dA Spotify Mini Player
🚧 Alpha — the latest release
is still a working-but-rough cut. Expect bugs and breaking changes before a
stable 1.0. See Liked Songs access below for a current
limitation on the heart button.
A native macOS floating mini player for Spotify. It sits as a small,
always-on-top, draggable panel showing the current track, with playback
controls and a button to add the current song straight to your Spotify
Liked Songs.
Features
- Floating panel — drag it anywhere on screen, stays on top of other windows
- Compact and expanded layouts, toggled with the chevron on the panel itself
- Live "now playing" info (track, artist, artwork) read directly from the
Spotify desktop app, with long titles scrolling in a looping marquee
- Playback controls: previous / play-pause / next
- One-click "Add to Liked Songs," with the heart reflecting whether the
current track is already liked
- Close button right on the panel, alongside the expand/collapse chevron
- Two themes, switchable from Settings or the menu: Liquid Glass (the
default — macOS 26's glass material with system typography; falls back to a
translucent material on older macOS) and Digital Archives (the original
green/tan Space Mono look). Both follow macOS's light/dark appearance
- Lives in the menu bar — no Dock icon; right-click the floating panel itself
to reach the same menu (Log In/Out, layout, theme, Settings, Quit)
- A dedicated Settings window (⌘,) alongside the menu bar dropdown
Requirements
- macOS 13.0 or later
- The Spotify desktop app, running
Install
Homebrew
brew tap peds24/tap
brew trust peds24/tap
brew install --cask da-miniplayer
This installs the same ad-hoc-signed build attached to the
latest release
(no paid Apple Developer identity yet, so it isn't notarized — the cask
clears the Gatekeeper quarantine flag on install so it opens normally).
To update to a newer version later:
brew update
brew upgrade --cask da-miniplayer
Manual download
Download DAMiniPlayer-vX.Y.Z.zip from the
latest release,
unzip, and move DAMiniPlayer.app to /Applications. Since it's unsigned,
right-click the app and choose "Open" the first time instead of double-clicking,
or it'll be blocked by Gatekeeper.
Liked Songs access
The heart button and Settings' Spotify login run through this app's own
Spotify integration, which Spotify currently caps at a small number of
allow-listed accounts (their "Development Mode" limit) — so for now, liking
songs only works if @peds24 has added your
Spotify account to that allow-list; message to be added. Playback controls
and now-playing info don't need this and work for everyone. A future release
will move to Spotify's extended-access mode so anyone can use it.
Build from source
1. Install dependencies
brew install xcodegen
2. Create a Spotify app
- Go to the Spotify Developer Dashboard
and create an app.
- Add
da-miniplayer://callback as a Redirect URI in the app's settings.
- Copy the app's Client ID.
3. Configure the client ID
cp Sources/DAMiniPlayer/Resources/Config.plist.example Sources/DAMiniPlayer/Resources/Config.plist
Edit Sources/DAMiniPlayer/Resources/Config.plist and paste in your Client ID.
4. Build and run
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project DAMiniPlayer.xcodeproj -scheme DAMiniPlayer -configuration Debug build
Then open the built DAMiniPlayer.app (find it via xcodebuild -showBuildSettings
under BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR), or open DAMiniPlayer.xcodeproj in Xcode and run
from there.
On first launch, macOS will prompt you to allow DA Mini Player to control
Spotify — approve it so the mini player can read the current track and
send playback commands.
Click the "♪" menu bar icon and choose "Log In to Spotify" once to enable
the Liked Songs heart button.
License
Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
Copyright (C) 2026 Pedro Serdio Hank
