Mac is an OS for creative types. Thus, most musicians use it for its recording software, like Garage Band. However, it’s still a good OS for listening as well. Most people use iTunes. It’s a serviceable audio player with a ton of organizational features. However, it’s also resource intensive and covers more than just music. Some may want something a little more simple or a little more focused on just the music.
Unfortunately, iTunes is so ubiquitous on MacOS that competitors aren’t very common. Most lists just list all of the ones that they can find, but many of those aren’t great. We can help with that.
Control YT Music from the touch bar with buttons and scrub bar. System notifications when a new track starts playing. YT Music is completely open source and is available on Github.
Here are the best music player apps for Mac! Amarra is a somewhat popular and powerful music app for Mac. It's mostly for audiophile types with hi-fi music files. It boasts support for things like FLAC, DSD, and MQA. Additionally, it integrates directly with Tidal for higher quality music streaming. The UI is good.
It won't surprise you at all, really. You do get presets as well for additional tinkering if you need it. It's a bit resource intensive. However, this is a good app for serious music fans.
There is a free trial available. The pro version goes for $99. That kind of price tag makes it apparent that this is for a certain kind of music fan.
Audirvana is a powerful music player with a lot of promises. It features a simple, but effective user interface along with optimizations for excessively large library. That also includes newer codecs like MQA and integration with hi-fi streaming services like Tidal. It worked fine during our testing.
We didn't run into any bugs. It's probably a little too much for someone isn't an audiophile, though. All those features all cost you. The cost is $74 for the pro version. There is a free trial, though, so you can try it first. VOX is a very flashy and serious music player for Mac.
It supports a variety of high resolution file types, including FLAC, ALAC, DSD, PCM, WAV, and most of the basics like MP3, AAC, and others. The UI is sleek and works well for organizing your library. Many of the features are free.
There is a subscription service available with extra features. They include unlimited cloud storage space for your music collection and some extra features. This is another excellent music player.
However, we only recommend this one for those who also want cloud features. The subscription works cross-platform between the Mac and iOS versions.
Have you ever spent hours on AppStore trying to find a decent substitution for Apple's native player? Again, you have. Moreover, you tried some of them, but you till ended up installing and uninstalling them till you got completely frustrated. You must've thought you could have some player to support different music formats, but usually, you understand it's not convenient at all. It might take ages to find the best music app for iPhone that will all your demands. What makes it harder is that nowadays there are so many of them that you most probably just get puzzled.
Some apps claim they are 'free' but have all the features for in-app purchases. Others are infested with annoying ads and can't play particular audio formats (usually Hi-Res), but even if they do, High-Quality music takes up too much space. Nowadays, many people choose conversion but you can read why. Unless you are craving for some particular features that can be found in apps for musicians or producers there really should be no reason for you to pay for the app. Some may say that you have to pay to use someone's creation but if you don't want to buy you just don’t – there are dozens of music apps which are and free but provide excellent playback. Also, you buy music on iTunes or other services alike; do you really want to waste more money on a music app that you are not sure about?
Formats support.