Packafōma Cōde
Did you purchase an earlier version
of Dock Party from the App Store?
Contact me through the support page
for a free upgrade.
Why is the App Store version of Dock Party
no longer being updated?
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Turn your macOS Dock into a dynamic light bar that syncs with your music and brings your Dock to life in ways subtle or dramatic. Display track details and album art right beside the Dock. Control music playback with clickable controls that are always visible. Or simply give your Dock a new tint with 12 colors to choose from.
This is the only place to find the latest release of Dock Party, which has more features than the outdated version that is still available for sale in the App Store. (I would love to update the App Store version, but Apple App Review is being a pain in the ass.) If you purchased an earlier version of Dock Party through the App Store, please contact me through the support page for a free upgrade.
Download only (if you already have a license key)
10 Ratings
4.8
★★★★★
Age
4+
Years Old
Category
🎶
Music
Developer
Dax Roggio
PACKAFōMA CōDE
Language
EN
English
Size
5.7
MB
Dock Party is a lightweight Spotify and Apple Music playback controller that offers a variety of ways to display album art, song details, and track progress for the currently playing track. Dock Party runs in the background as a menu bar status item that doesn’t take up any space in the Dock. It also features a unique audio visualizer that utilizes your Mac’s built-in microphone to turn the Dock itself into a dynamic show of color and rhythm in sync with your music (or any ambient sound). There are several visualizer modes to choose from and more will be included in future, free updates.
A key advantage of Dock Party is that the controls, track details, and visualizer are always visible — as long as the Dock itself is visible. (If you keep your Dock hidden by default, this is not the app for you!). It doesn’t matter what app you’re working in; you can see what song is playing without a click or even a slide. The visualizer never gets hidden behind other windows, unlike those OTHER guys! (Extensive testing has shown that music visualizers are less interesting when they’re not visible.)
Dock Party runs quietly and efficiently in the background with low impact on system resources. Preference options and other features can be accessed from the Menu Bar icon. Most interface elements can be turned on or off or customized.
I don’t have my own rating system set up yet, but click this link for a screenshot of the ratings and reviews Dock Party received on the App Store. Unfortunately, Apple’s App Review team has refused to approve further updates to the App Store version, even bug fixes, unless I remove core features that had been accepted previously — and are still present in the version they’re continuing to sell!
An older release of Dock Party, version 2.0.2, is still available for sale in the App Store. However, I am no longer able to update it.
Dock Party 1.0 was approved for sale in the App Store on June 14, 2018. In the 3 years that followed, I successfully submitted 11 updates, up to and including version 2.0.2.
My submission of version 2.0.3 was rejected by App Review, however, because of an App Sandbox entitlement that is suddenly no longer being granted, even though the version that remains available for purchase uses the same capability. (It just does so with more bugs and fewer features!) The entitlement in question relates to System Events, access to which is critical to Dock Party for purposes of determining and monitoring changes to the precise dimensions and location of the user’s Dock.
I spent considerable time working with App Review and code-level support to find a solution. The Apple team members I communicated with were generally responsive, but in the end they were unable to offer an alternative mechanism that would allow Dock Party to function without the newly off-limits entitlement.
So here we are.
I still think Dock Party has a lot of potential. So I have chosen to continue to develop it, with new releases being made available for purchase exclusively on my website.
This non-App Store version of Dock Party has been notarized by Apple and even remains fully sandboxed.
If not for Apple’s App Store, I would never have attempted to distribute Dock Party. So I appreciate its utility. I don’t even mind that Apple takes a 15% cut of every sale (30% in some cases), but I do wish Apple would put more resources into screening for potentially dangerous apps during App Review instead of layering on increasingly rigid restrictions that only serve to prevent trustworthy developers from accessing the full potential of macOS.