Now Playing Display

A macOS menu bar app that streams what you're playing (album art, track info, progress) to a USB-connected ESP32 round display.

The device showing "Walking On The Moon" by The Police

macOS 13+ Apple Silicon & Intel USB-C

Hardware

Either board works. The app detects which one is attached and sizes the artwork to match.

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.46: all-in-one, 412×412 round IPS with touch. Nothing to assemble.
Seeed XIAO ESP32-C6 plus the Round Display for XIAO: 240×240, two parts.
USB-C data cable (charge-only cables won't work)

3D-printed cases

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.46: STLs on Printables.
Seeed Round Display for XIAO: STLs on Thingiverse. Snaps around the round-display board and exposes the USB-C port.

Setup

1. Flash the firmware

Pick the image for your board. Each is a single merged image, flashed to offset 0x0.

Download firmware-esp32s3.bin

…for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.46.

Download firmware-esp32c6.bin

…for the Seeed XIAO ESP32-C6 with the Round Display.

Use the right one. The images are board-specific. The S3 build assumes 16MB flash and octal PSRAM, the C6 build 4MB and none, so the wrong image will not boot.

Easiest method: open the ESP web tool in Chrome (uses WebSerial), connect to the device, and flash your image at offset 0x0.

Or via the CLI. Install esptool:

pip install esptool   # or: brew install esptool

Plug the board in over USB-C, then flash:

# Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.46
esptool.py --chip esp32s3 --port /dev/cu.usbmodem* write_flash 0x0 firmware-esp32s3.bin

# Seeed XIAO ESP32-C6 + Round Display
esptool.py --chip esp32c6 --port /dev/cu.usbmodem* write_flash 0x0 firmware-esp32c6.bin

Note: on Linux/Windows the port path is different (/dev/ttyUSB0, COM3, etc). If esptool can't enter download mode automatically, hold the BOOT button while plugging in (or while pressing RESET).

Or build from source via ESP-IDF (idf.py set-target esp32s3 or esp32c6, then idf.py build flash) using the firmware/ tree in the repo.

2. Install the Mac app

Download NowPlayingDisplay.dmg

Open the disk image, drag NowPlayingDisplay.app to /Applications, and launch it. It auto-detects the ESP32 over USB and reconnects on replug, no configuration.

To have it start automatically when you log in, click the menu bar icon and toggle Launch at login. macOS will list it under System Settings → General → Login Items, where it can be disabled at any time.

How it works

┌───────────┐ USB serial ┌────────────────┐ /usr/bin/python3 ┌──────────────────┐ │ ESP32 │ ◄──────────── │ Menu bar app │ ◄──────────────── │ Apple Music │ │ + display │ ─────────────► │ (Mac side) │ ─────────────────► │ / Spotify, etc │ └───────────┘ touch cmds └────────────────┘ media controls └──────────────────┘

The Mac reads now-playing metadata via the bundled MediaRemoteAdapter.framework, loaded in-process by /usr/bin/python3 (a com.apple.*-signed binary, since macOS 15.4+ only authorizes the private MediaRemote framework for callers with an Apple bundle id, so the bundled py2app Python can't reach it directly). Artwork is converted to RGB565 and pushed to the ESP32 over USB; touches on the round display send prev/play-pause/next back to the Mac.

Source code

Firmware and Mac app source live at github.com/gxlabs/now-playing-device, released under the GNU GPL v3.

Credits

This project would not be possible without ungive/mediaremote-adapter, which provides the Apple-signed bridge into the private MediaRemote framework on macOS 15.4+. Huge thanks to @ungive for building and maintaining it.

Gratuity

If this project saved you some time or made your desk a little nicer, you can support further work here:

Scan the QR code, or visit:

buymeacoffee.com/gxlabs