Chatterbox

LAPLACE Chatterbox gives bilibili web live rooms the "Audio Only" switch the official web player lacks. Turning it on stops the native HLS video stream from being pulled and requests an only_audio=1 audio-only stream (FLV container, AAC) through bilibili's official app API, played in the background by mpegts.js

Useful when you leave a stream running only to listen, want to save data, or want to keep a high-bitrate picture off your GPU and bandwidth

Features

• Audio-only stream: measured at about 180 kbps against roughly 1700 kbps for the original 1080P video stream, a saving of about 90% of the bandwidth, rather than merely muting or hiding the video
• One-click toggle: an "Audio Only / Restore Video" button is injected next to the Chatterbox floating button and takes effect on click
• Volume sync: the switch inherits the native player's volume and mute state, so returning to video needs no manual adjustment
• Lossless quality restore: turning audio-only mode off calls the native reload(), which restores the quality level you had selected
• Guard mechanism: when another script (BLTH's automatic quality module, for example) reactivates the native player, it is stopped again automatically so that audio and video streams never download at the same time
• On-demand mpegts.js loading: pulled from a CDN only the first time you enable the feature (about 120 KB), so anyone who never uses it pays no extra loading cost
• Persistent state: the toggle survives a page refresh and restores itself the next time you enter a live room
• Graceful degradation: on a load failure, an API error, or a room that is not live, the native player is restored and a notice is logged

Usage

Enable / Disable

• Enter a bilibili live room and wait for the native player to start playing
• Click the "Audio Only" button in the lower right corner of the page; the picture hides immediately and a "🎧 LAPLACE Chatterbox - Audio-Only Mode" notice appears
• Click the button again (it now reads "Restore Video") to resume native video playback

Status Indicator

Notes

• The audio-only stream comes from a bilibili app-side API, and a few rooms (encrypted rooms, rooms that are not live, carousel playback) may not offer one; the switch fails there and the native video is kept
• Turning audio-only mode off calls the native reload() to resume playback, so you may hear a very short stall — this is expected
• Alongside another script that takes over the player (automatic quality switching, for example), this feature's guard checks every 1.5 seconds and stops the native video again
• The audio-only bitrate is fixed by bilibili (about 180 kbps, mono AAC), so audio quality cannot be adjusted by hand
• If startup fails (the mpegts.js CDN is unreachable, the API returns an error, autoplay policy blocks playback), the script rolls back to native video and logs the reason
• Audio-only mode applies to web live rooms only; it has no effect on VODs or other pages