Music

Whatever is playing on your Mac, in any player, shows in the notch: the track, the artwork, controls and a progress bar.

• Collapsed: a live state with the track. Hover it for inline controls and a scrub bar, without opening the panel.
• Expanded: the Music section and the mini player on Home.

On the Lock Screen

Lock the Mac with music playing and a separate card shows the artwork, track and controls. Pause, resume or skip without unlocking. The card stays while paused and goes away when you unlock. Turn it off in Settings › Appearance › Music on the Lock Screen.

When it cannot see the player

Nothing playing means no player is playing. Music unavailable means Shelf lost its connection to the system's now-playing information and could not get it back after several tries.

Now playing on macOS comes from a private system framework. It works on the macOS versions Shelf is tested on (most recently macOS 26.6.2), but a macOS update can break it until Shelf is updated.