This is LiveStreamLinkGUI. It's a lightweight GUI for Livestreamer, Streamlink, and any future forks. I made it for the personal use of my family and myself, but when I looked around, I saw people making requests for things I've already implemented. So I decided to share it. Its only requirements are BASH, rtmpdump, and zenity. I wrote it in Linux, for Linux, but because it's a BASH script, it should (in theory) work for any platform that supports BASH and its requirements. I hear Win10 has some kind of BASH support but I have no idea how capable it is of running this or any other script.
Some websites have popout chats, such as twitch and vaughnlive. When you give LiveStreamLinkGUI a link for one of these sites, it can ask if you want to open the chat for that stream in your browser. It's important to know only the chat will be opened. So you don't have to worry about your browser eating up a lot of your system resources just to take part in the chat. I designed LiveStreamLinkGUI in a way where adding support for other sites shouldn't be difficult at all. All you need to know is the popout chat's URL and how to parse it.
LiveStreamLinkGUI can save your favorite links. This makes it easy to keep track of streams you watch a lot and even open them without running your browser. You can also name links. Simply put the name before the link when saving. For example: "Don't Do Drugs https://d12gmupx1a6wc4.cloudfront.net/media3/001/206/355/7mvR_360.mp4" If you've been using LiveStreamLinkGUI and want to add names to already existing links, you can do so by editing the file at: $configdir/history.
If the stream is lost or closed for whatever reason, you have the option to "loop forever". While doing so, LiveStreamLinkGUI will keep trying to reopen the stream until the script is manually killed. This is best used in a media setup, so you can keep watching your streams while you fall asleep, work, clean the house, or whatever. It works very well with the shutdown command. An example of the shutdown command (which can differ from distro to distro) is sudo shutdown -hP {minutes}, which will shutdown the system after the specified number of minutes. So it's similar to sleepmode for TVs.
When you give LiveStreamLinkGUI a link, it will check to see if the link is a direct link to a media file. If it's not, it will then check to see if a plugin exists for the link. If no plugin is found, it will then "dig" through a link and search for common video types and automatically pipe them into the video player. For example, you could give LiveStreamLinkGUI this link, "https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7mvR/the-partnership-at-drugfreeorg-awkward-silence" and LiveStreamLinkGUI will automatically find the video link and play it, even though neither Livestreamer or Streamlink support the site. So how do you use it? The same as you would for any link! It's automatic!
You can create your own playlists in LiveStreamLinkGUI. A playlist can be made up of as many links as you want, regardless if they're links to streams, webpages with videos on them, direct links to videos online, or even paths to files on your hard drive. In addition to that, each playlist can have different configurations, such as looping forever or opening each stream in fullscreen. Playlists and these options help make LiveStreamLinkGUI more flexible and help fill gaps previously left neglected. And because a playlist can be one link long, this tackles a couple of the problems "Loop Forever" has, such as always opening each stream in fullscreen (because sometimes you may not want that) and only being available after a stream is closed.
NOTE: LiveStreamLinkGUI does not give you the option to delete playlists, as each playlist is a separate file and rm is dangerous. So instead of deleting a playlist, rename and edit it. But if you really want to delete a playlist or edit it directly (because sometimes it's faster that way) they're saved at $configdir/playlists/
Some websites like being a pain and frequently stop working with Livestreamer/Streamlink. And if you were to find a fix for that site's plugin (and wanted to change the plugin manually, instead of waiting for it to be updated in the repositories), you would have to elevate yourself to superuser status, edit the file, and then save it. Then you would have to do this with every system that uses Livestreamer/Streamlink, which involves memorizing, writing down, emailing, or somehow keeping track of the changes you need to make. It can be very annoying when all you want to do is turn on a show while you work. But now, you can save plugins you edit yourself to $configdir/plugins without needing an admin password, set a cloud service to sync the directory across all of your systems, and they will automatically update when you edit a plugin! So when a fix is found for a website, you only need to make one change on one system and the rest will update, too! Plugins in this secondary directory take priority over the default plugins, and you only need to add the plugins you want to overwrite the default plugins.
It's now possible to ping live streams and sites automatically when you launch LiveStreamLinkGUI. If a live stream is available, a message will appear next to the link that says "(Online!)", if the stream is hosting another stream, it will say "(Hosting)", and if the stream is offline, it will say "(Offline)". Pretty neat, huh? So how do you make use of it? Simply put LSLGUIping in the stream's name. For example, "Hey I know this guy! LSLGUIping He loves pizza! https://www.twitch.tv/sirclare" and LiveStreamLinkGUI will take care of the rest.
NOTE1: This can greatly increase the time it takes to load a menu, especially if you set it up to ping 15+ streams. If you enjoy how quick LiveStreamLinkGUI starts up, then you can ignore this feature.
I've added support for sites like twit.tv, roosterteeth.com, and a few other sites. LiveStreamLinkGUI is designed so that adding support for other sites shouldn't be much of a chore. And even if LiveStreamLinkGUI doesn't specifically support the site, it's still quite possible it can play content.
LiveStreamLinkGUI doesn't just support streams. It also supports direct links to media. Including remote media on a server, and local media on your computer. And if you want to watch something on a webpage but don't have the direct link to it, LiveStreamLinkGUI will "dig" for it automatically.
User specific configurations are at the top of the script. I would recommend going through them before running the script the first time, but there is also a setup walkthrough which will help take you through the more basic configurations.
In addition to that, you can optionally add configuration files to the LSLGUI directory and LSLGUI will make use of those files. This allows you to have the same script shared on a cloud storage service across multiple devices and still maintain different configurations for each machine. Here are the optional files LSLGUI will search for.
streamercmd:
This file must contain the command and flags you want to be called when opening streams. For example; "streamlink --http-no-ssl-verify"
qualitypriority:
This file must contain the quality of the stream you want opened. It will try to open streams based on the order you arrange them in. For example; "720p, medium, low, worst"
chatopenpref:
This file is where you can set whether or not you want to be asked if you want the chat to be opened for a given link, assuming there is a chat and LSLGUI supports opening it. The options are "ask" and "always". Ask means it will ask if you want the chat opened before trying to open it. Always means it will never ask, and instead always open the chat, if possible. And if the file contains literally anything other than those two words, it will never ask or open.
playercmd:
This file must contain the command and flags you want to be called for the player. For example; "vlc --fullscreen --no-repeat"
Again, these files are all optional. You're not required to make them.
If you want to open a new stream, all you have to do is execute the script and select "Open A New Link". A text input box will appear and you can drag and drop the link to that text box and click "OK". You can also copy-paste the link or manually type it in, if you so choose.
When the player closes, you're presented with a list of options. You can reopen it (if the stream is online), save the link for future use, loop it forever, open a new stream, open a saved stream, etc, etc. To save you a click, selecting "Close Program", is the same as clicking "Cancel", pressing ESC, or closing the window in any other way. So you don't have to scroll to the bottom every time you're done with the script.
For ease of use, I have a launcher for LiveStreamLinkGUI in my DE's panel. For media machines, I also keep a launcher for timed shutdowns. It makes it very easy to watch streams while falling asleep using only a pointer device. I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you what I do. I'm not here to put your mind in a box.
As a side note, there's a VLC script that allows VLC to play Youtube playlists. Naturally, LiveStreamLinkGUI gets along very well with this.
Feel free to make whatever changes you want with this. If you make a change, such as adding chat support for other sites, or site support for any sites livestreamer/streamlink don't support, please let me know so I can add the changes too. If you redistribute this script, I would like to ask that you please give me credit as "Mouse". Thank you and enjoy!