I recently discovered SpotMenu while looking for a cleaner way to control music playback without constantly switching between applications or keeping iTunes visible. As someone who works with Spotify running most of the day on my Mac Mini M4, having quick access to playback controls without disrupting my workflow has been valuable.
SpotMenu is a free, open-source menu bar utility that displays currently playing track information from both Spotify and Apple Music directly in your macOS menu bar. The app shows a compact two-line display with song title and artist, along with a small album art preview. Clicking the menu bar item reveals a hoverable panel with full album artwork and playback controls for play/pause, next, and previous tracks.
The app includes customizable preferences covering four main areas: music player selection (Spotify, Apple Music, or automatic detection), playback appearance settings with text truncation options, menu bar display preferences, and keyboard shortcut assignments. The interface is built with modern SwiftUI, making it native to macOS and responsive to system appearance changes. In my usage on macOS Sonoma, the app adapts smoothly to both light and dark modes.
What impressed me about SpotMenu is its focused approach and minimal system impact. The app does exactly what it promises without attempting to add unnecessary features or complexity. For users who prefer keyboard-driven workflows, the global keyboard shortcuts for play/pause, next, and previous tracks work reliably across applications. The developer maintains active development on GitHub, where the project has attracted community contributions and regular updates.
The main limitation is that SpotMenu requires macOS to support the music players’ AppleScript interfaces, which means it works exclusively with Spotify and Apple Music. Users of other streaming services like Tidal or YouTube Music would need alternative solutions. The menu bar space requirement is also worth considering for those already managing multiple utilities, though the two-line display is reasonably compact.
SpotMenu requires macOS 10.15 Catalina or newer and is available as a direct download from the project website or GitHub repository. For anyone who regularly uses Spotify or Apple Music and wants quick access to playback information without keeping player windows visible, this utility provides a straightforward solution. The fact that it’s both free and open-source makes it particularly appealing for users who value transparency and community-maintained software.
