SpotMenu alternative: now playing, off the menu bar
SpotMenu is a tidy free, open-source menu bar player for Spotify and Apple Music. Notchy moves the same thing into the notch — artwork, scrubbing, synced lyrics and a visualiser — without taking menu bar space.
| SpotMenu | Notchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — MIT, open source | Free — optional donations |
| Spotify & Apple Music | Yes | Yes — plus browser and system audio |
| Artwork and playback controls | Yes | Yes — with scrubbing |
| Time-synced lyrics | — | Included |
| Audio visualiser | — | Real FFT of system audio |
| Where it lives | Menu bar — competes for space | The notch — space macOS wasn’t using |
| Anything beyond music | No | 50+ tools in the same island |
From SpotMenu’s own repository, checked against Notchy’s shipping build.
The menu bar is already full
Track titles get truncated, and on a 14-inch MacBook the notch eats the middle of the bar anyway. Putting the player in that dead space means artwork and a progress bar fit properly.
More than transport controls
Time-synced lyrics, a real FFT visualiser, an output switcher and AirPods battery on connect.
Everything that is playing
Spotify and Apple Music, plus YouTube in a browser tab and anything else going through system audio — so the notch shows what you are actually hearing.
Both are free and open to inspect
SpotMenu is MIT-licensed if reading the source matters to you. Notchy is not open source, but it is free and ships signed and notarised — pick on which trade you prefer.
Everything Notchy does, for free
- Fluid Dynamic Island animations on the Mac notch
- Command palette (⌃⌥K) — every action one keystroke away
- Knock — double-tap a modifier key to open the notch
- AI usage tracker (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot)
- Detach any tab into a menu-bar popover
- Now Playing music controls (Apple Music & Spotify)
- Time-synced karaoke lyrics under the notch
- Mac clipboard history shelf (password-manager safe)
- Searchable clipboard — filter by text, file name, or OCR'd words
- On-device OCR — copy a screenshot, get its text (Apple Vision)
- Window snapping — drag a window to the notch to tile it
- App Launcher — pin apps to the notch, open with one tap
- Text snippets — TextExpander-style pastes from the ⌘K palette
- One-tap screen capture to clipboard + shelf
- Color eyedropper — sample any pixel, hex auto-copied
- System-wide mic mute for every meeting app at once
- Keystroke HUD for demos & screencasts (secure-input safe)
- Keyboard cleaning lock with countdown island (⌘⎋ unlocks)
- Menu-bar icon hiding — Bartender-style separator & chevron
- Live CPU / memory / network stats flyout
- Open GitHub PR count in the notch (Keychain-stored token)
- iPhone-style call island — Answer/Decline FaceTime on the notch
- Notch Terminal — real VT100/xterm shell in a PTY, its own tab
- Privacy Indicator — pill when any app's camera or mic goes live
- Caps Lock HUD — brief island on every toggle
- Full Charge island with adjustable threshold + low-battery sound
- Alt HUD styles — edge-pinned bar or circular gauge off the notch
- Audio-reactive Now Playing visualizer (real FFT of system audio)
- Custom closed-notch idle animation — drop in your own Lottie JSON
- Drag-and-drop file drop shelf — persists across relaunches
- Zip & unzip files right from the shelf
- Image converter (HEIC, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF) + video → GIF
- Run Apple Shortcuts with one tap
- Screenshots auto-staged on the shelf, ready to drag
- Download finished alerts with Reveal in Finder
- USB drive mount island with one-tap Eject
- Apple Reminders quick capture & due list
- macOS Pomodoro notch timer & stopwatch — streaks + 7-day chart
- Resizable expanded panel (width & height, live preview)
- System HUDs (volume, brightness, battery)
- Audio output switcher (speakers, AirPods, monitor)
- AirPods connection manager & battery
- Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad battery + low-battery alerts
- Quick notes & Calendar widgets
- Camera Mirror (check your appearance)
- Keep Awake (caffeine toggle)
- Teleprompter (Cuely) for Zoom calls
- Focus-aware alerts & native haptic feedback
- Lock screen widgets & hide-the-notch mode
- 133 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple Silicon
Notchy vs SpotMenu — FAQ
Is SpotMenu free?
Yes — free and open source under the MIT licence. Notchy is free as well, so this comes down to where you want the controls and how much else you want the app doing.
Does SpotMenu work with Apple Music?
Yes. SpotMenu handles both Spotify and Apple Music, auto-detecting or letting you pick. Notchy covers the same two plus anything else playing through the system, including browser players.
What does Notchy add over SpotMenu?
Time-synced lyrics under the notch, a real FFT audio visualiser, an output device switcher, AirPods battery the moment they connect, and a heart that saves the track to your library — then everything outside music: clipboard, timers, file shelf, system stats.
Menu bar or notch — does it matter?
A menu bar player competes for horizontal space with everything else up there, and long track titles get truncated. The notch is dead space macOS was not using, so artwork and a scrubbing bar fit without costing you anything.
Can I scrub and control playback?
Both apps do transport controls. Notchy adds scrubbing on the notch itself, so you can jump back ten seconds in a podcast without opening the player window.
Can I run both?
You can — they do not conflict, since neither takes exclusive control of playback. But two now-playing readouts on the same screen is redundant, so most people keep one.
Compare Notchy vs 146 Mac Apps
See how Notchy replaces dozens of single-purpose paid Mac utilities for free.