nowplaying-cli
April 6, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
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
- Sequoia 15.7
- Tahoe 26.3
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. If you want to install it system-wide, use make install so the helper script and dylib are installed alongside it.
sudo make install
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 |
Acknowledgments
Thank you @ungive for their mediaremote-adapter project, which restores support for macOS 15, 26. The files under src/mediaremote-mini/ are derived from that project and are licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License.