Menu Spot II For Mac

Even on macOS, where Apple Music is tightly integrated into the ecosystem, Spotify enjoys a large market share. However, unlike Apple's player, Spotify isn't as well integrated into the operating system, which is why developers have been coming up with all sorts of apps to improve users' experience.

Menu Spot II aims to make it easier to both control playback and keep an eye on what you're listening to. It displays song information in the menu bar and provides you with some basic controls, as well as helpful hotkeys. Moreover, it can mute ads in the free version of Spotify.

While Big Sur has added a new icon for controlling playback and viewing track info, you still have to click it to view said info.

With Menu Spot, the name of the song and artist are displayed in the menu bar at all times. Note that the artist's name can be hidden if you prefer. Also, the app removes unnecessary details, such as the year, "remastered", and so on.

If you click the app's icon, you can view the album art and gain access to some additional controls, most of which can also be used via keyboard shortcuts.

This is one feature Spotify Free users will probably enjoy. If you can't afford to pay for a Premium subscription but find the ads to be a bit too annoying, you can have the app mute them automatically when they start playing.

Keep in mind that Spotify ad-muters tend to break quite regularly, as any update to the player might change something that renders the blocker useless. But hey, the app is free, so you're not losing anything by trying.

Menu Spot also provides you with some easy shortcuts for managing playback, switching between regular and shuffle mode, and enabling repeat. However, given that most of these can be controlled with the standard media keys, this feature isn't particularly useful.

Menu Spot offers some interesting features, but nothing out of the ordinary. It's great for viewing song info in the menu bar, as well as for muting Spotify ads, assuming the feature isn't broken by future updates. The keyboard shortcuts would have been a bit more useful if they were customizable.