[BUG] Now Playing HUD shows No Audio Playing even with audio playing from Spotify or Firefox

[nikhiltur]

I have music playing from Spotify, however the Now Playing HUD says No Audio Playing/doesn't pop up when i hover over the notch. I have a 2022 M2 Macbook Air 13". It was working properly a week or so ago, I do not remember updating anything but it stopped working. I tried deleting and reinstalling both Mediamate and Spotify but it did not fix the issue. I gave Mediamate access to pretty much everything in the Privacy tab in System Preferences but that did not make a difference either. I have attached a screenshot of it.

• OS: [Sequoia 15.4 Beta (24E5222f)]
• Device [2022 M2 Macbook Air]
• Version [3.6.2 build 288]

[Larsen2k4]

This is caused by changes (or a bug) introduced in the current 15.4 betas - I'm also experiencing the same bug with other tools that show media information like DockMate - no output anymore. Hopefully this will get fixed by Apple during the beta period.

[nikhiltur]

I see, if I want to report the bug to Apple is there anything specific I need to mention? I am not super familiar with the development side of things so I don't know what exactly I would have to report.

[Wouter01]

Hi,
@Larsen2k4 is correct, this is caused by the latest betas of macOS. I did look into this and it looks like macOS doesn't allow apps to read the current playing media anymore, as this could be done without any permission checks. Maybe they'll roll back that change, but I'm personally not too optimistic as it seems intentional.

I have temporarily paused the sales of MediaMate since yesterday until I can assure that it'll keep working properly on macOS 15.4

[nikhiltur]

Is there any workaround you know of yet? Or is this something that we will just have to wait on Apple for?

Thanks

[Wouter01]

I'm guessing disabling SIP might work, but I wouldn't do that personally.

[Larsen2k4]

Just a wild guess: There's been an entry for accessing media information under the Privacy & Security option in System Preferences called "Media + Apple Music" for quite some time ... maybe devs need to reroute their code by somehow asking permission here. (Although I still find these changes pretty annoying - especially on such a minor version bump like 15.4 - and no information within Apples release notes ... so there may be hope it'll work again).

Also: This doesn't seem to affect all tools - Using the Music search tool in Alfred I'm still getting infos about the current playing tracks - including play/pause etc. So it might be a temporary defect after all.

[Larsen2k4]

Still defunct in Beta 3 - I've tried another app called Sleeve for showing media information - and it also can't show any Music.app information anymore.

[Wouter01]

Thanks for rechecking! I will dig a bit deeper into this this evening, but seems like this won't change anymore

[Larsen2k4]

Found something: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1j5vmbj/macos_beta_154_issues_with_track_changes_in_apple/?rdt=35490