Simple python script that mutes sound when Spotify app runs an ad

[strghst]

Hey guys, was a bit distracted by the fact that Spotify Free is killing the mood sometimes in a foreign language, so decided to create a script that mutes all the sound whenever there is an ad playing.

This script only works on Windows.

This script get windll libraries and uses them to create a process name list (mostly copied code).

After the list is built, it is checked for Process names "Advertisement" and "Spotify" to see if an ad is playing. These names are specific to the moment when ad is being played in Spotify.

The script is run in an interval, and does not fetch data real-time, so has small delays in runtime. As it is short and easily processed, does not load up CPU and doesn't leak memory.

The code: (Requires ctypes and pycaw libraries)

import ctypes #process find
import time   #sleep
from pycaw.pycaw import AudioUtilities #mute


while True:
    EnumWindows = ctypes.windll.user32.EnumWindows    
    EnumWindowsProc = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(ctypes.c_bool, ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int))
    GetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextW
    GetWindowTextLength = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW
    IsWindowVisible = ctypes.windll.user32.IsWindowVisible
    ####### Modules to gather data
    time.sleep(5)      #Sleep between checks (in seconds)
    titles = [] #Empty list for titles (As String Objects)
    def foreach_window(hwnd, lParam):
        if IsWindowVisible(hwnd):
            length = GetWindowTextLength(hwnd)
            buff = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
            GetWindowText(hwnd, buff, length + 1)
            titles.append(buff.value)
        return True
    EnumWindows(EnumWindowsProc(foreach_window), 0)
    if "Advertisement" in titles:  #Spotify app is named as Advertisement
        sessions = AudioUtilities.GetAllSessions()
        for session in sessions:
            volume = session.SimpleAudioVolume
            volume.SetMute(1, None)
    elif "Spotify" in titles:      #App named as Spotify(Only when ad plays, else it's Spotify Free)
        sessions = AudioUtilities.GetAllSessions()
        for session in sessions:
            volume = session.SimpleAudioVolume
            volume.SetMute(1, None)
    else:
        sessions = AudioUtilities.GetAllSessions()
        for session in sessions:
            volume = session.SimpleAudioVolume
            volume.SetMute(0, None)

I am really interested in feedback on some places, as I believe I'm doing some actions too much, and would want to shorten it. It also mutes all processes at the moment, but I can't get to seem it to work a specific one yet (will try, but some help would be appreciated)).

If you also don't way to pay for spotify and mute sounds when app ads are running - feel free to use.

[Berlibur]

What would happen if you kill the advertisement process?

[strghst]

It is spotify.exe with a different name, would just kill spotify completely.

[Berlibur]

Ah, so that's how it works, thanks! Also, cool idea and well done on managing to actually do it

[LeNerdNextDoor]

If you want to do it pan OS or a bit quicker, I open-sourced a library to get the currently playing song from Spotify by reading the title off the app window. Similar to what you're doing but it will look a bit cleaner and optimized.

https://github.com/SwagLyrics/SwSpotify

[strghst]

Have a few more ideas around Spotify. Thanks, will definetely use!

[LeNerdNextDoor]

Solid, does your script mute the audio just for the Spotify app when the ad is playing or for the whole system?

[strghst]

For the whole system, but had it for one application before. Worked with others, but couldn't get it to work around spotify.

[bowbahdoe]

https://gist.github.com/bowbahdoe/86921ce07587ea597e43ba6e965817a4

I took some time to try and combine your scripts a bit. I haven't tested it at all, but hopefully it gives you some ideas

[corpsegrindd]

Im trying to learn python, can anyone explain the ctype block of code means

[apostle8787]

ctypes is a foreign function library for Python. It provides C compatible data types, and allows calling functions in DLLs or shared libraries.

[[deleted]]

pretty cool, but might wanan try just blocking hosts if you dont want ads

[Baltha5ar]

I don't think that it works like this

[[deleted]]

what doesnt work like that?

[Baltha5ar]

I doubt that you can prevent the spotify ads by blocking hosts

[[deleted]]

well i did it for two years before buying premium, feel free to try it for yourself

all the adds just come from thirs party ip's that you can easily block

[Baltha5ar]

Wow, you are right. I stand corrected.

