Apple Music Profile
YouTube Channel
RSS Feed
Dupin
Join Together
M3Unify
30 Most Recent RSS FeedBug or Feature?
iTunes play with once is Broken Redux
I posted about this back in July but the problem seemed to go away (which is weird, too).
To play a track just once and then stop you use the once modifier with the play command:
tell application "iTunes"
set aTrack to item 1 of selection
play aTrack with once
end tell
As I said, I first noted this in July when iTunes 12.2 came out. But then I somehow couldn't get it not to work. Also saw a mention of it on the AppleScript mailing list, but even then I got it to work. Well, I definitely can't get it to work now. Filed a bug.
UPDATE: Ah-HA! It will work if the Up Next queue is completely empty, which can be made so by clicking its "Clear" button.
Hooray! Sort Of
Apple fixed the drag from Playlist View problem!
But they didn't fix the current track in For You predicament or the drag from Audiobooks setback. So maybe these are not problems at all but just the way it's going to be.
iTunes 12.2 Playlist View Issues
iTunes 12.2 introduces a new View by which to display tracks in a playlist: "Playlist". It displays a nice header with artwork from the tracks in the playlist and abbreviated tag information. I like it.
Except that there is an issue when dragging tracks from a playlist set to "Playlist" view to another drag-and-drop enabled application. The pasteboard that should contain metadata information about the tracks being dragged ("com.apple.itunes.metadata" is the name of the pasteboard type) only supplies the file paths ("NSFilenamesPboardType").
This affects my apps "Join Together", "M3Unify" and "Playlist Assist". The workaround is to either drag tracks while the playlist is in "Songs" view or drag the entire playlist by selecting its name in the Playlist Column and dragging.
I'm working on fixes for those apps.
play with once Is Broken
(I have updated this post. See below.)
To play a track just once and then stop you're to do something like this, using the once modifier with the play command:
tell application "iTunes"
set aTrack to item 1 of selection
play aTrack with once
end tell
Well, that doesn't work in iTunes 12.2. The tracks just keep on coming. In fact, a few times some random track in some other playlist started playing afterwards or queues up in Up Next.
UPDATE (July 1, 2015, 6:39PM) - I think I may be wrong about this. I cannot replicate the original set of issues I describe above.
Dragging from Audiobooks Still Fails
This has been a problem for a couple of versions now. You can't drag tracks from the "Audiobooks" library. There's simply nothing in the "Tracks" node of the dragged pasteboard. Here's what the pasteboard looks like in Console after trying to drag a track from the Audiobooks library to my app Join Together:
iTunes 12.2 and AppleScript Issues, Volume 1
The current track and current playlist properties return a -1731 "unknown object type" error when run against a currently playing Apple Music track. That's going to be a problem for scripts and apps that use those properties to identify a playing track. I couldn't say if this is intentional or a bug.
The iTunes XML reports the main Library name as "####!####". This is not necessarily AppleScript related, but several of my scripts may refer to this "Master" playlist by obtaining its name from the XML.
More as it develops.
Security Update 2015-004 Fixes EPPC Issue
Good news, everyone. Today, in addition to releasing OS X 10.10.3 and iOS 8.3, Apple released Security Update 2015-004 for 10.9 and 10.8. This update appears to fix the EPPC bug introduced in Security Update 2015-002. The bug prevented access to Remote Apple Events over the EPPC protocal. Anyway, I had no problems with a couple of simple tests.
Fast turnaround, actually.
Latest Security Update Affects EPPC Protocol
Apple's latest Security Update (2015-002) apparently affects the EPPC protocol on OS X 10.8 and 10.9 and prevents Remote Apple Events from being sent/received correctly. Topher Kessler has more at MacIssues and there is this thread at MacScripter.
UPDATE: This issue was fixed with Security Update 2015-004 for 10.9 and 10.8.
Books, PDFs Playlists?
Working with a script to get all the names of the playlists in iTunes, I noticed that two playlist names popped up in the latest iTunes 12.1 that aren't actually visible in my Playlists: "Books" and "PDFs". Here's a script that illustrates:
tell application "iTunes"
get every playlist whose name = "Books"
--> {user playlist id 60870 of source id 80}
get every playlist whose name = "PDFs"
--> {user playlist id 60873 of source id 80}
end tell
While I almost certainly have had "PDFs" playlists in the past, this doesn't appear to be some artifact from a past library. These playlists aren't in the XML either, but they have persistent IDs and low index numbers. I tried using AppleScript's delete command to remove them but it didn't work, which leads me to believe these are hard-coded and are supposed to exist. Not sure what this is about (iTunes does use invisible playlists from time to time) but it may be inconvenient and inaccurate if you use a script that lists playlists.
UPDATE: Kirk speculates that ebooks may be returning to iTunes.
iTunes 12.1
Apple has released iTunes 12.1 with fixes to device syncing and a new widget for controlling iTunes in Notification Center.
Things fixed: selection object for selected tracks in Audiobooks library works, reference to Audiobooks library via "get view of front window" command works. Things not fixed: View Options for CD display, Command-I shortcut for CD "Get Info". More as it develops.
