If you listen to music on your Mac as often as I do, you’ve probably recognized the need for more accessible music controls. Switching from your active app over to iTunes or Spotify to control the sound just doesn’t cut it, and the few keyboard keys don’t offer everything I need.
Instead, try putting your music controls right in the menu bar. This makes them accessible regardless of whatever app you’re using without disrupting your workflow. With just one click, you can play, pause, skip, go back, scrub through and more. Here are four Mac apps that can do that for you.
SkipTunes
SkipTunes acts as a mini media player in your menu bar. It gorgeously displays album artwork of the current song you’re listening to, plus provides controls to play/pause, skip ahead, go back, scrub through the song, adjust volume and more. You can even enable pause and skip right inside the menu bar alongside the icon. The best part is that it works with both iTunes or Spotify so you can control either source of music.
In addition, SkipTunes has built-in push notifications that let you know when a new song has started playing plus the title and artist. This is optional, but it’s a neat little feature that remains fairly unobtrusive.
Jan 10, 2020 Sender devices include Windows computers running Apple Music, iOS devices (iOS 4.2 or higher) including iPhones, iPods, and iPads, and Mac computers running MacOS Mountain Lion or later (depending. Dec 04, 2017 “Apple Music controls the audio quality that is served to the masses and chooses to not make high quality available, reducing audio quality to between 5 percent and 20 percent of the master I. Nov 06, 2017 So this is aac files on the phone or Mac. The easiest way is to 1) get a big USB stick. 2) Copy the whole iTunes music folder from your computer to the stick. 3) Put the stick in your HC250/800 or EA controller. 4) get your dealer or a remote dealer here to put mymusic on your controller and point it.
SkipTunes is fantastic for music lovers, but it’s the most expensive Mac app on this list at $2.99.
Note: SkipTunes is currently experiencing a bug in which it can not pull album artwork from Spotify.
Controls+
Controls+ is a bit of a multi-tasker. On top of letting you control your music from the menu bar, it also lets you adjust the brightness of your Mac, set a screensaver to start playing, set a timer or stopwatch and more. It’s about the closest you can get to having Control Center on a Mac.
As far as the music controls go, you can play/pause, skip ahead, go back, adjust volume and view album artwork. Unlike SkipTunes though, Controls+ only works with iTunes. But the other built-in productivity features are great in making the most of the tiny space granted by a menu bar window.
Controls+ is available in the Mac App Store for $0.99.
Muzzy
Muzzy is the prettiest of all the apps on our list, but it’s the one with the least amount of functionality. What it seems to do is only include the features that aren’t already available to you on your Mac’s keyboard.
For example, you can skip back, skip forward, play/pause and adjust volume from your keyboard. But what you can’t do is scrub through a song, view album artwork, or view your current album or playlist and select songs on demand. Muzzy lets you do all of that and none of the keyboard stuff.
While it’s kind of annoying to not be able to do something as simple as pause the music from Muzzy, its minimalism makes it fast and uncomplicated. Muzzy works only with iTunes and is free in the Mac App Store.
BarTunes
BarTunes is basically like a control-click menu of controls for your menu bar. There is no album artwork on display (though you can oddly show it as a tiny icon within the menu bar — a bit counterintuitive) and no visual controls. Just click the BarTunes icon to see the song currently playing and textual menu items for Play, Next, Previous and Rating.
What’s nice though is that like SkipTunes, you can add controls for play and skip right alongside the menu bar icon too. One less click to deal with.
It’s far from elegant, but it’s basic and perfectly functional. BarTunes works only with iTunes and is free in the Mac App Store.
ALSO SEE:How to Quickly Access Most Trendy Songs of your Favorite Genre With a Tiny Chrome App
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Oppo used to make portable media players before they ventured into the field of mobile phones.
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Apple Music is available on your Mac. Streaming Internet radio stations have their place and are great. But Apple (like many of its industry rivals) curates its own streaming radio stations for your listening pleasure. The result is the radio portion of the Apple Music service, which you can get to by clicking the Radio tab in iTunes. You’ll land in an environment like this one.
As part of Apple Music, anyone using a Mac (or for that matter portable devices from Apple and Android) can tap into deejay-hosted Beats 1, a global 24-by-7 radio station broadcast live from studios in Los Angeles, New York, and London.
The other Apple Music radio stations, and the benefits that come with them, are reserved for people who subscribe to Apple Music. The cost is $9.99 a month for an individual or $14.99 a month for a family membership that covers up to six people. If you aren’t sure Apple Music is for you — and although it’s great, there are other fine music subscription services are out there, including Spotify — sample it for three months under a free trial.
Apple Music membership benefits include a bunch of genre-focused curated Apple Music radio stations. And if you hear music from these stations that tickles your fancy, click the heart to train the service into serving up more songs just like it.
You can also click the three dots next to the song title (when you hover the cursor over it) for other drop-down menu choices. For example, you can add the song to your My Music collection. You can add the song to a playlist or an iTunes wish list. You can share the song or station (via email, Twitter, Facebook, and Messages), or jump to the particular artist or album to explore other music from that performer. And you can use the song in question as the seed song that blossoms into its own custom radio station.
And if your opinion of the song is less harmonious, you can also tell Apple Music to “Never Play This Song.”
Songs with explicit lyrics are shown with a tiny E next to their title to ward off you (or perhaps your kids).
Speaking of material that you or your children may not want to hear, if you are turned off by vulgar words or other potentially sensitive or scatological lyrics, head to iTunes Preferences, click the Restrictions tab, and place a check mark next to the Restrict: Music with Explicit Content option.
The various tabs at the top of your iTunes display hint at other sections of Apple Music. Click New to peek at Hot Tracks, Hit Songs, and other new music that Apple wants to bring to your attention.
Control Appe Music Quality Machines
Click For You for recommended playlists and albums that the Apple Music editors think you’ll like, based on your current collection and the songs you choose to buy or designate as favorites. The For You section is frequently updated to keep the material fresh.
Click Connect to follow certain artists and learn about new releases and tours, view candid photos, and even watch some video. You can read what fans of the artist have to say about the performer and contribute your own comments.
You’ve probably figured out by now that the My Music tab leads to your own iTunes music collection or library. If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can add the music you hear streaming on the radio to your collection. As a subscriber, you can also stream any song in the vast Apple Music collection that you want to hear and add that song to My Music too.
Control Apple Music Quality Mac And Grill
Of course, there is a great big catch here: If you no longer subscribe to Apple Music, you won’t be able to play back any of the music that you don’t outright own.