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.
ITunes and Spotify in your menu bar macos menubar mac spotify apple objective-c osx itunes cocoa macosx mac-app macos-menubar macos-application menubar-app Updated Apr 26, 2020. View song info and manage playback from the menu bar Once you’ve installed the application and given it the required permissions, you will see each song’s title, artist and album in the menu bar. Menu Bar Now Playing on Mac OS X Submitted by Rodrigo on 2014-06-08 11:36 PM A great feature we don't have in the current Spotify OS X app is a Menu Bar icon/widget, next to the other icons, like Wifi, Battery, Volume, etc.
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.
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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Did You Know
Spotify’s Discover Weekly was launched in 2015.
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'Though I sure my device has connected to WiFi, I get a message that saying I'm in offline mode on Spotify. Any advice?'
Normally, all Spotify users can play music from Spotify once they have connected to WiFi, however some subscribers complain that they receive a message indicating no internet connection from Spotify when they successfully connect to WiFi. If you are also annoyed with that problem, you can totally try below solutions to fix it.
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Part 1. How to Solve Spotify Says Offline Issue
Solution 1. Re-login to Spotify
Though you don't know why Spotify saying offline happens, you can try to re-login to Spotify at first.
#1. On Desktop:
Click in the top-right corner or the screen and select 'Log Out', then enter your ID and password to back in again.
#2. On Web Player:
Click on your profile at the bottom of the left side menu and select 'LOG OUT', then back in by entering your ID and password.
#3. On Mobile and Tablet:
Tap Home > Your Library > Settings and scroll to the bottom, then tap 'Log out' and back in.
Solution 2. Check the Network and Firewall
If you can't solve your problem after trying solution 1, then you can try to check the network and firewall as your firewall - the software might wrongly thinks that Spotify likely pose a threat to your computer. Therefore, try the below solution.
On Windows:
Step 1: First click on Change Settings.
Step 2: Then tick the box next to Spotify.
![Bar Bar](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134145096/457399038.png)
Step 3: At last, click on OK.
On Mac:
Step 1: Click on Firewall option to open it.
Step 2: Click on lock icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen. You might be asked to enter your administrator username and password.
Step 3: Click on Advanced to bring up a firewall security dialog box and click on + icon below Block All Incoming Connections.
Step 4: Select Spotify from the Browse dialog box and click on Add.
Solution 3. Check if VPN is Correctly Connected
As Spotify might be not available for your country or region, so that you need to access to Spotify with VPN. If so, you should check if VPN is correctly connected. To do that, you can try to see if you can browse through some limited webpages that can't be access to without VPN connection. If the VPN is incorrectly connected, then you are supposed to see what happen to your VPN.
Solution 4. Make Sure You've Turned Off Offline Mode
When you turn on Offline mode, you can have access to tracks that you mark as available in Offline mode, but it might result in Spotify saying no internet connection when you connect to WiFi, so if you have turned on Offline mode on Spotify, then you should follow below guides to turn off Offline mode.
#1. On iPhone:
Tap Settings button, then swipe the Offline Mode switch to Off position in the Settings screen.
#2. On Android:
Go to More > Settings, then disable the Offline Mode in the Settings screen.
Solution 5. Reinstall Spotify
Reinstalling might be helpful for fixing many common issues you are experiencing. So for those who have a problem that Spotify says in offline, you can try to reinstall Spotify on your computer or portable devices.
On Mac:
Step 1: Click on Spotify in the menu bar and then Quit Spotify.
Step 2: Open Finder and then click on Go > Library in the menu bar.
Step 3: Open Caches and then delete the com.spotify.Client folder and click on the back arrow.
Step 4: Open Application Support and delete the Spotify folder. After that, download and install Spotify.
On Windows:
Step 1: Close Spotify and go to the Control Panel.
Step 2: Click on Programs and Features and select Spotify in the list.
Step 3: Then click on uninstall and follow the instructions on the screen.
Step 4: Download and install Spotify.
On iPhone:
Step 1: On the home screen, tap and hold Spotify app icon until it shakes.
Step 2: Tap the X symbol on the icon to uninstall Spotify.
Step 3 Open the App Store, then search for and install the Spotify Music app.
If Spotify keeps saying 'Offline' even when you are connected to WiFi, you can try the above five solutions to solve your problem.
However, the best solution is to download music from Spotify so that you can enjoy Spotify tracks whether you have an internet connection or not. The following part will show you how to download Spotify songs for offline playback without using Premium.
Part 2. How to Listen to Spotify Offline without Premium
Even if you are Spotify Free subscribers, you can download Spotify for offline playback, but you need to download TuneFab Spotify Music Converter on your computer. It is an efficient Spotify DRM removal which enables you to download Spotify tracks without payment and convert them to common formats such as MP3, M4A, WAV and FLAC.
Step 1. Download and Install TuneFab Spotify Music Converter
Show Spotify In The Menu Bar On Macbook Pro
Download TuneFab Spotify Music Converter by clicking on either of below download buttons, then install it on your computer.
Step 2. Drag Songs from Spotify
Click on 'Add Files', then drag tracks from Spotify or copy and paste relevant links to the search bar to add Spotify tracks to the program.
Step 3. Click 'Add' to Add Songs
Show Spotify In The Menu Bar On Macbook
Click at 'Add' button to add selected Spotify tracks to the conversion list.
Show Spotify In The Menu Bar On Mac Catalina
Step 4. Start Converting
Then click on 'Convert' button on the menu bar to start downloading Spotify songs to PC. After you download all songs from Spotify, you can listen to the music on any device online or offline.
When you find Spotify says no internet connection, then try the above five solutions to fix your problem. If you have another efficient method, welcome to share it with us. To avoid that happen, you had better download Spotify with TuneFab Spotify Music Converter so that you can play Spotify anytime and anywhere.