MuseBar: Apple Music in the Menu Bar

A companion to muse — this one lives in the menu bar instead of the terminal. MuseBar shows the currently playing track from Apple Music directly in the macOS menu bar: artist, title, and a tiny album art thumbnail. Click it to open a dropdown with full artwork, a seekable progress bar, and playback controls. Features Menu bar display — artist, title, and album art at a glance Album artwork — full size in the dropdown, thumbnail in the bar Seekable progress bar — click or drag to scrub Playback controls — previous, play/pause, next No Dock icon — runs entirely in the menu bar How it works Built with SwiftUI’s MenuBarExtra (macOS 13+). Track info and artwork come from AppleScript queries to Music.app, with distributed notifications providing real-time updates on track changes. Playback commands are also sent via AppleScript. ...

March 13, 2026

muse: A Terminal UI for Apple Music

A small terminal app for controlling Apple Music from the command line. Built in Swift with no dependencies — just raw ANSI escape codes and AppleScript talking to Music.app. The interface is a single unified screen: the now-playing panel sits at the top with track info, a progress bar, and playback controls, while a tabbed panel below lets you switch between your queue, library, search, lyrics, and themes without ever leaving the player view. ...

March 12, 2026