grooveshark png

Grooveshark Hacks with Chrome

On April 24, 2010, in General, by MikeMurko

You can basically get Grooveshark Desktop without paying for it, by using two cool features of Chrome!

It’s just using a greasemonkey script, and the Create Application Shortcut. Awesome! Click to find out more.

Assuming you have Chrome (if not, why don’t you!?) you need to download the following greasemonkey script. It’s safe, I’ve checked the source code so it won’t be running any jiggery-pokery on your computer.

Install the greasemonkey script

Install the greasemonkey script

That’s great. Now when you visit Grooveshark you won’t have any ads. Sweet! That’s one benefit of the VIP membership we have eliminated. Now what about the second one? Grooveshark Desktop? Basically you want an icon on your desktop that opens up Grooveshark. Independent of your web browser. You don’t want to switch tabs to change your music. But this costs $3 a month?! How dare they! Just do this little trick and you’ll have the Grooveshark Desktop (Chrome Version).

First go to Grooveshark and bask for a moment in your ad-free music player. Then click the “Customize and Control Google Chrome” icon,  (wrench). Then click “Create Application Shortcuts”. Leave all settings the same and click OK!



Create an Application Shortcut on your Desktop

Now if you have a look at your desktop you can find an icon there. Either use that or if you’re running Windows 7, drag it to your task bar. 

Your wonderous new media player awaits …

Grooveshark Desktop Chrome Edition

Tik Tok is a kick ass song. Don’t judge.

SUPER UPDATE: Better taskbar functionality

If you’re running Windows 7 like me you may have noticed that if you have Chrome open already and then click on your taskbar icon it just opens up as a new Chrome window (because it has the same AppID I presume) … which means if you want to get access to your new window you have to hover over the Chrome icon to get to it. Now – no longer!

Shift-right-click on your taskbar Chrome shortcut (not the new one you’ve created) and go to properties – then the Compatibility tab – and finally uncheck the “Run this program in compatibility mode for …”. Click OK and that’s it!

Wonderful! Now when you click on the taskbar shortcut to Grooveshark or any other webpage (think Gmail, Todoist, BBC, Twitter, Facebook!) it will open in a unique instance that you can click on directly from the taskbar. Love it!

UPDATE: New icon

I found an icon so that the original one isn’t so pixelated. I’ve uploaded it here in ICO format. Download the icon, save it to My Pictures or some place safe. Shift-rightclick on your Grooveshark taskbar icon and click Properties. Then Change Icon, find the icon you saved – and Ta-Da you have a groovey new Grooveshark icon. Wasn’t that easy!

ICO

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  • Connor

    but what about the upload limit?

  • MikeMurko

    To be honest I’ve never uploaded before … but I could test it out and see if there’s a way with some scripting to disable it. I’ll keep you posted!

  • Leon

    This is all good except one major feature of VIP thats missing is offline mode it the one thing I cant live without and at £3GPB a month or £15 for the year cant complain :D and we all have to make money some how :p

  • MikeMurko

    I didn’t even know you can do offline listening with VIP! Does it just download all of the music in your library? Sure, that’d be worth the money! This was more of a way to stop having GS as a tab in your browser.

  • Mike

    This works well, thanks a lot.

  • Gary2234

    I was wondering if I could use my multimedia keyboard to control Grooveshark?

  • Chad

    VIP status also gives you acccess to Grooveshark Mobile on Android, which has the aforementioned offline feature, which is awesome.

  • Vlad

    thanks! awesome !! it works and I freekin’ love it !

  • Rob

    For offline listening check out groovewalrus (google it) theres an option in the preferences to save the songs to a “offline storage” folder as mp3 files

  • Pingback: GrooveShark Ad Blocker + Desktop Version

  • Dan

    I cant seem to make this work on my android. Does this truly give VIP or just block ads?

  • MikeMurko

    @Dan no this doesn’t give VIP. It is to block ads as well as offer you an icon on your taskbar to open Grooveshark.

    General question – I figured out a way to download music from Grooveshark. It is currently manual and technical to accomplish, but I could potentially write a program that you leave running in the background and as you play songs on GS it downloads to your computer. Is this something anyone would be interested in?

  • http://therandomsite.dreamhosters.com/ Random

    I do know of a another hack. It works with google chrome. Download the Sharkzapper extension for chrome and then you can have crossfade!
    Try it!

  • Burdine

    @MikeMurko I would be very interested in a program to pull music from Grooveshark. They have a few live recordings I can’t find anywhere else.

  • MikeMurko

    @Burdine until I get round to writing that program … send me an email with what songs you want and I’ll grab the songs and mail them back or put them on hosting somewheres. shhhh before the feds find out ;)

  • http://mattsoave.com Matt

    Having trouble changing the icon. Shift-Click, Properties, Change Icon didn’t work — it isn’t updating the taskbar icon for me. Any other help?

  • MikeMurko

    Hey Matt – you may have to restart explorer.exe as it might be caching the icon. Rebooting your computer is a pretty easy way to do that (or use Task Manager). Does that fix it?

    Your comment actually got me thinking of another really irritating thing about these shortcuts – the fact that when I click on them … they just open grouped as another window of the Chrome icon. That way if I want to get to Grooveshark I have to hover over Chrome and then click the GS window.

    Luckily I SOLVED this! It’s awesome and I’ll post it in the original article. Read up!

  • Ryan

    Thank you so much. I’ve been looking for an alternative since Spotify announced they were changing their plan and limiting free users to just 10 hours of music a month. I found Grooveshark, but I was looking for a dekstop streamer (which I then found again from GS), but it was asking me to pay to use it. Googling a solution for a free account led me here. Sorry to have babbled on like this, but thanks again! :D

  • MikeMurko

    Haha thanks. Gotta babble every now and then!

  • intguser

    I signed up for VIP account. Only because I used http://www.lala.com until apple killed it. Grooveshark seem to be the only one that provides service close to lala.com and it would suck if some one else like apple would kill this one as well.

  • intguser

    P.S – thanks for the tip on chrome application shortcut. The desktop version doesn’t seem to be working on Windows 7. This way is much easier.

  • http://3ddrawingpad.com 3D Drawing Pad

    Grooveshark is the coolest new internet radio station. I also have been hearing some good things about groovedown.

  • http://sgfdgdfgdfg Kiwi

    hey just wondering how to you do it on a mac ???

  • http://www.pariswells.com Paris Wells

    Awesome, kept loosing grooveshark in my multiple open tabs to change song , perfect ! Looks like Mac application chrome support is coming out soon according to google!

  • Taylor

    This is really cool. And I would be really interested in a program that pulls music from grooveshark. I’ve spent hours searching for a good program that will do just that but they all seem to crash and burn. It would be awesome to get one that works!

  • bot

    wew

  • bot

    la lg

  • http://Tights Luther

    Now i’m a beginner along with your success is very much an inspiration for me.

  • Fishtwit

    just tried this and doesn’t seem to work

  • Fishtwit

    just tried this and doesn’t seem to work

  • Joshua12ka

    Does this VIP hack include the crossfade ffect?

  • MikeMurko

    Nope, sorry.

  • MikeMurko

    Can you give me more details? What part doesn’t work? It’s working for me.



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