macOS Dock Party for Spotify and Apple Music

Dock Party v3.0.4 (May 1, 2025)

Spotify and Apple Music visualizer in your macOS Dock — with player controls, track details, album cover artwork, ♥️ button, menu bar display, Dock color themes and animations, and more

Turn your macOS Dock into a dynamic light bar that syncs with your music and brings your Dock to life. Display track details and album cover art right beside the Dock. Control music playback with clickable controls that are always visible. Like songs. Or simply customize your Mac by giving your Dock a fresh color or background animation.

Compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma and higher
Requires Spotify desktop app or Apple Music desktop app

Previews

Dock Party is a lightweight Spotify and Apple Music playback controller that offers a variety of ways to display album cover art, song details, and track progress for the currently playing track. Dock Party runs as a menu bar status item that doesn’t take up any app icon space in the Dock. It also features a unique audio visualizer that turns the Dock itself into a dynamic show of color and rhythm in sync with your music.

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. It doesn’t matter what app you’re working in; you can see what song is playing without a single click.

Dock Party runs efficiently in the background with low impact on system resources. Settings options and other features can be accessed from the Menu Bar icon. Most interface elements can be turned on or off or customized.

It is important to note that the Dock music controls and visualizer will not be visible unless the Dock itself is visible, for obvious reasons. If you always keep your Dock hidden or always run your apps in full-screen, this is probably not the app for you unless you’re just here for the menu bar features, which will still work just fine. Dock Party also works best when the Dock is positioned in its default location at the bottom of the screen, ideally with some space to spare on each side. Consider removing the icons of infrequently used apps if your Dock stretches all the way from edge to edge across the full-width of your screen. You can also opt to hide the track details completely and still see album cover artwork and visual effects. Track details can also be displayed within the Dock Party progress bar and/or in the macOS menu bar.

What’s New in Version 3

Dock Party now taps into system audio directly to monitor the Spotify and Apple Music audio streams. No more microphone access required! This offers a number of benefits:
- Visualizers now work even when you’re using headphones
- No drop in audio quality (“call mode”) when listening through duplex Bluetooth devices
- No need for third-party audio routing apps or custom aggregate devices
- Visualizers respond directly to the music without interference from ambient sounds
New Dock background animation: “Neon”
Enhanced pitch and waveform visualizers
New appearance option for player controls: “Backlight”
New scrolling marquee option to display artist, song, or album
Greater leveraging of GPU to boost efficiency and responsiveness of visualizers and background animations

What’s New in Version 2

♥️ button (Add to Liked Songs)
Detachable status bar popover window with player controls, large album art, progress bar, and track info
Controllable track progress bar that runs along the Dock and includes its own mini controls, elapsed and total time displays, and song info
Buttons to search song and artist info on DuckDuckGo, YouTube, Genius Lyrics, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, and BandsInTown
More track tint color options including gradients and color cycling options
More responsive album art resizing when there is limited space next to the Dock
Shuffle and repeat controls
Option to switch sides of player controls panel and track info panel
Click on album art to bring active music player to front
Packaged for distribution outside of the Mac App Store
Optimized for M-Series processors in addition to Intel processors
More preference options to adapt to a variety of screen sizes and Dock configurations

Features

Resizes automatically along with the size and position of your Dock
Track details and album art next to the Dock with player controls on the other side
Silky-smooth, controllable track progress bar along the edge of the Dock
Amplitude, Pitch, and Waveform visualizers in the Dock
Track progress visualizer in the Dock
Dock color styles: Choose from a variety of colors, gradients, and animations
Runs in the background as a status item in the menu bar with no icon taking up space in the Dock
Much less irritating than the standard macOS song change notifications
Menu bar drop-down displays song details and provides its own controls
Shuffle and repeat controls
Save full-sized album cover image file to your Downloads directory with the Save Album Cover button
Buttons to search song and artist info on DuckDuckGo, YouTube, Genius Lyrics, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, and BandsInTown
Display song title, artist, and/or album name in the menu bar
Scrolling marquee with customizable text message
Universal binary for native performance on Apple Silicon (ARM64) and Intel (x86-64) CPUs

App Privacy

No ads
No in-app purchases
No data collection

Version History

v3.0.4 May 1, 2025

Fixed a bug that was causing the album name to appear in menu bar instead of artist name
Like button now works with the latest version of Apple Music
Better responsiveness to changes in Dock position and size
Fixed an issue that would cause Dock Party to steal focus from the active app when clicked

v3.0.3 April 24, 2025

New appearance option for player controls: “Backlight”
Right-clicking Dock Party in status bar now shows menu options for Settings, About, and Quit
More accurate matching of main window dimensions to Dock size
Fixed a bug that could cause track info text in the menu bar to get cut off

v3.0.2 April 19, 2025

New scrolling marquee option to display artist, song, or album
More scrolling marquee font options
Dock area album info text size now adjusts dynamically in proportion to window height
New size options for menu bar track info text

v3.0.1 April 14, 2025

Fixed a bug that prevented Dock Party from hiding along with the Dock if the active app entered full screen mode

v3.0.0 April 11, 2025

Dock Party now taps into system audio directly to monitor the Spotify and Apple Music audio streams. No more microphone access required! This offers a number of benefits:
- Visualizers now work even when you’re using headphones
- No drop in audio quality (“call mode”) when listening through duplex Bluetooth devices
- No need for third-party audio routing apps or custom aggregate devices
- Visualizers respond directly to the music without interference from ambient sounds
New Dock background animation: “Neon”
Enhanced dynamic pitch and waveform visualizers
Stability improvements to scrolling marquee
Greater leveraging of GPU to boost efficiency and responsiveness of visualizers and background animations
RAM usage has gone from low to really low
Fixed a bug that could prevent Dock Party from gaining automation access
General performance improvements and bug fixes

