Control music from the Mac menu bar with Now Playing

To control music from your Mac’s menu bar, put Now Playing there: on macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27, open System Settings › Menu Bar and select Now Playing under Menu Bar Controls. Now Playing is the control Apple describes as controlling media playback from any app — pause, skip or scrub — without switching windows. Below: the ways to add it, how to show it only when it’s active, and a progress line you can seek along the top of the screen.

Add Now Playing from Menu Bar settings

Choose Apple menu › System Settings, then click Menu Bar in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down). Under Menu Bar Controls, select Now Playing.

Now Playing also has a pop-up menu beside it:

• Show When Active shows the icon in the menu bar only when the item is active.
• Always Show keeps the icon in the menu bar at all times.

Or pin it from Control Center

On macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27, click Control Center in the menu bar, click Edit Controls, then drag Now Playing to the menu bar. Apple’s guide for macOS 27 also gives a shorter way: Control-click the item and choose Add to Menu Bar. To take the icon off again, hold the Command key and drag it out of the menu bar; How to hide menu bar icons on a Mac covers the other ways.

A progress line along the top edge

Dynamic Menu Bar can add a thin progress line along the top edge of the screen that fills as the track plays. It reads the track and its position from what macOS reports as now playing.

Turn it on in Dynamic Menu Bar’s settings: Music Visualizer › Enable Progress Bar. The line is also a control:

• Hold ⌥ and click or drag the line to seek. Modifier key swaps ⌥ for ⇧, ⌃ or ⌘ here and in the keys below.
• With Keyboard control on, ⌥ ← and ⌥ → skip back or forward 10 seconds, and ⌥ ↑ and ⌥ ↓ go to the next or previous track.
• Auto-hide while paused hides the line after the pause you pick; it comes back when playback resumes.

The same settings page holds the music visualizer, which turns the menu bar strip into bars or waves that react to the sound; Add a music visualizer to your Mac’s menu bar goes through it, and the features page shows the progress line on its own.