YouTube Music has never had a real Mac app. Google ships a web app, and the Mac's media keys and Now Playing treat it like any other browser tab, which is to say unreliably. Spotify and Apple Music have had a proper home in Droppy's notch for a long time. YouTube Music did not, until a community developer built a bridge, and then built the droplet that uses it.
Why a browser tab was never enough
A media tab in a browser reports what it is playing through the browser, and the browser reports it to macOS on its own schedule. Artwork arrives late or not at all. The queue is invisible to anything outside the tab. Liking a track means finding the tab. Droppy's media HUD can read a browser's Now Playing session, and it does, but it can only show what the browser hands over.
Kaset is a native wrapper for YouTube Music that exposes the things the tab keeps to itself: the queue, the shuffle and repeat state, the like state of the current track. The droplet talks to that, and the notch gets the same depth Apple Music has, described in controlling Apple Music from the top of your Mac.
What the droplet shows
Artwork, title and transport. The compact player in the notch, the same one Spotify and Apple Music use, with play, skip and back. Swipe a track to skip, and the artwork stretches with your fingers before it lets go.
The queue, and the buttons a tab hides. Browse what is coming up and tap a track to jump to it. Toggle shuffle and repeat. Like or dislike the current song, and see the state reflected in YouTube Music straight away.
Now Playing on the phone. With Droppy for iPhone paired, the Now Playing droplet shows the same artwork, progress and transport for whatever the Mac plays, YouTube Music through Kaset included.
The droplet needs the Kaset app running. Without it, the card explains what to install rather than sitting empty.
Discord Rich Presence, with a switch
Droppy 15.0 beta 6 added Discord Rich Presence for Kaset, Apple Music and Spotify, so the track you are playing can show on your Discord profile with its artwork. It is off until you turn it on, and each droplet has its own privacy switch, so you can broadcast YouTube Music and keep Apple Music private, or the reverse. A connection row in Settings tells you whether Droppy is linked to your Discord profile at all, which is the thing to check when a friend says they cannot see your track.
| YouTube Music in a browser tab | Kaset droplet | |
|---|---|---|
| Artwork in the notch | Sometimes, late | Yes |
| Queue | Only in the tab | Browsable on the shelf |
| Shuffle and repeat | Only in the tab | Toggle from the shelf |
| Like and dislike | Only in the tab | From the shelf |
| Discord Rich Presence | No | Optional, per droplet switch |
| iPhone remote | No | Through Now Playing |
A community droplet, and what that means
Kaset is one of a growing set of droplets in the Store that I did not write. Anurag Deshpande built the Kaset app, then built the droplet on Droppy's droplet SDK and published it through the Store's community path, the same way the Meetings droplet and a handful of others arrived. It installs from the same Store page as a built-in droplet, and it is switched off by default like everything else. The Store's Made by filter shows which droplets come from the community and which from me.
This matters beyond YouTube Music. Every service Droppy does not support natively is a droplet someone could write, and the Store is set up so that when they do, it reaches everyone the next day. If you have built something for the notch, the Droplet Store page is where to start.
Setting it up
There is one prerequisite, and the droplet is honest about it. Kaset is the app that talks to YouTube Music; the droplet talks to Kaset. Without the app installed the card in Droppy tells you what to install and where, instead of showing an empty player and leaving you to guess.
Install Kaset for YouTube Music on the Mac and sign in there. In Droppy, open the Droplet Store, find Kaset, and switch it on. Play something. The notch picks it up like any other player. If you also use Spotify or Apple Music, Droppy 15.2 lets you set a preferred music app, so when two players are open the notch follows the one you chose rather than whichever spoke last.