The Apple TV is the one Apple device your Mac pretends not to know. Your iPhone has a remote for it in Control Center. Your Watch has one. The Mac, sitting on the desk in the same room, has nothing: no Now Playing, no pause, no volume. So the Siri Remote lives in the sofa cushions and the music keeps playing through the meeting you just joined.
Droppy closes that gap. Pair it with an Apple TV once and whatever the TV plays shows up in the notch like any other music source: the artwork, the title, the progress, and the controls. The Mac's volume keys drive the TV while it plays. And because it is Droppy's regular media widget, the lyrics come along too.
How it talks to the TV
There is no official Apple TV API for the Mac, so Droppy does what the iPhone's remote does. Apple TVs announce themselves on your local network, Droppy lists them, and it pairs with the one you choose over the same Companion link the Remote app uses. Pairing asks the TV for a PIN, the TV shows it, you type it into Droppy, and the two agree on keys. After that the connection is encrypted, and the TV remembers your Mac the way it remembers a paired iPhone.
Two things can get in the way, and Droppy says which one it is. If macOS has not given Droppy Local Network access, the list stays empty and the settings row tells you why. And if the TV refuses new devices, Droppy tells you where to change that on the Apple TV: Settings, AirPlay and HomeKit, where access can be allowed for anyone on the same network.
Settings, Live Activities, Media Controls, then Apple TV Now Playing. Droppy starts looking for Apple TVs on your network and lists the ones it finds with their names.
Choose Pair… beside your Apple TV. Droppy asks the TV for a PIN, the TV shows it, you type it into the sheet Droppy opens, and the pairing is stored for next time.
Start anything on the Apple TV. The notch shows it with artwork, title and progress, and Droppy's controls work on the TV instead of the Mac.
While the notch shows a playing Apple TV, the Mac's volume keys press the TV's own volume buttons, one step per press, like the iPhone remote does.
Each step is the real flow in Droppy's settings and media widget.
What you can do from the notch
See what is playing. Title, artist, artwork and a live progress bar, in the same widget Apple Music and Spotify use. Some apps on the TV, YouTube among them, send a track with no cover at all; Droppy then looks the artwork up so the widget is not left blank.
Control it. Play and pause, next and previous track, and scrubbing: drag the progress bar and the TV jumps there. The TV's transport only moves relative to where it is, so Droppy works out the jump from the current position and sends that.
Turn it up with your keyboard. While the notch shows a playing Apple TV, the volume keys belong to the TV, the same way an iPhone's side buttons do while the Remote is open. Each press is one step on the TV's own volume. Two honest limits: there is no mute, because the remote has no mute button, and a TV whose volume is controlled over infrared by your television rather than by the Apple TV itself cannot be driven this way. In those cases the keys simply go back to the Mac.
Pick the output. Open the output picker on the media widget while the TV plays and it lists the Apple TV, with its volume buttons, instead of your Mac's speakers. That is the Living Room row in the capture above.
Read along. With the Lyrics droplet on, the L badge appears beside the title whenever timed lyrics exist for the song, exactly as it does for music on the Mac. I wrote about how that works in synced lyrics in the notch.
More than one Apple TV
Pair as many as you have. Droppy follows whichever one is actually playing; if two play at once, the one that updated most recently wins. A TV that you paused stays in the notch for ten minutes, so the play button is still there when you come back from the kitchen. After that, or when nothing plays, the notch falls back to whatever your Mac is playing. Unpair in the same settings row forgets a TV completely.
What this is not
It is not a full remote. There is no d-pad, no app switcher and no text input for the TV's search field, because the notch is the wrong place for them and your iPhone already does that well. It is also not AirPlay: nothing streams from the Mac to the TV. Droppy watches and controls what the TV is already playing, which is exactly the part you want while you are working.
Availability, September 27, 2026: pairing and Now Playing are in Droppy 16. The volume keys, the TV in the output picker and the artwork lookup are the newest pieces and arrive with the next Droppy update if your copy does not have them yet.