MusicLy

MusicLy is a local-first macOS menu bar app that shows the current lyric line of whatever Apple Music is playing, in real time — whether the Music window is visible, hidden, or minimized.

How it works

The display is driven by synced LRC lyrics keyed to the track, not by reading the screen:

1. Playback position is read locally via Apple Events (player position). This works regardless of the Music window's state, so lyrics keep flowing when the window is minimized or in the background.
2. Synced lyrics (LRC) are fetched once per track from LRCLIB — free, no API key, read-only — then cached on disk. You can also drop your own .lrc files in ~/Library/Application Support/MusicLy/Lyrics/ (named Artist - Title.lrc), which always take priority.
3. Position interpolation advances the line smoothly at 10 fps between the ~2 Hz Apple Events samples, so the lyric never stalls even if a poll is slow.

Features

• Real-time synced lyric display in the menu bar, working when minimized
• Current line + translation pairing + previous/next context in the popover
• Local on-disk lyric cache and user-supplied .lrc override
• Per-track sync offset adjustment (right-click menu)
• Local packaging script that keeps all build outputs inside this project directory

Requirements

• macOS 13+
• Apple Music app installed
• Apple Events permission for playback metadata (prompted on first launch)

Install (from a release)

1. Download MusicLy-<version>.dmg from the Releases page and open it.
2. Drag MusicLy into Applications.
3. Because the app is not signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, macOS Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Clear the quarantine flag once (most reliable on macOS 14/15):

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MusicLy.app

   Alternatively: try to open it, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
4. Allow Apple Events access when prompted, then open Apple Music and play a song. MusicLy lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon); left-click it for the lyrics panel, right-click for options.

Build from source

# Build the app bundle (ad-hoc signed)
./scripts/build_local.sh        # → dist/MusicLy.app, dist/MusicLy.zip

# Drag-to-install disk image
./scripts/build_dmg.sh          # → dist/MusicLy-<version>.dmg

Notes

Synced lyrics are fetched from the free LRCLIB service (HTTPS GET, no key, no account, no personal data beyond the track's name/artist/album/duration) and then cached locally, so each track only hits the network once. Playback position is read entirely locally. To stay fully offline, pre-populate ~/Library/Application Support/MusicLy/Lyrics/ with your own .lrc files.