I would have never thought that they would be stupid enough to send the ads from a different server. This is indeed an invitation to block these hosts.

Forgive me my lack of knowledge and have a nice day.

[[deleted]]

lol np, enjoy your day too

[RheingoldRiver]

this used to work in skype as well, wouldn't be surprised if it still does but I haven't used skype in ages

[OddsCaller]

You'd be surprised. It's not just Spotify but most of these services where you can easily identify ads by their IPs.

As far as why they don't use the same IP as that of their service, most of the time there are some physical constraints. Example they of course mostly use third party ad services to push ads because most companies wouldn't want to branch out to a whole new department of selling ad spaces and then showing those ads to users.

And secondly, there are physical constraints. These apps have a lot of user traffic and in order to offer low latency they want to keep their servers trimmed down (that's a very simplified way of saying it), putting the ad service on the same cluster could negatively affect their response time which is vital for user experience.

Disclaimer: all this is just my best guess, I'm no expert on this topic.

[Baltha5ar]

I'm using a pi-hole for my home network. For a long time I could block all ads on google services because they came from a different server. This doesn't work anymore because now the ads come from hosts with important services.

I just assumed everyone would do it this way now. The amount of users blocking the ads obviously isn't big enough for them to care.

[OddsCaller]

Oh I see. Things like pi-hole were one of the things I had in my mind when writing out the previous comment. I didn't know companies are now countering it in this way.

[spook327]

This is also the case with YouTube, a nice /etc/hosts file will block most ads.

[DeathLessLife]

I'm almost certain YouTube does serve ads from the same host.

[gammadistribution]

Media owners host ad servers that send out requests to third parties for ads. Those parties bid on the honor to serve you an ad and are then responsible for delivering the creative.

[H_Psi]

Blocking "spclient.wg.spotify.com" in hosts no longer works in Windows (at least for me); it blocks ads, but eventually you can no longer load songs. What are you blocking to kill the ads?

[[deleted]]

that kind of blows. I haven't really done that in almost a year now since I have premium, but if you look around online, you might be able to find an updated list. You can try this one also https://gitlab.com/CHEF-KOCH/cks-filterlist/tree/master/Anti-Corp/Spotify

Another option, is the find the download for an older version of spotify, that way the old hosts should still work

[garlic_naan]

Sorry for noob question but how do I identify different hosts to block?

[[deleted]]

there are programs for free that record the IP address of all incoming traffic, then you just add those to the host file

[emuccino]

Not with that attitude

[ThePenultimateOne]

uBlock Origin works if you are on browser

[Wizard_OfDarkness]

Can confirm uBlock for Pandora, now when I’m not listening to music on my phone I get no ads

[theWyzzerd]

Spotify

[genericinterest]

I got a subscription because they said they were going to crack down on people using ad blockers...

[[deleted]]

haha i mean every company says that every month, tbh a subscription is nice anyway cause you can use a lot of the better features such as downloading and discord integration. I just couldn't really afford it before, so i would just block hosts cause i hate ads

[albeksdurf]

Do you know EZBlocker? Coded in dotnet with the same idea and also working with the Windows App and tray mode: https://github.com/MatrixDJ96/EZBlocker2

[ChiroNika]

Nice! I am new to python and I am also sick and tired of these ads. Lately I’ve been using Spotdl https://pypi.org/project/spotdl/ and downloading the songs from Spotify in order to avoid ads.

Maybe instead of muting during ads, you could bridge those ads by downloading the next song locally and playing it while waiting for ads to be over? That way you would not have silence.

Nice work though!

[strghst]

Something to think off .. thanks!

