‘Music MiniPlayer’ for Mac offers iTunes 10 nostalgia with modern twists

A new app from from developer Mario Guzman, dubbed “Music MiniPlayer,” aims to bring one of the most useful features from iTunes 10 back to the Mac. The utility replicates the design of the classic iTunes 10 MiniPlayer for Mac, but with a few added modern twists. Head below for all of the details.

During its final years, iTunes gained a reputation for being app with a lot of baggage and cruft. Before being discontinued in 2019, iTunes for the Mac offered a number of different features packed into a single application, including Apple Music, TV shows and movies, Podcasts, and more.

With the release of macOS Catalina in 2019, Apple split these different media types into separate apps, including Music, Podcasts, and TV. While the Music app on the Mac is still based on quite a bit of the original iTunes foundation, it has obviously gone through a number of different design changes and feature changes over the years.

Music MiniPlayer from Mario Guzman is a new remote control app for the Music app on the Mac. As explained by MacStories, Music MiniPlayer is not a music player itself, but rather a separate utility that interfaces with the Music app built into macOS.

Music MiniPlayer offers an incredible recreation of the iTunes 10 MiniPlayer, written using Core Graphics and Core Animation frameworks. It includes a design that is not just reminiscent of the iTunes 10 MiniPlayer, but one that is a pixel-perfect recreation.

The utility includes all of the same controls, including quick access to play and pause buttons, skip forward and backward buttons, a scrubber, and details on the currently playing song, album, and artist.

Unlike the iTunes 10 MiniPlayer, this new Music MiniPlayer utility also offers quick access to all of your playlists. This means you can quickly browse your entire collection of playlists, choose shuffle or repeat options, and begin playback without having to use the Music app itself.

For additional convenience, Music MiniPlayer can even float over your other windows, allowing you to always have quick access to playback controls and playlists.

I’ve been using Music MiniPlayer since I saw it pop up on MacStories earlier this week – it’s been a great addition to my Apple Music experience on the Mac. The Music app does offer its own MiniPlayer option, but I find Guzman’s utility to be both more useful and more capable for almost everything.

Even looking beyond the nostalgia factor, Music MiniPlayer is an excellent utility that is worth a shot if you’re a big Apple Music user on macOS. You can download it for free from Guzman’s website right here.