A minimalist macOS menu bar lyrics viewer for Apple Music, featuring real-time karaoke-style synced lyrics with zero CPU rendering.
- Real-time synced lyrics — TTML lyrics displayed directly in the menu bar, perfectly synced with playback
- Karaoke effect — word-by-word highlight animation (can be toggled off for plain scrolling)
- Hover playback controls — previous / play·pause / next buttons appear on hover
- Smart interlude detection — displays animated ♪ notes during intros and instrumental breaks
- Edge fade — configurable gradient fade on lyrics edges for a polished look
- Adjustable width — lyrics area width from 120 pt to 320 pt
- TTML lyrics from Apple Music API — with local disk caching
- Auto dark/light mode — adapts to system appearance seamlessly
- 10 languages — English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, Deutsch, Español, Français, 日本語, 한국어, Português (Brasil), Русский
- macOS 26.0+
- Apple Music
Download the latest FlowX-vX.X.X.dmg from Releases, open it, and drag FlowX.app to Applications.
The app is not notarized. After downloading, run the following command to remove the quarantine attribute:
xattr -cr /Applications/FlowX.app
Open Settings (⌘,) from the FlowX menu bar icon.
| Section | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Music API | User Token | Paste your media-user-token from Apple Music web player (browser DevTools) |
| Apple Music API | Storefront | Select your Apple Music region (auto-detected from system locale) |
| Menu Bar Lyrics | Lyrics Width | Adjust the lyrics display width (120–320 pt) |
| Menu Bar Lyrics | Edge Fade | Gradient fade width on both edges (0–60 pt) |
| Menu Bar Lyrics | Karaoke Effect | Toggle word-by-word highlight on/off |
| General | Language | UI language (follows system by default) |
- Swift / SwiftUI + AppKit
- ScriptingBridge — Apple Music playback control
- Apple Music API — TTML lyrics fetching
- CALayer + CAAnimation — zero-CPU menu bar rendering
- MediaRemote.framework (via osascript) — catalog song ID retrieval
git clone https://github.com/kadxy/FlowX.git
cd FlowX
open FlowX.xcodeprojBuild and run with Xcode 16+ (macOS 14.0 deployment target). Sandbox must be disabled.