• Dynamic Music Pillis a GNOME Shell extension that embeds a pill-shaped media controller into your desktop panel or dock. • It shows album art, artist name and track title alongside an animated waveform visualiser. • If that sounds unashamedly blingy, it’s because it is - nothing wrong in that, right? • The extension received an update today, which seem a good hook to actually take this off my “to write about” list. • V20 adds a compact mode to hide all text; player filtering to add/ignore specific apps; and the option to set fallback album art for players/streams that don’t emit any. • Hit play on the video embed to see a quick demo of Dynamic Music Pill on my Ubuntu desktop.

Article Summaries:

  • Dynamic Music Pill, a GNOME Shell extension that embeds a pill‑shaped media controller into the panel or dock, released version 20 today. The update adds a compact mode that hides text, player filtering to include or exclude specific apps, and a fallback album‑art option for streams that lack artwork. The widget shows album art, artist and track title with an animated waveform, and can be fully customized (background, transparency, control placement, etc.). It works with any MPRIS‑compatible player, disables GNOME’s native controller, and integrates with Dash to Panel/Dock. Compatible with GNOME 45‑49, the source is on GitHub and can be installed via the GNOME Extensions site.

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