v2.7.1 January 24, 2025

Scrolling marquee with customizable message
Compatibility with third-party software to route audio directly to music visualizers rather than relying on microphone input
Reorganized Settings window
Performance and stability improvements

v2.6.6 June 18, 2023

2 new Dock background color animations: “Emergency” and “KITT”
Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when clicking on album cover art or track meta data if no Spotify account was connected

v2.6.5 June 15, 2023

New settings option prevents degradation of audio quality when listening to music with a Bluetooth headset

v2.6.2 June 10, 2023

Amplitude visualizer has been re-coded to be more responsive and CPU/energy efficient

v2.6.1 May 28, 2023

Modifications for inclusion in App Store
Bug fixes

v2.5.6 December 18, 2022

Like songs with the new ♥ button
Spotify deep links: Click on a song title, artist, or album name to go directly to the corresponding page in the Spotify app
Save full-sized album cover artwork to disk with the new Save Album Cover button
Spotify logo now accompanies metadata and cover art at all times per Spotify API requirements (Click on logo to open Spotify app)
Improved the Tone visualizer when the Dock is positioned on the right side of the screen
Improved functionality when there is no internet connection
Settings window loads more quickly
Added a right-click contextual menu to the Dock Party app icon if a user chooses to make the app icon visible in the Dock — which is not recommended. It’s a menu bar app
So much bug fixes
General performance improvements

v2.4.1 November 11, 2022

Fixed an issue that would cause Dock Party to crash if the update check encountered a server error

v2.4.0 November 9, 2022

Compatible with macOS Ventura 13 in addition to macOS Monterey 12
New Updates tab in Preferences / automatic update checks
New background color gradients
New option to fill either vertically or horizontally for track progress in Dock
New color cycling option for track progress in Dock
Upgraded licensing system
Fixed a bug that could cause a crash if no music apps are open
Plugged a memory leak that could cause RAM usage to increase significantly over long run times
Fixed a bug that could cause a visualizer to remain visible after switching to a different visualizer
More minor bug fixes than I care to remember

v2.3.4 December 23, 2021

Option to keep popover window open while working in other apps. (Click status bar icon to close.)
Fixed a bug that was causing player control and track info panels to appear at first launch even when set to hidden
General performance optimizations

v2.3.3 November 29, 2021

Status bar popover window can be detached and dragged anywhere on screen

v2.3.2 November 27, 2021

Fixed a bug that prevented album art from appearing in popover window in Big Sur (bug reported by Uncle Bob)

v2.3.1 November 26, 2021

Additional button to search for song and artist on YouTube (per Cousin Miika’s feature request)

v2.3.0 November 25, 2021

New status bar popover menu:
- Player controls
- Big ass album art
- Progress bar
- Track info
- Buttons to search song and artist info on DuckDuckGo, Genius Lyrics, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, or BandsInTown

v2.2.1 October 13, 2021

Fixed a bug that prevented use of the new progress bar controls if user has automatic Dock hiding on in System Preferences (bug reported by Cousin Shea)

v2.2.0 October 11, 2021

Packaged for distribution outside of the Mac App Store
Universal binary for native performance on Apple Silicon (ARM64) and Intel (x86-64) CPUs
Optimized for M-series chips
Controllable track progress bar that runs along the Dock and includes its own mini controls, elapsed and total time displays, and song info
More preference options to adapt to a variety of screen sizes and Dock configurations
More responsive album art resizing when there is limited space next to the Dock
More track tint color options including color cycling option
Option to switch sides of player controls panel and track info panel
Shuffle and repeat controls
Click on album art to bring active music player to front

v2.0.2 December 23, 2020

Fixed a bug that could cause the volume control slider to stop working

v2.0.1 December 2020

Option to replace the app icon with the album art of the currently playing track
Bug fixes

v2.0.0 December 13, 2020

macOS 11 Big Sur compatibility
Music visualizer IN the Dock!
Universal binary for native performance on Apple Silicon (ARM) and Intel (x86) processors
Support for automatic Dock hiding/showing
Option to show the app icon (support for multiple desktops)
Dynamic layout uses precise Dock dimensions

v1.2.3 October 13, 2020

New preference options:
- Display only album cover in track details area
- Display only “skip” button in player controls area
Fixed a bug that was causing the drop-down menu track details to display incorrectly

v1.2.2 June 14, 2020

New preference options:
- Display more track details in status bar
- Hide either Dockside panel (or hide both to use status bar features only)
Fixed a bug that could cause memory usage to increase significantly over time

v1.2.1 April 17, 2020

Fixed a bug that prevented the menu bar track details from updating properly

v1.2.0 April 14, 2020

Spotify support
Playback controls in menu bar in addition to Dockside panels
New preference options:
- Show volume control slider
- Select from 9 Dock area background colors
- Hide Dockside panels to use menu bar features only
Interface enhancements
Bug fixes

v1.1.1 January 7, 2020

Fixes a problem with the “Launch at login” preference option

v1.1.0 January 7, 2020

Compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina and the new Music app

v1.0.1 June 24, 2018

Compatible with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, macOS 10.12 Sierra, and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan

v1.0.0 June 24, 2018

Dock Party is perfect. It has every possible feature and will never require any bug fixes.