I was wondering today what I could use to take a 24hr streaming service from something like youtube and have just the stream, not the YouTube bit run as a native Linux Application.
# Disclaimer
Remember this is my journey, i've written this as a guide for myself and it might help others. If your setup isn't the same or you break your system because you just copied and pasted things without understanding what you are doing. Welcome to Linux.
This is not a personal afront against your beliefs. I'm open to opinion and grown up discussion, but cannot be bothered with trolls.
Also I know I can't spell and my grammar is terrible, you don't need to tell me.
# Please NOTE
I do not work for, am affliated with, or make any money from Nativefier
Seems the de facto way for doing this is Electron, however, I come from the sysadmin/there must be a tool to make that easier school of thought. I
A quick Google showed there are various methods of doing this and the one which seemed the easiest to get working was Nativefier
It's an NPM based application which will turn a URL into a Native platform App.
Under OpenSuse the install of NPM is
sudo zypper in npmto install Nativefier the command line format is
nativefier -p <platform "linux"> -a < Architecture "x64"> <URL>So to Turn Youtube.com into a native app you'd run
nativefier -p linux -a x64 https://youtube.comRunning this will create an Electron App which opens to the youtube front page.
My requirement was to have an app that ran twit.tv's Livescream off Youtube So I ended up finding the Embed code of the Livestream Video
Then ran as root
nativefier -p linux -a x64 https://www.youtube.com/embed/rXNigcDdTz8 --trayThe --tray icon puts a systray icon to Quit and Hide the Electron Application
This started packaging
packaging [============================== ] 60%Packaging app for platform linux x64 using electron v5.0.13Once completed there was a folder in my home directory
TWiTLive-YouTube-linux-x64/
cd TWiTLive-YouTube-linux-x64/
and running (not as root)
./TWiTLive-YouTubeResulted in this app
And this in the Systray
So Nativefier does a really good job of also identfying the right systray icon too.
The help content lists some interesting values
Usage: nativefier [options] <targetUrl> [dest]
Options:
-v, --version output the version number
-n, --name
-p, --platform
-a, --arch
--app-version ProductVersion metadata property on Windows, and CFBundleShortVersionString on OS X.
--build-version FileVersion metadata property on Windows, and CFBundleVersion on OS X.
--app-copyright LegalCopyright metadata property on Windows, and NSHumanReadableCopyright on OS X
--win32metadata
-e, --electron-version
--no-overwrite do not override output directory if it already exists, defaults to false
-c, --conceal packages the source code within your app into an archive, defaults to false, see https://electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/application-packaging
--counter if the target app should use a persistent counter badge in the dock (macOS only), defaults to false
--bounce if the the dock icon should bounce when counter increases (macOS only), defaults to false
-i, --icon
--width
--height
--min-width
--min-height
--max-width
--max-height
--x
--y
-m, --show-menu-bar set menu bar visible, defaults to false
-f, --fast-quit quit app after window close (macOS only), defaults to false
-u, --user-agent
--honest prevent the nativefied app from changing the user agent string to masquerade as a regular chrome browser
--ignore-certificate ignore certificate related errors
--disable-gpu disable hardware acceleration
--ignore-gpu-blacklist allow WebGl apps to work on non supported graphics cards
--enable-es3-apis force activation of WebGl 2.0
--insecure enable loading of insecure content, defaults to false
--flash if flash should be enabled
--flash-path Chrome://plugins
--disk-cache-size
--inject
--full-screen if the app should always be started in full screen
--maximize if the app should always be started maximized
--hide-window-frame disable window frame and controls
--verbose if verbose logs should be displayed
--disable-context-menu disable the context menu
--disable-dev-tools disable developer tools
--zoom
--internal-urls
--proxy-rules
--crash-reporter
--single-instance allow only a single instance of the application
--clear-cache prevent the application from preserving cache between launches
--processEnvs
--file-download-options
--tray [start-in-tray] Allow app to stay in system tray. If 'start-in-tray' is given as argument, don't show main window on first start
--basic-auth-username
--basic-auth-password
--always-on-top enable always on top window
--title-bar-style
--global-shortcuts
--browserwindow-options
--background-color
--darwin-dark-mode-support (macOS only) enable Dark Mode support on macOS 10.14+
-h, --help output usage information
Its quite useful it has a lot of these, as one website I was using stated, if we take a site like OneNote which doesn't have a native Linux Application and just ran
nativefier onenote.com
This creates a problem, as the site explains
While the program picks up all the relevant data, it doesn’t keep your main browser’s passwords and cached login credentials. Therefore, you’ll need to log in.
Oops. Clicking the sign in button takes you to another Microsoft web site and that causes the program to open that in your regular browser. Logging in there doesn’t help you any.
Due to the expansive options of Nativefier we can however run a command like
nativefier onenote.com --internal-urls ".*(\\.office\\.com)|(\\.onenote\.com)|(go\\.microsoft\\.com)|(\\.live\\.com).*"Which essentially says
if the URL ends in .office.com, .onenote.com, or .live.com, it is internal. It also catches go.microsoft.com.
Thoughts
I can see by my intital google search there are plenty of ways to do what I wanted to, PWA's in Google etc. The Nativefier was a very quick easy "lazy mans" method of giving me a quick and dirty Icon within a Native app to watch some Live streamed content in a window..
I'm also accutely aware that that URL is subject to change, and will work round that.
Next Steps
I'm going to expand on this over the next few days to see if i can use OpenSuse's tools to create an RPM of my Electron app and use that to install off my own repository using Sonotype Nexus3
Useful URL's
How to use Nativefier to turn websites into Linux apps
Linux Fu: Turn a Web App into a Full Program