Now Playing Retriever

Demo with my Now Playing widget in OBS:

2022-01-25.19-40-48.1.mp4

Now Playing Retriever is a simple Mac app that listens for changes in the system's "Now Playing" data in the control center. It then saves that data to files within its container, which can be symlinked to in order to access them. I made this for my Twitch stream for rare macOS streams where I want my Now Playing widget to work.

The app uses private Apple APIs, so it is not guaranteed to continue to work forever.

Installation

Download the latest release from the Releases page and extract it somewhere. Currently the app is not notarized, so you'd have to put it in your Applications folder, then right click it and choose Open. In the dialog that pops up, choose Open.

You'll now need to setup symlinks to access the internal files.

For example, if you're using this with my widget:

• Take the setup_file_links_example.sh file and paste it in the Snip folder.
• Open Terminal, cd to the widget's Snip folder.
• Delete Snip_Artist.txt,Snip_Album.txt,Snip_Artwork.jpg and Snip_Track.txt if they exit.
• run chmod +x setup_file_links_example.sh and then ./setup_file_links_example.sh.

Usage

Simply run the app whenever you want the internal files to be updated with whatever's currently playing.

Contributing

If you'd like more behavior customizations, open an issue and we can talk about what can be done.

Donations

License

MIT