Vinyl

Vinyl is a native macOS companion for the Spotify desktop app. It detects the item currently playing on your Mac and presents its artwork as a live, click-through turntable scene behind your desktop icons.

Run it

1. Open Vinyl.xcodeproj in Xcode.
2. Select your Apple Developer team in Signing & Capabilities if Xcode asks.
3. Build and run.
4. Open Spotify for Mac and play a track.

Vinyl does not need Spotify developer credentials or an account connection.

What is already wired up

• Near-instant local detection from Spotify for Mac's playback-change notifications.
• Album artwork lookup through Spotify's public embed metadata.
• An AppKit desktop-level window on every connected display.
• A textured turntable scene with a spinning record, album sleeve, tonearm, and live playback progress.
• App Sandbox, hardened runtime, and outgoing-network entitlement.
• A privacy manifest declaring no tracking or developer-side data collection.
• A menu-bar control so the desktop can keep running after the main window is closed.

Distribution reality

GitHub release builds are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple for a normal, warning-free direct-download experience.

Before wider distribution, confirm that the desktop presentation satisfies Spotify's current attribution and artwork requirements.

Original implementation

The desktop-window idea was informed by ibuhs/Luviosa, a GPL-3.0 live-wallpaper project. Vinyl is independently implemented and does not include Luviosa source or media.