TrackPeek

A notch-style now-playing player for macOS. Control Spotify and Apple Music without leaving whatever you're doing.

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TrackPeek lives in your Mac's notch and menu bar. Hover the notch to peek at the current track, control playback, and watch a live equalizer react to the music — all without switching apps. It is not a music client: it remote-controls the Spotify or Apple Music app you already run.

Features

• Notch player — a Dynamic Island-style surface around the MacBook notch: hover to expand into a full mini-player with artwork, progress, and controls.
• Live equalizer — bars animate from the actual audio level of the music, with sensitivity settings.
• Menu bar player — icon, track title, or artist in the menu bar (configurable), with a compact popover player and optional dedicated prev / play-pause / next buttons.
• Three popover layouts — Standard, Compact Horizontal, and Artwork Vertical, previewable in Settings.
• Adaptive accent colors — the UI picks up a palette from the current album artwork; the color source is configurable.
• Spotify & Apple Music — auto-detects which player is active, or pin a preferred source in Settings.
• Launch at login and automatic updates via Sparkle.

Install

1. Download the latest TrackPeek-x.y.zip from Releases.

2. Unzip and drag TrackPeek.app into /Applications.

3. First launch: macOS Gatekeeper will warn that the app is from an unidentified developer. Right-click the app → Open → Open, or run:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/TrackPeek.app

4. When TrackPeek first talks to Spotify or Apple Music, macOS asks for an Automation permission — allow it.

TrackPeek updates itself afterwards via the built-in Sparkle updater.

Note: the app is currently signed with a development certificate, which is why the Gatekeeper step above is needed.

Build from source

Requirements: macOS 14+, Xcode 15+, XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen).

git clone git@github.com:Komortes/TrackPeek.git
cd TrackPeek
xcodegen generate          # regenerate TrackPeek.xcodeproj from project.yml
script/build_and_run.sh    # Debug build + launch

Run the test suite:

swift test

Cut a release build (bumps the version, zips the app, signs the Sparkle appcast):

script/release.sh 1.1

How it works

• Playback state and control go through AppleScript / Apple Events to the Spotify and Apple Music apps — no Web API, no account login, everything stays local.
• A PlaybackSourceRouter picks the active player and falls back per your source preference.
• The equalizer reads the system audio level of the player process via a small Objective-C++ analyzer.
• The notch surface is a borderless NSPanel positioned around the physical notch; the rest of the UI is SwiftUI (MenuBarExtra + popover).

Project layout

Sources/
  Models/     — playback state, layout & notch configuration
  Services/   — AppleScript clients, source routing, audio monitoring
  Stores/     — observable app state
  Support/    — windowing, Sparkle, launch-at-login, palette extraction
  Views/      — notch player, popover layouts, settings
Tests/        — unit tests (swift test)