Skip Tunes: A Simple Way To Control iTunes Or Spotify From Your Mac’s Menu Bar Review By Alex Heath. 12:24 pm, February 15, 2012. I was intrigued by the app’s menu bar interface. Your music's control center Skip Tunes is a simple Mac OS X app which allows you to easily control iTunes and Spotify from your Menu Bar. Auto-detect and play iTunes and/or Spotify tracks from your menu bar.
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.
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. How to download no mans sky mac.
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.
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. Download ppt software for mac. 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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By Aarti Kelapure of Evolver.fm.
Music apps have demonstrably given us more ways to access and listen to music than ever. As cool as that is, it can also be a headache to jump between them – say, Pandora, iTunes, Rdio, and Spotify.
Assuming you’re a Mac person, an incredibly elegant solution exists to your problem: Americo Trading’s Music Control, which streamlines the audio control process for Pandora, iTunes, Rdio, and Spotify into one seamless, unobtrusive menu bar app. Not only does this make them all easier to get to, but you no longer have to remember to turn off Pandora before firing up Spotify. Finally!
(Bonus: If you have more than one Mac, things get even more interesting; Music Control can also control these apps to and from up to five Macs on the same local network, although this feature does not work with Pandora, as you’ll see below.)
After testing out Music Control, we definitely recommend it if you regularly use any mix of iTunes, Pandora, Rdio and Spotify. It does exactly what it says it does, and installation and use couldn’t be easier. We like the mini-dock’s simple interface and the fact that it hangs out in the menu bar, without getting in the way.
Yes, the $5 asking price might scare off some potential users — but keep in mind that 20 percent of profits go to the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, to support their efforts to restore music education in public schools. Just by making your life easier, you’re giving a dollar to a great program.
Here’s how to simplify your music life on OS X.
Spotify Main Menu
1: Install Music Control
If your Mac is sporting OS X Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion, head to the Mac App Store and install this $5 app. To use Music Control on multiple computers on a single network, you’ll have to install the app on each computer. Each purchase can be installed on up to five computers, so long as they’re all connected to the same iTunes account.
2: Enable universal access
This allows you to control different audio players within the app (and on different computers, if you like). Open up “System Preferences” by clicking the Apple icon in your menu bar, and then click “Universal Access” (or “Accessibility” in OS X Mountain Lion). Select “Enable Access for Assistive Devices.” Again, you’ll have to do this on each computer with which you want to use the app.
3: Manage Your Music Control Preferences
Now that you have Music Control installed, you’ll be able to access the mini-dock and everything else you need through the icon in your menu bar.
Spotify Control Mac Menu Bar Download
Click the settings icon in the bottom right corner to open up Music Control Preferences.
From Music Control Preferences, you can:
display album artwork and artist/song title in your menu bar;
enable remote control capability by clicking “Control this Mac from other local network Macs;” and
select a computer to control from a list of automatically detected Macs on your local network. Each computer must have Music Control installed to be detected by Music Control in order for this part to work.
Spotify Control Mac Menu Bar Software
4: Search for and Listen to Music on iTunes, Rdio, and Spotify
To begin searching for music, click the magnifying glass in the top right corner and search an artist name in the search box that appears. Your search will generate a list of available albums by the artist. Hovering over the album icon will show which music players the album is available on. Click on an album name to start listening immediately.
5: Manage Music Playback
Whether you’re controlling music on your own computer or another one in your home or office, you can adjust volume, play, pause, skip, and switch between music players all in one place. Whenever you’re connected to another computer, a cloud will appear behind the settings icon.
To switch computers, just head back to the Music Control Preferences (see step 3) and choose another machine.
Other features:
Add songs to a favorites list by clicking the heart icon
Share what you’re listening to on Facebook and Twitter
Scrobble to Last.fm
6: Add Pandora to the Mix
You can only use Music Control with Pandora on one computer. Make sure the app isn’t controlling another remote computer, then head to Music Control Preferences, click the Pandora tab, and simply enter your account information. If you don’t have a Pandora account already, you can register for one here.
After you’ve saved you’re account information, click on the Pandora icon in the mini-dock and Music Control will sign into your account automatically. Now, you can access all of your previously made radio stations — or click on the magnifying glass to create a new one. Adobe premiere elements 13 mac download.
And that’s basically all there is to setting up and using Music Control on a Mac. Enjoy!