See what is Now Playing

In this video, we’re going to take a look at Now Playing on the Mac. With Now Playing, we can easily see what is playing on our Mac. This can be a podcast and music from the Music app; it can be music from Spotify or even a YouTube video. Let’s take a look at it Now Playing on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Now, the first thing we need to do is we need to start playing audio from a source. As I mentioned in the introduction, this can be from the music app; it can be from podcasts, it can be from Spotify and YouTube, a video in Safari.

So let’s go and start an audio source. I’m going to go to Music here. I click on it. It opens up, and now let’s start playing Babylon from David Gray. I click on the play button here, and it is playing. Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to hide the Music app. I go up to Music in the menu bar, and then we go over to Hide Music.

Now, to see what is playing or what is Now Playing on the Mac, what we do is we go up to the Control Center. This is new in macOS Big Sur. When we’re in the Control Center, at the very bottom, we have Now Playing. We can see Babylon as now playing. If I want to pause it, I click on the pause button. I want to go to the next song; I click on the arrows pointing to the right. If I click on it, it opens it up in a new modal window, and from here, I can pause it. I can see the play head. I can also go to the next song or start over.

We also have this in the menu bar. I’m going to click outside here. It goes away. And when we go to the menu bar, you’re going to see we have this new icon. This is the play icon. I click on it, and again, I can see what is playing. So that is Now Playing.

Now. If you quit out of an app, it no longer shows what is playing, and in fact, what will happen is in the menu bar here, this Now Playing icon will disappear. If I quit out of the Music app, let’s go ahead and quit out of this, I click on it, and then we go up to Music, and I go over to Quit. I quit it, nothing is Now Playing, and now when we go up to the Control Center here, we no longer have anything playing, and if we look at the menu bar, we no longer have our Now Playing icon. If I were to play something again, it would show again.

Now I mentioned that this works with multiple sources. Let’s go and open up Spotify here. And now let’s play David Gilmore, Rattle That Lock, I go up to Spotify, and I hide it. You’re going to see, I have my Now Playing in the menu bar, click on it, and we have Rattle That Lock by David Gilmore. What do you think we’re going to see when we go to the Control Center? Click on the Control Center, Rattle That Lock by David Gilmore.

Let’s go and open up a podcast. I click on it, and now we’re going to go and listen to this podcast here. Let’s go ahead and hide this again. Now I have two sources playing; I have my Spotify playing, and then I also have podcasts playing. When we go up to Now Playing here in the menu bar, we can see both of those playing here. So Now Playing does show you all of your different sources. If I want to pause the podcast, I just click on pause here, and it pauses the podcast.

What about the Control Center? When I go over to my Control Center, we can see that we have Al Franken here; well, what about Spotify? If I click on it, we can see both of those items, my podcasts, and Spotify.

Let’s go and open up a YouTube video. I mentioned in the introduction that this also works with YouTube. I go to Safari here. Let’s go to YouTube and Bowling Balls How It’s Made. Let’s go ahead and take a look at this. Click on the play button. We’re going to skip the ad here. So now we’re watching this video on how bowling balls are made. Let’s go and hide Safari. Now, when we go up to Now Playing, what do you think we’re going to see? Remember, I have three audio sources open, my three audio sources, Spotify, Podcasts, and YouTube. I go over to my Control Center, click on it. We have bowling balls here, but when I click on this, there are my three sources again.

We do have one setting for this. We can set if we want this Now Playing here in the menu bar to be active all the time, or we can just remove it from the menu bar altogether. To do that, we go down to our System Preferences, and then we go over to Dock & Menu Bar. This was introduced with macOS Big Sur. Over on the left, when we swipe up, you’re going to see Now Playing. From here, we can set if we want to show it in the menu bar. If we want it to be in the menu bar at all, even when I have an audio source active, I deselect this. Now even though Spotify is open, my podcast is open, I’m listening to something in YouTube. Now Playing is no longer going to be in my menu bar. The only way that I can access it is through the Control Center here. To show it in the menu bar. Again, you select this, and then we can also set it to show all the time or always. When this is selected, even when I do not have any apps open, remember how this disappeared when I quit out of my Spotify or quit out of my music app? Well, now that this is set to always show, it will no longer disappear, even if I do not have any apps open that Now Playing supports. By default, this is going to be set to When Active.

So that is Now Playing on the Mac. This was introduced with macOS Big Sur, and basically, what we have is easy access to anything that is playing on our Mac. This can be the Music app, Podcasts, Spotify, or even a YouTube video. We can access Now Playing through our Control Center, and then when something is playing, by default, it’s also going to show in the menu bar. We can have more than one audio source open at the same time. Now Playing will reflect that. You’ll see all the sources when you click on it in the menu bar, and then when you go to the Control Center, if you click on Now Playing, it opens up in a separate modal window, and then from there, you’re going to be able to control all of your different sources.

So that is Now Playing on the Mac.