Round Music Widget displaying Billie Holiday's Solitude artwork in a circular glass-like player
Round Music Widget displaying black-and-white artwork in a circular glass-like player
Round Music Widget displaying monochrome sculpture artwork
Round Music Widget shown at a compact size

Tool

Open source

Round Music Widget

A native macOS companion I designed and built to keep the current Apple Music artwork on the desktop as a movable glass-like bubble with playback controls.

Why I made this project

I find it astonishing that macOS does not have an Apple Music widget. I really like music widgets, mostly because I like seeing the artwork for whatever album I am currently listening to.

There are apps you can download, but I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a sort of bubble with an effect around the edge. I wanted it to be pretty and to go with whatever I was listening to.

So I made Round Music Widget, which is exactly what it sounds like.

How I built this

It stays in sync with Apple Music. Every time I open Music, the widget opens and shows the artwork for the song or album I am listening to, with basic controls for play, next and previous.

The interesting bit is the design. I wanted a bubble, not just a circular frame with the artwork inside it. So I added an effect around the edge that extends and distorts the image a little, as if you were looking at the artwork through a magnifying dome or one of those strange lenses. When you hover over the widget, the song title and artist appear around the frame.

When I close Apple Music, the widget closes too. I can move it anywhere on the desktop and choose between four sizes, from compact to extra large, depending on what I am doing.

What comes next

One thing that does not look good is a text-heavy album cover. I have several possible solutions in mind, which I may add as I use the widget more and more.

  1. Use the playlist cover instead of the album cover. This usually happens when I am listening to classical music, and I usually listen to classical music from a playlist.
  2. Detect and use only the part of the album cover that does not contain text. That would probably involve AI, or some kind of detection automation. I am not sure it is worth it. It may be too heavy for the scope of the tool.
  3. Let me replace a text-heavy album cover with either a random photograph or one I have chosen.
  4. Do nothing and decide that this is fine.
Round Music Widget showing a text-heavy Camille Saint-Saëns album cover with track information and controls layered around it
An example of a text-heavy album cover that does not quite look right in the widget.