Mac Touch Bar Play Pause Button Spotify

treechallenge
7 min readJun 3, 2021

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I don’t live in the US but I listen to music via Spotify’s web app when I’m writing or just browsing the net. I use the free ad-supported tier because I don’t need access to premium mobile features (podcasts FTW) and it’s better than blatant piracy.

You should see the service you just created in Automator, ‘Launch Spotify’ or whatever you called it. Click on it once to select it. You will see an ‘add shortcut’ button. Click the button. Now you can choose any key/combo that isn’t already in use (though there are a lot!) to launch your service. I’m a huge fan of Spotify, but I recently encountered a really annoying — and apparently common — bug.No matter what playlist, artist, or album I was listening to (whether on my iPhone, Mac, or Sonos), Spotify would pause every song or two, and I’d have to tap Play for it to continue. I don’t want to be a party pooper here but the play/stop button is already there, on the right part. And I don’t get why you don’t use the whole part of the touch bar allowed to app. I expect Spotify to take more benefit, the iTunes use for example is really good and beautiful, expect it lacks animations.

Cool Tip: I use Hola Unblocker Chrome extension to mask my real location in Spotify’s web player. That’s also how I made the Spotify account.

The reason I don’t use Spotify’s stellar Mac app is because every week or so I get kicked off for “not being in a supported country”. I need to reinstall the app and wait for the game of cat and mouse to begin again. So eventually I just gave up and settled on the web player. I don’t get support for plugins but that’s OK.

One thing I sorely miss on the Mac app is access to Mac’s built in Play/Pause, Next, and Previous keys. When you’re listening to music on Spotify/Pandora/Rdio on the web, the tab is usually in the background. I hate going hunting for it every time I need to pause playback.

https://treechallenge.medium.com/spotify-free-worse-now-c676247ac91f. Playlists are a great way to save collections of music, either for your own listening or to share. To create one: Tap Your Library. Tap CREATE.; Give your playlist a name.

Which is why I’m glad to share with you a simple Mac menubar utility that lets you control more than a dozen web based music/media player sites using your Mac’s media keys. All you need to do is use a keyboard shortcut to set the current tab as active and just like that Mac’s media keys will take over the tab’s playback.

How To Install BeardedSpice

Download the zipped file from the website, use Mac’s built in Archive Utility to unzip it, and drag the unzipped app to the Applications folder. The first time you open the app, Mac will give a default warning. Just click Open.

Hello YouTube: BeardedSpice supports video sites like YouTube and Vimeo as well with no issues in performance. Scroll to the last section for the entire list of supported services.

Now you’ll see the BeardedSpice logo in the menubar. As the name suggests, the logo is a beard and a mustache.

How To Use And Configure BeardedSpice

Now that BeardedSpice is up and running, go to any of the supported web based media players. Click the menubar utility and you’ll see the media tab listed.

Click on a web page to activate it. A checkmark beside the selected site will show up.

Configuring Keyboard Shortcuts

To make the activation process for web based players as quick as possible, BeardedSpice supports keyboard shortcuts. The default shortcut to activate BeardedSpice is Cmd+F8. F8 is conveniently also the Play/Pause key.

But for some reason I found this shortcut to be buggy. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Thankfully, you can change the keyboard shortcut.

Click the BeardedSpice menubar utility and go to Preferences. Here click on the space beside Set active tab and type in your preferred shortcut. I have mine set to Cmd+8 as it’s right below the Play/Pause button.

Enable/Disable Supported Services

From the same Preferences menu you can decide which web players you don’t want BeardedSpice to interact with.

Here’s the entire list of supported web players:

  • 8Tracks
  • Amazon Music
  • BandCamp
  • BeatsMusic
  • Bop.fm
  • Google Music
  • GrooveShark
  • HypeMachine
  • Last.fm
  • Mixcloud
  • Music Unlimited
  • Pandora
  • Rdio
  • Shuffler.fm
  • Slacker
  • Songza
  • SoundCloud
  • Spotify (Web)
  • Synology
  • XboxMusic
  • YouTube
  • VK (“My Music” from vk.com)
  • Vimeo

Where Do You Plan On Using BeardedSpice?

What services do you plan on using BeardedSpice with? Do you wish that it supported more players like Netflix.com? Let us know in the comments below.

