Apple Music CLI Player

Tested on macOS 12 & 13 (likely to work on macOS 10.15, 11). Can be called with the system default zsh. I recommend aliasing am.sh to alias am=zsh path/to/am.sh, or moving its three individual functions into your .zshrc.

Goal: Provide a simple command-line interface to listing out, playing songs from, and utilizing controls for Music.app. I decided against using a library such as ncurses to build a full TUI application, as I think it is preferable to interface via quick commands and a light "widget".

Now Playing (np)

Enjoy a simple "Now Playing" widget from your terminal. Uses standard Unix tooling/piping, AppleScript for interfacing with Apple Music, and Viu for displaying the album art images. It also includes keyboard shortcut bindings for basic playback controls. Apart from toggling shuffle, toggling repeat, and changing the Music.app-specific volume, the other controls are already accessible from the special Fn key functions/touch bar.

Dependencies: Viu (unless you always use text mode)

Configuration:

• Place album-art.applescript at ~/Library/Scripts/album-art.applescript, or configure a valid path in the np() func of am.sh for wherever you decide to keep it
• (Optional) In the np() func of am.sh, adjust the -h dimension of the album art (look for the two calls to viu) to ensure a square appearance with your terminal emulator's line spacing

Usage (aliased): am np

Usage (not aliased): zsh am.sh np

np                    Open the "Now Playing" TUI widget.
                      (Music.app track must be actively
		      playing or paused)
np -t		      Open in text mode (disables album art)

np keybindings:

p                     Play / Pause
f                     Forward one track
b                     Backward one track
>                     Begin fast forwarding current track
<                     Begin rewinding current track
R                     Resume normal playback
+                     Increase Music.app volume 5%
-                     Decrease Music.app volume 5%
s                     Toggle shuffle
r                     Toggle song repeat
q                     Quit np
Q                     Quit np and Music.app
?                     Show / hide keybindings

Notes:

• Attempting to play the previous track with an empty queue will kill the script
• album-art.applescript is a modified version of this script, written by AppleScript wizard Doug Adams♡

List

List out all song groupings of a specific type or all songs of a specific song grouping in your library. The song grouping type is dictated by the flag you pass. By calling list without specifying a title after the flag, you will see a printout of all the titles of that flag's collection type.

Usage (aliased): am list [-grouping] [name]

Usage (not aliased): zsh am.sh list [-grouping] [name]

list -s               List all songs in your library.
list -r               List all records.
list -r PATTERN       List all songs in the record PATTERN.
list -a               List all artists.
list -a PATTERN       List all songs by the artist PATTERN.
list -p               List all playlists.
list -p PATTERN       List all songs in the playlist PATTERN.
list -g               List all genres.
list -g PATTERN       List all songs in the genre PATTERN.

Example: am list -r In Rainbows (not case-sensitive)

Notes:

• Music.app does not need to be open or closed; it should launch itself silently when list is called
• Only works on tracks saved to your Library (but they do not need to be downloaded)
• Remember to escape any special characters or punctuation if passing a title (or wrap it in double quotes)

Play

Begin playback of different song groupings or a specific song grouping in your library. The song grouping type is dictated by the flag you pass. By calling play without specifying a title after the flag, you are prompted to select a title of that flag's collection type on the fly via fzf. Unfortunately there is no simple way to play, for example, a specific album or songs from a specific artist with AppleScript, but I was able to modify code shared by a "jccc" here, as a workaround which involves automatically creating a single temporary playlist in your library that is utilized by play().

Dependencies: fzf (unless you always play groupings by name)

Usage (aliased): am play [-grouping] [name]

Usage (not aliased): zsh am.sh play [-grouping] [name]

play -s               Fzf for a song and begin playback.
play -s PATTERN       Play the song PATTERN.
play -r               Fzf for a record and begin playback.
play -r PATTERN       Play from the record PATTERN.
play -a               Fzf for an artist and begin playback.
play -a PATTERN       Play from the artist PATTERN.
play -p               Fzf for a playlist and begin playback.
play -p PATTERN       Play from the playlist PATTERN.
play -g               Fzf for a genre and begin playback.
play -g PATTERN       Play from the genre PATTERN.
play -l               Play from your entire library.

Example: am play -a Radiohead (not case-sensitive)

Notes:

• Music.app does not need to be open or closed; it should launch itself silently when play is called
• Only works on tracks saved to your Library (but they do not need to be downloaded)
• Remember to escape any special characters or punctuation if passing a title (or wrap it in double quotes)
• calling -p Library will result in quite a delay, unlike -l, because it requires copying all the songs in your library into the temporary playlist

Optional AirPlay Snippet (not in src)

Toggle the Music.app AirPlay audio output for a specific device.

Configuration:

• Adjust the device strings to a device hostname of your choosing
• Ideally adapt the argument name to match

if [ $1 = "atv" ]
   then
    isActive=$(osascript -e 'tell application "Music" to get selected of AirPlay device "Apple TV"')
    if [ $isActive = 'false' ]
    then
      osascript -e 'tell application "Music" to set selected of AirPlay device "Apple TV" to true'
    else
      osascript -e 'tell application "Music" to set selected of AirPlay device "Apple TV" to false'
  fi
fi

Example: zsh ap.sh atv

Known Problems

• Error: execution error: Music got an error: Application isn’t running. (-600)
  • Solution: Reboot. It seems to occur occasionally after having had Music.app open for too long while your Mac has slept. Other potential solutions can be found here
• Blinking for each output refresh when running np()
  • Consider using a lighter-weight terminal emulator, or even Terminal.app, where this doesn't seem to occur. I am not sure how to mitigate this for heavier terminal emulators such as iTerm2

Ideas For Improvement

• am.sh could be expanded with a function to call new AppleScript snippets to create, delete, or refine playlists; it would also be nice to be able to queue (as apposed to immediately play) a song or a group of songs, which is possible (though there is no native corresponding AppleScript function to accomplish this at present)
• This project could be forked and used in the backend to create a full client alternative to Music.app, though it would not be possible to browse for and save tracks outside of the user's library
• See the Script Editor.app's dictionary API (Music.sdef) for an exhaustive reference of all the native Music.app variables and functions that can be interfaced via AppleScript