AudioPaper 0.1.7

AudioPaper 0.1.7: ask Siri.

Update: AudioPaper offers it on its own if automatic checks are on (Settings → About), or choose Check for Updates… in its menu. New here? Download AudioPaper-0.1.7.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 26, and the Music app or Spotify.

What changed

• "What's on my desktop in AudioPaper?" Siri answers with the credit: who made the image, its licence, where it came from, and the song it's for. Siri also knows "Open the AudioPaper image source", "Next image in AudioPaper", "Pause AudioPaper" and "Resume AudioPaper".
• The same five actions are in the Shortcuts app and Spotlight, ready for your own shortcuts.
• AppleScript: read what's showing (current song, image count, current image, current credit) and choose (show image 3, next image, set paused to true). macOS asks you before another app or script may use these, and none of them controls your music.
• Switching a fan-art source off takes its images out of the rotation straight away, including ones found earlier. They're kept, and come back if you switch the source on again.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/

SHA-256: a57ce916b72ff3dc5aaee583664c367481e6a4cbac07082396b97852ef1272d1 (DMG)

AudioPaper 0.1.6

AudioPaper 0.1.6: a compact Mini Player.

Update: AudioPaper offers it on its own if automatic checks are on (Settings → About), or choose Check for Updates… in its menu. New here? Download AudioPaper-0.1.6.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 26, and the Music app or Spotify.

What changed

• The Mini Player is smaller. Your desktop already shows the wallpaper, so the large copy of it is now optional: Show Artwork in the … menu, the window's right-click menu, or Window → Show Artwork in Mini Player brings it back.
• It reads top to bottom: the song, with the playing app's icon and a note or a microphone; the strip of images, with the one on your desktop outlined; that image's credit; the controls.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/

SHA-256: 8e1a023c0f3dbfc4bbcc5cc55b42bb74bb45c808f2a407e9b108219cf73067fe (DMG)

AudioPaper 0.1.5

AudioPaper 0.1.5: update settings.

Update: choose Check for Updates… in AudioPaper's menu, or download AudioPaper-0.1.5.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 26, and the Music app or Spotify.

What changed

• Settings → About now has Check for updates automatically (about once a day) and Download and install updates automatically (off unless you turn it on; the update installs when AudioPaper quits), with when it last checked and a Check Now button. Before, the only way to choose was the one question AudioPaper asks on its second launch.

0.1.4, the release before this, added Spotify (free accounts work), podcast handling and the player icon. See its release notes.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/

SHA-256: 11ae75a32c123eef4180b2711f6a75e411fa02d4d9c3558f074848de86e71bf0 (DMG)

AudioPaper 0.1.4

AudioPaper 0.1.4: Spotify.

Update: if you have 0.1.3, choose Check for Updates… in AudioPaper's menu (or wait for the automatic check). Otherwise download AudioPaper-0.1.4.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 26, and the Music app or Spotify.

What changed

• Spotify works now, alongside Apple Music, and a free account is enough. AudioPaper follows whichever player changed most recently; either can be switched off in Settings → Sources.
• Podcasts: Settings → General → During podcasts chooses My wallpaper (the default: your own wallpaper until music returns) or Podcast cover art (the episode's cover, from Spotify). Podcasts never get fan art, and the Mini Player and widgets show the episode's cover either way.
• Spotify's ads are ignored. Spotify doesn't announce them, so the last song's art simply stays up until the next song.
• The Mini Player and the menu show which app is playing, with its own icon, and a note or a microphone for music or a podcast.
• Songs that neither Apple's catalog nor MusicBrainz knows can use Spotify's own cover.
• The first time, macOS may ask to let AudioPaper control Spotify. That lets it read what's already playing at launch, and podcast covers. It never controls playback.

Privacy: one new host, Spotify's image server (i.scdn.co), used only to download a cover Spotify itself shows. Podcasts are never sent to any other service. Details in PRIVACY and NETWORK.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/

SHA-256: e27f60ba5d8d5154068ebb33fb3e3ac7ed404e7376010f247b6e7c9df4a4442e (DMG)

AudioPaper 0.1.3

AudioPaper 0.1.3: automatic updates.

Install once more by hand: download AudioPaper-0.1.3.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications (replace the old copy). From here on, AudioPaper updates itself: on its second launch it asks whether to check automatically, and Check for Updates… in its menu checks any time. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple; every update is also verified with an EdDSA signature before it's installed.