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#music #spotify

Did You Know

Automated Content ID — the name of the YouTube program that scans videos for copyright infringement.

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How do i download spotify premium on my ipad to my. AirPods and AirPods Pro don’t just provide excellent-sounding music, they also pack in a lot of audio controls — it’s just not remotely obvious where they are or how you can use them. Here’s how to play, pause or skip through music.

It’s not as if they come with a pause button. AirPods and AirPods Pro bring excellent music, but until their battery runs out, there’s no apparent way to stop the audio playing. There are, however, many ways to pause, skip forward, skip back, and otherwise control everything on your AirPods — without resorting to your iPhone.

Without question, the easiest way to pause music on either AirPods or AirPods Pro, is to take them out of your ears.

You can take out just one AirPod and in theory music will pause until you put it back in. That means if someone is talking to you, you can just pop out one AirPod, speak to them, and go back to listening afterwards.

In practice, this does work, yet after a little while, you may find that the remaining AirPod in your ear starts the music again. To be sure of pausing, and then not unexpectedly playing, take both AirPods out.

Spotify app long load time. If you want to be totally certain you won’t hear the AirPods at all, put them back in their charging case.

To be fair, if you do have your iPhone in your hand, that may be the next quickest way to pause or change AirPods audio.

If you’re in the Music, Podcasts or any other app that is playing audio, you can use that app’s controls to do what you need, and the AirPods respond.

If you’re using any other app, you can still use Control Center.

  • Swipe down from the top right
  • Press the Pause icon in the Music section at top right

That Pause icon changes to a Play one, so you know how to restart the music too. In the same section, you can also disconnect the AirPods completely.

Mac Touch Bar Play Pause Button Spotify Download

While you’ve got your iPhone out, if you are using AirPods other than the AirPods Pro, open the Settings app and choose Bluetooth.

To be able to pause audio by physically pressing on either the original or second generation AirPods, you have to configure them.

In the Bluetooth section, tap on the i icon to the left of the name of your AirPods. If they’re showing as Not Connected, open the AirPods case and tap when you see the listing change to Connected.

Configure AirPods to let you tap to pause or play music.

  • Scroll to the Double-Tap AirPod section
  • Choose Left or Right and tap on that
  • Tap on Play/Pause

If instead of Double-Tap AirPod, you see Press and Hold AirPods, you’re using AirPod Pro. This doesn’t have the same Play/Pause option, because that has been replaced by built-in functionality.

When you have configured either your Right or Left AirPod to act as a Play/Pause button, all you have to do is tap on it. It’s a toggle so if music is playing, one tap will pause it. If music isn’t playing, that tap will start it.

If you’re wearing AirPods Pro, you can do a similar thing. Rather than tapping on an AirPod, squeeze the stem. There’s a force sensor which will pause the music when you squeeze, or resume playing when you squeeze again.

With AirPods Pro, you can use Siri. Just say aloud the words ‘Hey, Siri, pause,’ and — again, in theory — that’s exactly what will happen.

In practice, while AirPods Pro are generally very good at hearing the magic invocation, you get the most reliable results by pausing slightly after saying ‘Hey, Siri.’ Say that, take the briefest of moments to clear your throat, and then tell it to ‘Pause.’

This really is a strong feature of the AirPods Pro and the second generation AirPods over the original ones, but you can do something similar with even that first edition.

If you’ve set the Left or Right AirPod to be Play/Pause, you could set the other to activate Siri. Use the same method for configuring them, but this time choose Siri.

  • Scroll to the Double-Tap AirPod section
  • Choose Left or Right, and tap on that
  • Tap on Siri

Now you can tap on that AirPod, and when you hear the Siri bleep, say ‘Pause’ or ‘Play,’ as you need.

AirPods Pro are packed with electronics, including a force-sensitive stem that you can squeeze to pause playback.

Given that it requires a tap, and you could equally well have configured an AirPod to play or pause with a single tap, it doesn’t seem like much use.

However, Siri is not just useful for playing or pausing. With this set up, you can as easily tell Siri to skip forward to the next track, or skip back to the next.

Mac Touch Bar Play Pause Button Spotify Playlists

AirPods Pro let you do the same just by asking Siri, and they also contain extra controls such as the ability to say ‘Hey, Siri, turn on noise cancelling.’

Spotify Play Pause Windows Hotkey

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