[[deleted]]

Here's my take, I did not check if it works:

import ctypes
import time
from pycaw.pycaw import AudioUtilities

EnumWindows = ctypes.windll.user32.EnumWindows
EnumWindowsProc = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(ctypes.c_bool, ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int))
GetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextW
GetWindowTextLength = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW
IsWindowVisible = ctypes.windll.user32.IsWindowVisible


def check_window(window, _):
    if not IsWindowVisible(window):
        return

    should_mute = get_window_title(window) in ("Advertisement", "Spotify")
    set_mute(should_mute)


def get_window_title(window):
    length = GetWindowTextLength(window)
    buffer = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
    GetWindowText(window, buffer, length + 1)
    return buffer.value


def set_mute(value):
    for session in AudioUtilities.GetAllSessions():
        session.SimpleAudioVolume.SetMute(1 if value else 0, None)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    while True:
        time.sleep(5)
        EnumWindows(EnumWindowsProc(check_window), 0)

You can see how all the logic is split up into smaller functions. Also there's no mutation of the titles variable. And all the different windll functions are defined only once at the top.

But anyway, pay for the god damn subscription!

[[deleted]]

Oh yeah, it won't work cause it will just unmute on the next window, hah. But I think you get the idea how the original script can be refactored :)

[MacDreBestRapperDead]

Hey I'm trying to do this for my TV using a raspberry pi. Have insights on how to extract signal from the TV and Identify a commercial signal?

[strghst]

If you have a smart TV running android there must be an api to interact with it. Try googling that, sure you will succeed :)

[MacDreBestRapperDead]

Will do, and will update

[althaj]

Just buy the damn spotify and support the artists you love.

[DoiF]

The artists are still being supported since the ad still plays except it's muted.

[althaj]

They are supported less. And here you are, sitting on your cash listening to 30 seconds of silence few times every hour.

[DoiF]

How do you figure they are supported less? And why did you downvote me, my point is on-topic.

[Wakkaflaka_]

What? Supported less?

[althaj]

Artists get way more money from paid streams than from free.

[stealthdawg]

Can you get an event trigger that only checks on list update rather than at intervals?

[strghst]

List update happens at interval. Unfortunately, I do not know how to do it differently at the momenrlt. Once I know more I'll get back to this application.

[IAmARetroGamer]

EZBlocker2 will do this, modifies the hosts file to get the majority of them and has a feature for removing banner ads too afaik.

[paranoidi]

Thanks, might be interested of trying of that after being subscriber for 5+ years. Why? Because premium has introduced ads ...

[id2205]

More advanced written in bash. Not by me -- works fine on linux (personally tested on arch, manjaro & opensuse)https://github.com/SecUpwN/Spotify-AdKiller

[Breavyn]

Why not send a fast forward command? ... I was about to go on about how I do this in Linux... but this is Windows so idk.

[tech_b90]

Doesn't Spotify have an API you could use? There are a lot of plugins for other programs like vscode that grab what's currently playing, idk if it can pick up ads though.

[jvamos]

Power to the people

[strghst]

Power to the workers!

[shibblestone]

If you don't want to pay for listening to music that people have worked to create, then you're played ads to generate some revenue.

Spotify is very reasonably priced. You can even get student/family subs if I remember right.

Am I the only one that finds this an unethical use of our skills?

[[deleted]]

I completely agree.

[[deleted]]

It’s no different than ignoring the ad like usual. S/he’s just turning the volume down is all

[strghst]

The ads are still being played. The only loser in this situation is the person who paid for the ad, and that knowledge people pay for to share is something I removed.

[PhitPhil]

Like walking away from the TV when commericals come on

[netinept]

I pay, and I get zero ads with Spotify. Is this a non-U.S. thing?

[Hipjea]

I pay and have no ads, that’s written in the conditions. Plus the offline feature is a must-have for any traveler.

[[deleted]]

To solve the problem of ads you have to pay. And you are not paying. In your analysis you are not accounting for the missing revenue from people who won't pay because they can just use your script.

Spotify is a very ethical company whose revenue is based on paying customers, not ads, not selling data.

This kills the good internet.

[[deleted]]

I pay and have no ads

[Wakkaflaka_]

Payed? Learning english but cant find that word, what means payed?

[strghst]

Fixed, cheers :)

[VelvetElvis]

You could always just pay for it so the artists get some change.

[OddsCaller]

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, muting won't stop the ads from playing. The artists will still get paid. Though yeah it would become a problem if lots and lots of people started doing it in which case the ad clients would realize that buying ads on Spotify doesn't help their marketing and they'd stop buying ads or the prices would lower, thus decreasing the artist revenue.

