rafenden / nowplaying-cli

macOS command-line utility for retrieving currently playing media

nowplaying-cli

nowplaying-cli is a macOS command-line utility for retrieving currently playing media, and simulating media actions.

Use nowplaying-cli to get song information and play/pause your media through an easy to use CLI!

Disclaimer: nowplaying-cli uses private frameworks, which may cause it to break with future macOS software updates.

Tested and working on:

• Ventura 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.6
• Sonoma 14.4

Installation

Homebrew

You can install nowplaying-cli using Homebrew.

brew install nowplaying-cli

Build from source

Clone the repository and run make to build the binary. You can then move the binary to your desired location.

make
mv nowplaying-cli ~/.local/bin

Usage

nowplaying-cli <cmd>

command	description
get [propName1 propName2 ... ]	get now playing media properties
get-raw	get all non-nil now playing media properties in dictionary format
play	play the currently playing media regardless of current state
pause	pause the currently playing media regardless of current state
togglePlayPause	toggle play/pause based on current state
seek	seek to a specific time in the currently playing media
next	skip to next track
previous	go to previous track

Examples

Available properties

native	nowplaying-cli
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoTotalDiscCount	totalDiscCount
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoShuffleMode	shuffleMode
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoTrackNumber	trackNumber
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoDuration	duration
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoRepeatMode	repeatMode
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoTitle	title
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoPlaybackRate	playbackRate
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoArtworkData	artworkData
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoArtworkDataWidth	artworkDataWidth
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoArtworkDataHeight	artworkDataHeight
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoAlbum	album
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoTotalQueueCount	totalQueueCount
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoArtworkMIMEType	artworkMIMEType
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoMediaType	mediaType
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoDiscNumber	discNumber
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoTimestamp	timestamp
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoGenre	genre
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoQueueIndex	queueIndex
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoArtist	artist
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoDefaultPlaybackRate	defaultPlaybackRate
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoElapsedTime	elapsedTime
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoTotalTrackCount	totalTrackCount
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoIsMusicApp	isMusicApp
kMRMediaRemoteNowPlayingInfoUniqueIdentifier	uniqueIdentifier