A quiet, native macOS desktop music player — a free, open-source take on the Sleeve aesthetic. Album artwork first, controls second. It sits on your desktop as a transparent, borderless window (behind your app windows, like a widget), shows what's playing, and updates in real time.
Built entirely in SwiftUI + AppKit, no dependencies. Works with Apple Music and Spotify.
⬇︎ Download Musify — macOS 13 or later
Installing (no terminal needed):
- Open the downloaded zip — you'll get Musify. Drag it into your Applications folder.
- Double-click Musify. macOS will say it "cannot verify the developer" — click Done (do not move it to Trash).
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to "Musify was blocked…", and click Open Anyway.
- Click Open Anyway once more and confirm with your password or Touch ID.
- Musify appears on your desktop and as a ♪ icon in the menu bar. When it asks, allow it to access Apple Music.
That one-time warning is normal for free Mac apps — this one just isn't paid-notarized by Apple. Your Mac is safe; the source is right here in this repo.
./make_app.sh
open "build/Musify.app"make_app.sh compiles a release binary and assembles Musify.app — a Dock-less
menu-bar agent. On first launch macOS asks for permission to read / control Apple
Music (and Spotify). Allow it — that's the standard, sandbox-safe way to read
now-playing info and send transport commands, with no private frameworks.
For development:
swift build # debug build
swift run Musify # run in placeBy default Musify appears in the lower-right, in the Minimal Artwork style with a transparent background, pinned to the desktop behind your windows. Show your desktop to see it.
- Drag it anywhere — click and move from any point on its body.
- Hover the cover → play / pause / next / previous fade in over the center.
- Rides along to every Space and works across multiple displays.
Everything else is in the menu-bar icon (♪):
- Style — Compact · Medium · Minimal Artwork
- Always on Top — float above your apps instead of sitting on the desktop
- Transparent Background — material panel vs. fully transparent
- Quit
| Style | Layout |
|---|---|
| Compact | 64×64 art · title + artist · play/pause |
| Medium | art left · info + prev/play/next right · progress bar + times below |
| Minimal Artwork | large cover · tiny controls fade in over center on hover · title / album / artist underneath |
- SF Pro (the system font) and SF Symbols throughout; semantic colors, so light and dark adapt automatically.
- Native
NSVisualEffectViewtranslucency for the non-transparent modes — no fake glass, no glow, no heavy shadows. One continuous corner family. - Artwork crossfades with a slight 1.03× zoom on track changes; controls spring in on hover; the progress bar interpolates between polls for smooth motion. In transparent mode the text carries a soft shadow so it stays readable on any wallpaper.
MusicBridge runs short AppleScripts in-process (NSAppleScript, on the main
thread) to read player state / track info and to send play-pause / next /
previous / seek. It only ever scripts an app that's actually running (detected via
NSRunningApplication). Album art comes from Music as raw image bytes and from
Spotify as an artwork URL. State is polled once a second and the position is
interpolated locally for smoothness.
- macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
- Apple Music and/or Spotify
Sources/Musify/
App/ main.swift, AppDelegate (status-bar menu, accessory lifecycle)
Player/ NowPlaying, MusicBridge (AppleScript), PlayerStore (polling state)
Window/ FloatingPanel (borderless NSPanel), PanelController, WidgetSettings
Views/ RootView + the three styles + Artwork / Controls / Progress / TrackText
Design/ Theme (tokens, sizes, animations)
Resources/ Info.plist (LSUIElement agent, Automation usage string)
make_app.sh builds + bundles Musify.app
Design and concept inspired by Sleeve by Replay Software. Musify is an independent, free, open-source project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.