Heavy users of Google Play Music on desktop machines will all be familiar with some of the frustrations associated with a Web based player and Google Music Desktop Player hits the marks that most users are going to look for in a desktop player option.
Developed by Melbourne based developer Samuel Attard, the player is a 100% Open Source desktop music player with Material Design incorporated into a desktop application for users on Mac OSX, Windows and Linux computers.
We’ve taken a look at a few Google Play Music clients in the past and found them have generally pretty good, unfortunately previous options have aged quickly and have lacked updates which hurt functionality. It was this lack of updates that again sent me in search of a desktop option for Play Music and so far I’m really happy with the looks, feel and behaviour of it.
Play Music Desktop Player offers a heap of features that many users will warm to, including:
- Media Keys support (Play, Pause, Stop, Previous, Next)
- Last.FM Scrobbling and Now Playing support!
- Desktop notifications on track change
- Simplistic mini player
- Customizable dark theme
- Taskbar media controls (media controls embedded into the taskbar) Windows only
- HTML5 audio support – No more Adobe Flash Player
- Built-in audio equalizer – Make it sound how you like it
- Background music playing, minimize to the task bar
- Customizable hotkeys. No worries if you don’t have media keys – Choose your own shortcuts!
- Choose your audio output device from within the player
- Interface for external applications such as Rainmeter
- And a whole lot more coming soon!!
There will be an Android and iOS app coming soon with which you can control your music on your desktop, you could even run it on a Raspberry Pi. As an open source initiative there’s a lot more to come, so this is definitely one to keep an eye on – and if you’re a developer you can check out the code on Github yourself.
If you’re looking around for something to alleviate the pain of accidentally shutting your Play Music Tab in Chrome (who hasn’t done that?) on your desktop machine, this is worth the time to take a look at.
Have you got an alternative Play Music desktop player you use?
Don’t forget if you like it to drop the Dev a few bucks guys!
This seems really neat, will check it out
That does look pretty sweet! I’ll give it a go tonight.
This piece of software is awesome. Absolutely love it. Works across my linux and windows machines. Seamless, looks great, especially love the dark theme.
I’m generally always listening to music and having a chrome tab open all the time can lead to some memory issues.
Oooo keen to give this a shot.
Google should really release an app for computer if they are serious about this service. And ability to save offline!