Google Inline MP3 Player

Martin Brinkmann
May 20, 2008
Updated • Apr 18, 2016
Music, Music and Video
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6

Adam Pash is a Senior Editor at Lifehacker and also someone who likes to code. His latest gorgeous application is a Greasemonkey script called Google Inline MP3 Player which, once installed, displays a [Play] link next to each mp3 link on a website.

A click on that Play link embeds an inline mp3 player, more precisely Google Reader's MP3 Flash player, directly on the web page providing access to play the mp3 directly without having to download it first.

The [Play] link changes into a [Hide Player] link which when clicked hides the embedded player again normalizing the website in the progress. This is an excellent way to listen to the first few seconds of a mp3 before making the decision whether you want to download it completely.

The mp3 is actually downloaded to the user's cache which means that it is possible to grab it right of the cache instead of downloading it again. Great script Adam !

I like this way because I can listen to music directly without having to open an external application, in this case the music player.

Update: The script is not working anymore. I installed it in Google Chrome this time to see if it still works. While it displays the Play link and hide player links, it does not display the player controls anymore. Worse than that, you do not hear the music playing.

While there are some alternatives listed on the userscripts website, they all date back some time and the ones I tried, did not work as well. Please let me know if you are aware of an option that adds a player back to the browser. I have removed the link from this article as it is not really useful anymore.

Firefox users can install the Inline Audio Player extension for the web browser which adds a play link next to any mp3, wav, or ogg file linked directly on websites opened in the browser.

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Comments

  1. darkkosmos said on May 21, 2008 at 8:29 am
    Reply

    @Bruno quicktime lite doesn’t although quicktime does so I suggest you use lite :)

  2. raveren said on May 21, 2008 at 8:26 am
    Reply

    This one’s much prettier:
    http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13870

  3. Bruno said on May 20, 2008 at 10:08 pm
    Reply

    it works great and it’s usefull to use it with servers found via google’s hacks.

    to darkkosmos :
    I saw this possibility with Quicktime Alternative (it’s the same then Quicktime Lite) but I never try it : does it modify files’s association ? Outside Firefox, I want to use winamp with mp3, ogg and vlc or media player classic with avi, mpeg etc.

    thx and sorry for my english level.

  4. archer said on May 20, 2008 at 9:22 pm
    Reply

    last comment should read:

    “…on pages loaded with a lot of mp3s….”

  5. archer said on May 20, 2008 at 7:20 pm
    Reply

    the problem with this and other such scripts that have been around awhile is that on pages loaded with mp3s page loading time can be drastically crippled. after trying a number of options i have found using del.icio.us’s bookmarklet javascript to be the quickest and most efficient method.

  6. darkkosmos said on May 20, 2008 at 5:41 pm
    Reply

    I have quicktime lite installed, you can even stream videos with it :)

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