I’m writing about the Touch Bar “Now Playing” widget, which unfortunately no longer works on macOS Sequoia. I understand that Apple temporarily blocked third-party access to system media playback data in an earlier Sequoia release. However, based on recent versions, this restriction seems to have been lifted.
For example, apps like Alcove are now able to reliably read album artwork, track titles, and album/artist information from any media source shown in Control Center, including third-party apps.
The Now Playing widget in BetterTouchTool used to work in a similar way, but it is currently completely non-functional and shows no media information at all. If possible, I sincerely hope you could consider the following improvements or fixes:
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Restore real-time media detection in the Now Playing widget, including album artwork, track title, and album/artist information.
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Add an option to limit the widget to specific apps only, such as Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube Music, to avoid media from Safari appearing in the widget.
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The option “Hide widget when no media is playing” currently exists as a checkbox, but it no longer works. If this could be fixed, it would be ideal if it also respected the same “specific apps only” filtering mentioned above.
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From my observation, the concept of a “default media app” no longer seems very meaningful under the current macOS behavior.
Other apps appear to read media information directly from what macOS presents in Control Center, and in this context, relying on a default app setting may actually introduce unnecessary mismatches or display errors.
Thank you very much for BetterTouchTool — I’m a heavy user, and I specifically chose a Touch Bar MacBook because of this app. If you have the time to look into this, it would truly make this the best possible start to my 2026.
