Dock Party 4+

Music visualizer and controls

Dax Mackenzie Roggio

    • 4.5 • 12 Ratings
    • $2.99

Screenshots

Description

Summer Dock Party sale! $2.99 for the month of June (Normally $4.99)

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 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 new tint with many colors, gradients, and animations from which to choose.

• Compatible with macOS Ventura 13 and later
• Works with Spotify desktop app or Apple Music desktop app.

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

Dock Party runs quietly and 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, although the menu bar features 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 (if they are being covered up anyway) 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.

It is also important to note that the Dock Party music visualizers use your Mac’s built-in microphone as the audio source, which means the visualizers work sync with your music if you are listening through headphones.

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, Tone, and Fourier visualizers in the Dock
• Track progress visualizer in the Dock
• Dock tint: Choose from a variety of colors and gradients or cycle through colors continuously
• 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 Download directory with the Save Album Cover button
• Buttons to search song and artist info on DuckDuckGo, YouTube, Genius Lyrics, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, and BandsInTown
• Appears and hides automatically when Music or Spotify is launched or closed
• Display song title, artist, and/or album name in the menu bar
• Coded in pure, modern Swift to run efficiently
• Universal binary for native performance on Apple Silicon (ARM64) and Intel (x86-64) CPUs

What’s New

Version 2.6.6

• 2 new Dock background color animations: “Emergency” and “KITT”
• New settings option prevents degradation of audio quality when listening to music with a Bluetooth headset
• Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when clicking on album cover art or track meta data if no Spotify account was connected

Ratings and Reviews

4.5 out of 5
12 Ratings

12 Ratings

Squid/Squad ,

Great app, missing customizability

This app is amazing! That is, when you're using the dock on the bottom of the screen. On either side, the play/pause and skip buttons get really bunched up, even at the largest dock size. I wish I could turn them off, or move them next to the album art. Or just get rid of the backwards button. I want to love this app, but small annoyances stop it from reaching its full potential.

Also, apparently "more features are on the way"... but it hasn't been updated for 5 months and is only on version 1.0.4

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the thoughtful review! You’re absolutely right that Dockside currently works best when the Dock is in the bottom position. I will definitely take your suggestions into account for improving functionality in the side positions. I have in fact been making progress on the next update, but I do apologize for the long delay. I’m a one-man band and haven’t had the time to dedicate to Dockside that I would like, but I am still passionate about its potential. I hope to release the next version this spring with quite a few refinements and new features. Thanks for your patience and support!

Mindstaria ,

Exactly what I needed

For years, I'd been dragging the Apple Music miniplayer to where this app puts the play info. It always moved out of place and was generally inconvenient.. but this is the solution.

There is a great deal of customization as well. A side effect of this app is being able to change the color of the dock!

I was running into one glitch and the dev was very click to patch it when I emailed them - always nice to have a responsive dev.

Buckker ,

Perfect for iMac display

This is a simple little app but I have to admit I’m probably a little bit too excited about it. Fitting the iTunes controls and song info on each side of the Dock is brilliant. This lets me see what’s playing at any time without clicking anything and without taking away any screen real estate. And the minimalist design looks beautiful on my 27-inch iMac! Even the menu bar option by itself is nicely done. What else can I say? Nice work!!!

App Privacy

The developer, Dax Mackenzie Roggio, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Supports

  • Family Sharing

    Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.

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