MacIsland

MacIsland brings the Dynamic Island experience to macOS, inspired by iOS. It’s a sleek, interactive floating UI that integrates system essentials like AirDrop, temporary file storage, and battery insights, with upcoming support for notifications and music control.

⚠️ Note: MacIsland is currently in pre-release (experimental). Expect frequent updates and missing features.

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✨ Features

• Drag & Drop for AirDrop – Easily drag and drop files to share via AirDrop.
• DropTray (Temporary Storage) – Drop files into a tray that stores them for 1 day (default), with customizable duration.
• Battery Status – Instantly check your Mac’s battery percentage in the island.
• Now Playing Display – Track title, artist, album, artwork, and remaining time, with an auto-popup chip when the track changes. See limitations below.
• Music Controls – Play, pause, skip, and scrub. (Coming Soon)

Now Playing limitation. macOS does not expose a public, system-wide "what's playing now" API to native AppKit apps — MPMusicPlayerController and MusicKit.SystemMusicPlayer are both @available(macos, unavailable), and Apple's private MediaRemote.framework now returns "Operation not permitted" on macOS 15+. As a workaround MacIsland listens to the public DistributedNotificationCenter broadcasts from Music.app (com.apple.iTunes.playerInfo) and Spotify (com.spotify.client.PlaybackStateChanged). This means browser audio (YouTube, web players), podcast apps, and any other source that doesn't post to DNC will not be detected — we're tracking the issue and will switch back to a system-wide source the moment one is available. PRs with cleaner workarounds welcome.

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🎥 Preview

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🚀 Installation

The easiest way to try MacIsland is by downloading the latest pre-built release:

👉 Download MacIsland v1.1.0 — notarized by Apple, runs on Apple Silicon + Intel.

Or browse all releases at the Releases page.

1. Unzip the downloaded file.
2. Drag MacIsland.app into your Applications folder.
3. Open it, and the island will appear at the top of your desktop.

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🛠️ Building from Source

If you prefer to build manually:

git clone https://github.com/BadRat-in/MacIsland.git
cd MacIsland
open MacIsland.xcodeproj

• Select the Mac target in Xcode and hit Run.

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📌 Usage

• Expand / Collapse → Click the island to toggle.
• AirDrop → Drag files into the island to quickly share.
• DropTray → Temporarily store files by dragging them onto the tray.
• Battery Status → Battery icon + percentage appears when charging/discharging.
• Now Playing → When a track is playing in Music.app or Spotify, the island briefly pops up with artwork + remaining time, and the expanded view defaults to the music panel. Tap the home icon in the music panel to access AirDrop / DropTray / Battery.
• (Future) Music controls (play/pause/skip/scrub).

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✅ Requirements

• macOS: 11.0 (Big Sur) or later
• Xcode: 14.0 or later (for building from source)
• Swift: 5.0 or later

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🤝 Contribute

Want to improve MacIsland?

1. Fork this repo
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature-branch)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m "Add some feature")
4. Push (git push origin feature-branch)
5. Open a Pull Request 🎉

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📄 License

Licensed under the MPL-2.0 License. See LICENSE for details.

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📬 Contact

Created by Ravindra Singh. Questions / suggestions → ravindra@rkinnovate.com