Download Tuneful (Mac) – Download & Review Free

macOS lets you control playback and view album art via the menu bar Now Playing icon, but the design could be better and offers very limited controls.

Beautiful melody Designed to extend it to give you a better understanding of the music, album art and more controls to play with. It also comes with an optional desktop mini player and supports Apple Music and Spotify.

Menubar music controller for music and Spotify

Once the app is authorized to manage playback, you can start playing music and then control it from the menu bar. Tuneful displays a song’s album cover, title, and artist using smart layouts, making everything easy to view.

Playback controls are extensive: play/pause, skip, shuffle and repeat, as well as the ability to change system volume and select the desired output device. I found the app to be very intuitive, and it looks much better than the built-in “Now Playing” music controller.

Optional desktop mini player

If you right-click on Tuneful’s menu bar icon, you can enable the mini player. This is reminiscent of the Silicio, albeit with fewer customization options. It has limited playback controls and is always on top of other windows.

The mini player is a great way to keep an eye on what’s playing, and it does look pretty good. However, more size options, and the ability to snap it to the edges of the screen, would make it even better.

There’s still some work to be done

While Apple Music and Spotify are by far the most popular services, support for other services would certainly be appreciated. Some additional visual customization options would also be welcome, and perhaps a hotkey for switching the mini player.

I also noticed that when using Spotify, a selection border appears around the album art both in the menu bar display and in the mini player. This doesn’t happen when using Apple Music, and you can choose to mark a song as “favorite” when you hover over the album cover.

All in all, Tuneful is a great app, especially if you need a menu bar music controller. The mini player isn’t as advanced as I’d like it to be, but it may get some improvements in the future.