Spindle.

A macOS desktop widget shaped like a 2000s-era portable music player. It shows whatever is playing, from any app — the album cover filling the screen, the title laid over it, and a working scroll wheel.

Download for Mac View on GitHub

Night Drive

Spindle

1:24-2:51

Platform: macOS 14 or later
Runs on: Apple silicon & Intel
Version: 2.5.0
Built with: Swift
License: MIT

Four of the nine Spindle skins — Four of the nine skins: Mini Silver, Mini Blue, Mini Pink and Mini Green.

What it does

Now playing, from anything.

Any app, not just Music

It reads what is playing from the system media controls, so Music, Spotify, Safari, Chrome, IINA and VLC all show up — artwork included.

A click wheel that works

Turn it to change the volume or move through the menu; the centre plays and pauses. Every step ticks — the sound is synthesised, not sampled.

Lives on your desktop

Not a WidgetKit widget: a borderless panel pinned to the wallpaper behind your windows, sized to the macOS widget grid, on every Space.

Your library, browsable

Playlists, Artists, Albums and Songs from Apple Music — or from Spotify through its Web API, signed in with PKCE and kept in your keychain.

Nine skins

Including Liquid Glass and Frosted Glass, plus one you colour yourself with a hue wheel and sliders for opacity, borders and blur.

Asks for very little

No Screen Recording, Accessibility or Full Disk Access. It only goes online to talk to Spotify — and only if you connect it.

Controls

The wheel, faithfully.

Drag around the ring or simply scroll anywhere on the widget. Nothing is wheel-only: the screen is a control too, the volume bar can be dragged, and the scrubber seeks. The player at the top of this page works the same way — try it.

1

Scroll anywhere, or turn the wheel

Now playing: Volume · In a menu: Moves the highlight
2

Centre button

Now playing: Play / pause · In a menu: Select
3

MENU

Now playing: Opens the menu · In a menu: Back up one level
4

Right / left of the wheel

Now playing: Next / previous track · In a menu: Next / previous track
5

Bottom of the wheel

Now playing: Opens the player you pick · In a menu: Same
6

Click the screen

Now playing: Opens the menu · In a menu: Selects that row
7

Drag the scrubber

Now playing: Jumps to that point

Under the hood

How it reads now playing.

Since macOS 15.4, the private MediaRemote framework returns an empty dictionary to any process that isn't an Apple platform binary — an ordinary app can no longer simply ask what's playing.

Spindle ships a small library and loads it inside /usr/bin/perl, which is a platform binary, using the technique from ungive/mediaremote-adapter. It subscribes to MediaRemote's change notifications and streams JSON back to the app — push-based and deduplicated, so idle playback costs nothing.

The elapsed time it reports is a reading taken at a timestamp, not a live value, so the scrubber extrapolates from the timestamp instead of trusting the number. If a future macOS closes this route, Spindle falls back to AppleScript for Music and Spotify.

Tested on macOS 15.4+

Reading now-playing directly from the app0 keys Blocked

Reading it from inside /usr/bin/perl31 keys, artwork included Works

Sending play, pause and skip commands Works

Setting shuffle and repeat Works

Seeking Works

Asking which app is playing Blocked

Reading shuffle and repeat back No usable API

Get Spindle.

Free and open source · macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon & Intel

Download for Mac Source code

First launch

Spindle isn't signed with a paid Apple Developer ID, so macOS blocks it the first time. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, click Open Anyway, and confirm. You only do this once. Or in Terminal:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Spindle.app"

Spindle is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Apple Inc. All artwork is original; product names belong to their respective owners.