Control Apple Music and Spotify playback
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 and “Like” songs with clickable controls that are always visible.
• Compatible with macOS 14+ (Sonoma, Sequoia, Tahoe, Golden Gate)
• Works with Spotify and Apple Music desktop apps
New: Dock Pics!
Sign up for a free Dock Pics account to share photos and music with other users. Dock Pics features a unique Pic Parade that expands Dock Party’s music visualization and colorful animations around your photos, shared tracks, and web pages.
Dock Party is a 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 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.
Features:
• Track details and album art next to the Dock with player controls on the other side
• 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
• Heart button to like songs in Spotify and Apple Music
• Share photos with Dock Pics buddies
• Share your currently playing Spotify or Apple Music track with 2 clicks
• Subscribe to Apple Photos Shared Albums: Photos shared by members of the album appear directly in your Pic Parade
• Subscribe to a buddy’s currently playing music and most recent listening history
• Immediately play received tracks in either Spotify or Apple Music, regardless of how they were shared
• Flash a buddy: Send a Dock Pic that disappears after being viewed
• Share web page links
• Buddy contact cards with nicknames, custom profile pics, crews, and buddy-specific settings
• Support for high resolution, high quality image formats
• Mark pics as winners
• Widget for "Newest Dock Pic" (Desktop and/or Notification Center)
• Cloud storage and local image cache
• Dock color styles: Choose from a variety of colors, gradients, and animations
• Automatically adjusts to the height of your Dock
• Runs in the background as a status item in the menu bar with no icon taking up space in the Dock
• 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, songsterr, WhoSampled, and BandsInTown
• Display song title, artist, and/or album name in the menu bar
• Less irritating than the standard macOS song change notifications
• Scrolling marquee with customizable message
• ”Send with Dock Party“ from Share menu in Finder or Photos app
• Meets Swift 6 strict concurrency requirements
This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Almost perfect…
lazyflowingriver
Love the functionality of this app, but there are some bugs–namely, after being open for some time, it starts to lag (the name of the song/album art takes longer to switch with songs, the menu bar applet barely loads) and has to be restarted. I find myself quitting and restarting Dock Party several times within a workday. Not sure if this is some kind of memory leak or? The heart (like) button also disappears after a song or two.I’d also love to see an option for the entire background of Dock Party to be completely transparent, so it just blends into my wallpaper, but that’s just a request. :)Still love this app! Fingers crossed for more updates in the future.
Developer Response
Thank you for thoughtful review and for your patience! Version 3.5 is now available for download, and I think you’ll find it’s significantly more stable, especially over extended run times. I put a lot of work into performance improvements in addition to a number of new features.And I hear you on the feature request! You’re not alone in requesting that, and I’m prioritizing that for 3.6. As simple as it sounds, there are some technical challenges involving restrictions that Apple imposes on App Store apps when it comes to the Dock area, but I’m ironing out some solutions.
Great app, missing customizability
rhodacted
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!
Great so far, needs more user control
Alaskanrain2
I love this app. I am a huge fan of being able to see my music info (especially album covers) in the dock, away from my work space. However, as the app is currenly written, I have no control over where in the dock the information appears, or how it appears. I'd also like to be able to turn off the conroller and modify the song information next to the artwork. Good so far, but lacks the custumability that would really great.
Developer Response
Thank you for the review and thoughtful feedback. I just submitted a free update to Apple that adds a bit more ability to customize, but not everything you’re looking for. I think the option to hide the player controls is a great idea that I will definitely add to the version I’m working on now. Hopefully, Apple will push the update in the next couple of days. Thanks again!
Exactly what I needed
Mindstaria
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.
Developer Response
I used to do the same thing with the mini player! But it didn’t want to stay put and was kind of clumsy. That’s pretty much why I created Dock Party in the first place! And it’s so nice hear from someone who appreciates the Dock color customizations as well! There are even more options in version 3 and more on the way. Thanks for the review!
• Subscribe to a buddy’s currently playing music and most recent listening history
• Dock Party remains visible even when the Dock is hidden or positioned on the side of the screen
• Capture Dock Pics directly with your Mac’s camera and optionally apply filters
• Flash a buddy: Send a Dock Pic that disappears after being viewed
• Pin up to 3 Dock Pics to the front of the Pic Parade
• New “Blue Wave” animated background option
• Additional tools in the viewer: Zoom, Reply, Forward, Hide, Delete, Get Info, Add to Photos, Save to File, Set as Wallpaper, Copy, and Share
• Display detailed camera and image data
• Widget for "Newest Dock Pic" (Desktop and/or Notification Center)
• ”Send with Dock Party“ from Share menu in Finder or Photos app
• Sent Dock Pics appear in Pic Parade across multiple active sessions
• Image quality enhancements: Preservation of transparency, color space, and color depth, including wide gamut and high bit depth; end-to-end HEIC image support; end-to-end lossless image support
• Seamless design across Dock level, progress bar, and Pic Parade
• ⌘W keyboard shortcut to close open windows such as the viewer, buddies list, camera, and settings
• Select any folder to download the currently playing track’s album cover artwork to
• Menu bar popover appearance now matches the system’s light or dark mode setting
• Toolbar refinements for Tahoe and Golden Gate
• Corrected link to privacy page in About Dock Party window
• Performance upgrades
Version 3.6.3
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 .
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