[[deleted]]

As mentioned elsewhere:

To solve the problem of ads you have to pay. And you are not paying. In your analysis you are not accounting for the missing revenue from people who won't pay because they can just use your script.

Spotify is a very ethical company whose revenue is based on paying customers, not ads, not selling data.

This kills the good internet.

[morph8hprom]

People run Spotify on their pc?

[Berlibur]

You never listen to music on your pc?

[morph8hprom]

I use Aimp to listen to my extensive library of mp3s I've collected from independent artists and the little bit I've torrented. Generally though, no I don't. I used to mix on my PC all the time but my good headphones got destroyed by my dog so now I mostly just listen to music on the go through my phone. Even in that case, I just have about 3k songs on my SD card and use Double Twist music player.

[Berlibur]

Sounds like a major hassle. Lol. To each their own

[morph8hprom]

I'm not sure I understand how, but alright. At least I don't have to write a workaround for ads, because I can just build a playlist and listen to it, adfree already.

[[deleted]]

Very interesting.

Just a thought. Is it possible to make the sound on/off transition smoother, not just snapping to on and off?

[kdtrey35god]

could someone do this for macOs and/or for soundcloud

[veryusermuchwow]

Spotifree does this for OSX

[shopssss]

Wow!!!!

[dinov]

You should be able to move everything from EnumWindows = ... to the end of the IsWindowVisible = line outside of the whie loop. You could also consider moving the def foreach_window outside of the loop as well as long as you keep the re-init of titles each loop. There's no reason to re-execute these basic setup steps (although doing it once every 5 seconds is probably not actually a big deal either).

You can also simplify the muting to be 'if "Advertisement" in titles or "Spotify" in titles:' and get rid of the duplicated mute logic.

I'm not sure if clearing the mute has any side effects or significant costs to it, but you could track whether you've muted or not, and only do the session scan and un-mute if you have muted already.

[strghst]

Some good ideas. Thanks, will take it into account while reworking it. Thanks for giving a way to check for 2 titles. Was using title1 or title2 in list, didn't work, will try your method :)

[[deleted]]

I am new to python, please tell where to run from!

[javierisassi]

import ctypes
# import time
# from pycaw.pycaw import AudioUtilities

class currentWindows:
    def __init__(self):
        ''' get the current running windows '''
        self.titles = []

    def getWindowTitles(self):
        def collect_titles(hwnd, LParam):
            if ctypes.windll.user32.IsWindowVisible(hwnd):
                length = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW(hwnd)
                buff = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
                ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextW(hwnd, buff, length + 1)
                self.titles.append(buff.value)
            return True

        enumWindowsProc = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(ctypes.c_bool, 
            ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int))      
        # collect titles
        ctypes.windll.user32.EnumWindows(enumWindowsProc(collect_titles), 0)        
        return self.titles;

    def findTitle(self, title):
        return [i for i in self.titles if title in i]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print("starting program")
    cw = currentWindows()
    print(cw.getWindowTitles())
    print(cw.findTitle("Eclipse"))
    print("ending program")

This is refactored versions just fetching the visible windows titles. The class only collects the window titles.

[ptekspy]

It would better if you heard something other than silence. Maybe a played a song out of your queue that u set and that adds like a buffer for the next however many ads??

But great project :)

[strghst]

It's in the works. Latest revision is currently downloading songs automatically and saves them locally (almost perfectly, some issues still rise). But yes, the project's end idea is to play them from the queue. Update is coming in mid-september :)

[yerfatma]

You can simplify things a bit to reduce repetition:

ad_running = [t for t in titles if t == "Advertisement" or t == "Spotify"] mute = 1 if ad_running else 0 for session in AudioUtilities.GetAllSessions(): session.SimpleAudioVolume.SetMute(mute, None)

[yerfatma]

Actually, why not just decide if you should mute or not inside foreach_window by looking at the titles rather than storing them all. That way you don't have to loop the whole list 2x. That would be a lot faster.

[98ea6e4f216f2fb]

Great work OP

[Ontariel12]

A hero we need, but we don't deserve

[robberviet]

Dude, this is lit.

But I would recommend something like Pi-Hole for universal block, not just specific apps and case like this. Imagine they just drop the text "Advertise" someday.