ghost-pause

Automatically pauses MPRIS media players when a browser starts playing audio, and resumes them when the browser stops.

How it works

ghost-pause subscribes to PulseAudio sink-input events via pactl subscribe. When a configured browser application starts producing audio (a non-corked sink input appears), it pauses all active MPRIS2-compatible media players via D-Bus. When the browser goes silent, it resumes the previously paused players.

Requirements

• PulseAudio or PipeWire with pipewire-pulse
• pactl (provided by libpulse)
• D-Bus session bus
• An MPRIS2-compatible media player (Spotify, Rhythmbox, Elisa, MPD with mpdris2, etc.)

Installation

AUR

paru -S ghost-pause-git

Manual

git clone https://github.com/mentigen/ghost-pause
cd ghost-pause
go build -o ghost-pause .
install -Dm755 ghost-pause ~/.local/bin/ghost-pause

To also install the systemd user service:

install -Dm644 ghost-pause.service ~/.config/systemd/user/ghost-pause.service

Configuration

ghost-pause reads its config from ~/.config/ghost-pause/config.json.

mkdir -p ~/.config/ghost-pause
cp config.example.json ~/.config/ghost-pause/config.json

If no config file is found, cannot be parsed, or target_apps is empty, ghost-pause falls back to these defaults:

{
  "target_apps": ["Zen", "Firefox", "Google Chrome", "Chromium", "Brave"]
}

target_apps

List of application.name values that PulseAudio reports for your browsers. To find the correct name while a browser is playing audio:

pactl -f json list sink-inputs | python3 -m json.tool | grep '"application.name"'

ignore_players

List of substrings to match against MPRIS2 D-Bus names (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.*). Matched players will never be paused. Matching is case-insensitive.

{
  "ignore_players": ["spotify", "mpd"]
}

pause_delay_ms

How many milliseconds to wait after browser audio starts before pausing players. Useful if browser audio triggers and stops briefly (e.g. notification sounds). Default is 0 (pause immediately).

{
  "pause_delay_ms": 1500
}

Usage

Run manually

ghost-pause

Flags

Flag	Description
--version	Print version and exit
--config <path>	Use a custom config file instead of the default

ghost-pause --version
ghost-pause --config /path/to/config.json

Commands

While the daemon is running, you can control it without restarting:

ghost-pause stop    # disable auto-pausing (players won't be paused)
ghost-pause start   # re-enable auto-pausing

Run as a systemd user service (recommended)

systemctl --user enable --now ghost-pause

Check status and logs:

systemctl --user status ghost-pause
journalctl --user -u ghost-pause -f

Troubleshooting

ghost-pause exits unexpectedly Check the logs: journalctl --user -u ghost-pause. Make sure pactl is installed and PulseAudio or PipeWire-pulse is running.

Browser audio is not detected Find the correct application name while the browser is playing something:

pactl -f json list sink-inputs | python3 -m json.tool | grep '"application.name"'

Add the result to target_apps in your config file.

Media player is not pausing The player must expose an MPRIS2 interface on the session D-Bus. Verify it is visible:

dbus-send --session --print-reply \
  --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus \
  org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames | grep mpris

License

MIT — see LICENSE.