

In my opinion, displaying the music symbol feels a little bit redundant, so I’ve left that disabled, but I do like seeing the artist and song information because that eliminates the guessing factor when I hear something I like and want to know what it is. In my example, you can see the options I’ve chosen to enable. Start SpotMenu when you boot up your Mac.Hide or show the SpotMenu icon in the menu bar.Display a music symbol icon in the menu bar when music is playing.Hide or show the song title in the menu bar.Hide or show the artist name in the menu bar.In the Preferences pane, you can personalize how the app looks and behaves while in your menu bar: You can access it by right-clicking on the menu bar icon and choosing Preferences: Forward and back navigation buttons are also available on both sides of the album artwork so you can move through your playlist in sequential order:īecause there are some optional aspects to SpotMenu, a preferences pane exists where you can tinker with the app. Hovering your mouse pointer over the album artwork in the popup interface displays hidden controls for pausing or playing the song. This feature makes it superior to Apple’s Now Playing implementation. Having the artist and song name appear in the menu bar is optional, but I think it’s a nice touch because it lets me see what’s playing without having to open the app. When you start to play any music on Spotify, you can click the menu bar icon to interact with what’s playing:

Once installed, a new icon appears in your menu bar that looks a lot like the Spotify app icon: It brings a Now Playing-like interface made specifically for Spotify to the menu bar on your Mac so that you can interact with your music more easily. Written entirely from Swift, this app is a combination of two older apps known as Trayplay and Statusfy. Mac users with a preference for streaming their favorite music tracks via Spotify instead of Apple Music are going to love an extension for macOS dubbed SpotMenu. Make sure Show in Menu Bar is checked, and the dropdown below it says always.įrom now, you will see the tiny Now Playing icon in the menu bar from where you can control the media playing on your Mac.

Scroll down the left sidebar and pick Now Playing.Click the Apple icon and choose System Preferences.Here’s how to make sure it always appears on the menu bar: This Now Playing button is for general media control and shows music or video playing in any app such as Spotify, Music, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.

Clicking this icon shows a tiny control pane from where you can see which song is playing, change tracks, and scrub it forward/backward. You can add a Now Playing button to the menu bar of your updated Mac. Do you want to control your Spotify music playback from Mac’s top menu bar? If yes, let me show you two easy ways to do that.
