this is still being actively developed?
Thanks. 🙂
Try this.
Hi,
I changed some things with the way the add on handles playing a song from a playlist. Actually got the idea from someone in the other apple music thread. At any rate, instead of messing around with a mouse click to get a play button to appear, the new enter script simply stops the previous song if one was playing, then plays the focused song.
I'd certainly not call this add-on under development. It's really just something I did to make apple music play nicer for me, and passed along hoping it could help people. Certainly vibe coded, though with lots of swearing along the way.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cbff4h2nudiuahdnxj0ji/appleMusicEnhanced.nvda-addon?rlkey=l77yal3dwlnlzy6hac3xrz8ry&dl=1
you know, for a
You know, for a company that claims itself on being more accessible than the rest of the competition, this really isn't a good look for them
Apple's keyboard commands
Keyboard commands for Apple Music on Windows are Shirley not standard. I have to press alt, followed by the first letter and then the second letter in sequence, instead of holding down alt and the first letter.
I've noticed some web apps also behave that way.
have you noticed that navigating lyrics depends on the song? sometimes I have to tab through each line instead of down and up arrows.
It's not easy to get out of the lyrics. I have to remember the command, which does not come to me right now. Escape doesn't work control F4 doesn't work. No windows standards at all.
I also get pretty angry with Apple Music but I use it a lot so I might try this add-on.
Re: Apple's keyboard commands
I completely agree; the Windows keyboard shortcuts are not standard at all.
But since Apple Music doesn't have a menu bar, that might be why the keyboard shortcuts are kind of complicated.
But still, for simple things like play a song, I should be able to do it by pressing the enter key, space for pause. If I want to play another song, I should just be able to press enter, not ctrl+period first and hit space again.
Also I noticed that NVDA will not announce the status of the focused song (playing/paused), unlike in iTunes.