What's new

• Automatic updates with Sparkle, the standard updater for Mac apps outside the App Store. It asks before checking automatically, sends no system profile, and reads a small feed on this project's website about once a day if you allow it. Details: Network and Privacy.
• A plain note about the images: they're found on the internet automatically, come from other people and services, and may be mislabelled, show the wrong person, or be unexpected. It's in Settings → Sources and About; Next Image skips one.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/

SHA-256:

• AudioPaper-0.1.3.dmg: 4a49d8e566dde1c0b61fc0033e03e5001fdd98c05dbc3ea26dd461fa69849b2e
• AudioPaper-0.1.3.zip (for the updater): aab909cc3331143b30a200a3a02521aca2ad557e1b7a8d9d1c636692ae5c1ddf

AudioPaper 0.1.2

AudioPaper 0.1.2: song changes feel instant.

Install or update: download AudioPaper-0.1.2.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications (replace the old copy). Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 26 and the Music app.

What changed

• The app keeps up with the music. When the song changes, the menu, Mini Player and widgets switch to the new cover at once; the wallpaper follows as soon as it's drawn, a fraction of a second later plus the cross-fade. Before, the app waited for the wallpaper, so it trailed the music by a few seconds.
• Covers you've played before go up immediately, without the short pause AudioPaper uses to avoid looking up every song while you skip. For a new album, the previous song's art clears straight away instead of lingering.
• The cover comes first, every time. It holds the place for about 10 seconds while the artist's images load, then the fan art takes over. Before, for artists with saved images, the cover was often skipped entirely.
• Fixed: a song with no cover could leave the previous song's cover on the desktop if it was still being drawn.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/

SHA-256: e1c9d23aeb9ebade4ce38236aa8564aa42ee9e605e4031f6086bd544e43e6a20

AudioPaper 0.1.1

AudioPaper 0.1.1: more photos, fewer gaps, and an accessibility pass.

Install or update: download AudioPaper-0.1.1.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications (replace the old copy). Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 26 and the Music app.

More artist photos

• Wikimedia Commons photos filed a level or two down are now found: many artists' pictures live in categories like "Aespa by year" → "Aespa in 2025". aespa and Poppy, among others, now get freely licensed concert photos.
• Songs you've played before are searched once more so they can pick these up, and each artist's image pool rebuilds as you listen.

Steadier lookups

• MusicBrainz's brief "busy" replies are now waited out and retried once, instead of pausing art lookups for a minute. That had sometimes left a song with only its album cover.

Accessibility (audited against WCAG2ICT and Apple's accessibility guidelines)

• VoiceOver now describes what's on your desktop ("Photo by …, from Wikimedia Commons"), says "Photo" for photos rather than "Fan art", and names the link to each image's source page.
• Settings fields say which service they belong to ("fanart.tv personal API key"), and the rotation slider reads its value ("45 seconds").
• Widget artwork is described for VoiceOver.
• With Reduce Motion on, the Mini Player's image strip jumps instead of scrolling.
• The Mini Player's "…" menu opens under its button, including when you press it from the keyboard.
• Photos now show a camera icon next to their credit.

Fixes

• Settings… in the menu bar menu now opens Settings in front of other apps, not behind them.

Help and reference: https://msitarzewski.github.io/AudioPaper/: including a new Credits page for every image on the site, and an Accessibility section.

Privacy is unchanged: no account, no telemetry. The one new kind of request is a Commons category listing, at most six per artist, as listed in Network.

SHA-256: adc1458ee4a30dead22720ca6b1978bd76ecdc9a2c8d0ffb9582e1b1292512ac

AudioPaper 0.1.0

The first release of AudioPaper: your desktop, set to the music you're playing.

When the song changes, the wallpaper changes to its album cover. While it plays, fan art and photos of the artist fade in and out, each credited with a link to where it came from.

Install: download AudioPaper-0.1.0.dmg, open it, and drag AudioPaper to Applications. It's signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. It lives in the menu bar; the Help page covers the rest.

Needs: macOS 26 or later, and the Music app.

What's in it

• Album covers from Apple's catalog, MusicBrainz and Cover Art Archive, or Music itself
• Fan art and artist photos from fanart.tv, TheAudioDB and Wikimedia Commons, with no key of your own needed; optionally Brave Search and DeviantArt with your own keys
• On-device filtering with Apple's Vision framework: no text-heavy images, screenshots, ads or duplicates
• A per-artist pool of up to 24 images, so repeat plays look different without going back online
• Menu bar menu, a Liquid Glass Mini Player, and Now Playing and Artwork widgets

Privacy: no account, no telemetry, no AudioPaper server. The names of the artist, album and song you play are sent to the lookup services to find art; nothing else leaves your Mac. Every request is listed in Network, and who learns what is in Privacy.

Undo: Restore Original Wallpaper puts your own wallpaper back; deleting the app removes it. The Help page lists the two folders it leaves behind.

SHA-256: 8c20a44742fdf86dd19066dafe06517408a9c12f3b2679e6fcedcbf3ceab1d9d