Now Playing IRL

Now Playing IRL

Display the real-life music playing on your computer as a sleek, customizable HUD widget inside Minecraft.

Now Playing IRL shows whatever track is playing on your desktop as a clean overlay widget inside Minecraft: song title, artist, live album cover, progress bar, and source app. Start a song in Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Music, Deezer, VLC, foobar2000, AIMP, or even a YouTube / SoundCloud browser tab, and the widget wakes up within a second or two. Pause your music and it quietly goes back to sleep.

100% client-side, so it works everywhere: singleplayer, multiplayer servers, and Minecraft Realms.

Highlights & Customization

| | Feature |
| :—: | :— |
| | 193 Recognized Players & Browsers
Covers streaming apps (Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Qobuz, YouTube Music), desktop players (AIMP, foobar2000, VLC, Winamp, MusicBee, MediaMonkey, mpv, PotPlayer), media servers (Plex/Plexamp, Jellyfin, Kodi, Emby), Linux MPRIS players, and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Opera GX, Vivaldi, Arc, Zen, Safari playing YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or Twitch). |
| | Real-Time Album Artwork & Vinyl Spin
Uses native cover art when supplied by your media player (such as MPRIS on Linux), and otherwise looks up high-res artwork automatically from the iTunes and Deezer catalogs. Toggle cover art on or off, or let it spin like a record (including an optional TURBO speed). |
| | 12 Built-In Themes & Full Layout Control
Anchor the widget to any screen corner or top/bottom center, scale from 50% to 250%, tune opacity, enable compact mode, scrolling marquee titles, and playback progress bars, or hide the overlay completely whenever nothing is playing. |
| | Zero-Overhead Idle Polling & Privacy
Automatically backs off its polling interval when no audio is playing so your CPU isn’t woken up unnecessarily. Only the artist and track title are sent to iTunes/Deezer when fetching missing album art; nothing else is collected or transmitted anywhere. |

Controls & Native OS Detection

| Key | Action |
| :—: | :— |
| N | Show or hide the Now Playing widget |
| M | Open the in-game customization screen (also accessible via Mod Menu on 1.21.x) |
| , | Cycle instantly through the 12 built-in visual themes |

• Windows: Matches active audio player processes (e.g. Spotify.exe, aimp.exe) and parses "Artist – Title" window metadata.
• Linux: Queries MPRIS via playerctl, providing track title, artist, album name, native cover URL, and live playback progress (make sure playerctl is installed).
• macOS: Queries supported desktop players directly via AppleScript (Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Vox, etc.).

Requirements & Installation

Drop Fabric API and the matching Now Playing IRL build from the Versions tab into .minecraft/mods/:

| Minecraft Version | Required Java | Fabric Loader | Optional |
| :— | :—: | :—: | :— |
| 1.21.4 – 1.21.11 | Java 21 | 0.16+ | Mod Menu |
| 26.1 – 26.3 | Java 25 | 0.20.1+ | Use M in game |

Links & Support

• Source Code & Issue Tracker: GitHub — MaxLananas/Now-Playing-IRL
• Community & Support: Join our Discord