Now Playing Taskbar Widget

Now Playing - Taskbar Widget puts what's playing right inside the Windows taskbar, so you can see the track and control it without alt-tabbing or fighting a miniplayer that floats over your windows.

It reads the Windows media session, so it follows whatever is actually playing: Spotify, YouTube in a browser tab, Apple Music, Windows Media Player, and anything else that reports to Windows. You get the album art, title and artist, play/pause, previous/next, and a progress bar you can drag to seek. For Spotify it also shows the liked state and controls Smart Shuffle, repeat and volume, read directly from the app with no login or API keys.

It positions itself next to the clock or weather on any resolution and DPI, adapts to left-aligned taskbars, follows auto-hide, and supports multiple monitors. When the taskbar gets crowded it shrinks to just the album art instead of overlapping your app buttons. It runs on Windows 10 (2004+) and Windows 11.

The app is free and open source (MIT). An optional paid Pro adds themes, an audio visualizer, synced lyrics and global hotkeys, but the whole core stays free.