# Pokoe for Mac

> Pokoe is a free macOS menu bar app that points your keyboard's media keys (play, pause, next, previous) at the music player you actually use, instead of whatever app macOS decides to hand them to. Built by Stijn Hanegraaf, a product designer in Amsterdam.

## What it does

- Routes the play, pause, next, and previous media keys to the player you choose. Works from inside any app, fullscreen included.
- Or routes them to whatever is actually playing. Pinning a player sends the keys there always; with nothing pinned Pokoe reads the system now playing session on each press and reaches the app that is playing, including a browser tab. Clicking a pinned player again unpins it.
- If your chosen player is not running, pressing play launches it.
- Shows the current track with artwork in a menu bar panel; switching players is one click, and a "Playing" marker shows which row is playing right now.
- Zero setup: Pokoe scans your installed apps locally and picks a sensible default the moment you grant access.

## Supported players

Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, SoundCloud, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Qobuz, Plexamp, Pocket Casts, VLC, DaftCloud, Swinsian, Vox, Doppler.

SoundCloud and YouTube also work in a browser tab, with no desktop app and no extension. Pokoe points the media keys at whichever browser is playing, so play, pause and skip all work with no setup and no permission prompt, in any browser (Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Dia and others). YouTube Music on the web is covered by the YouTube support. Identifying a tab as SoundCloud or YouTube specifically is optional and asks for permission once. Each site gets its own row, and Pokoe tells them apart even when both tabs are open in the same browser. A YouTube tab sitting on the homepage does not count as a player. Skipping depends on the page having something queued: it works in a playlist or a mix, not on a single video. With no tab open, pressing play opens the site in your default browser, the same way it launches a desktop player that is not running; the skip keys do nothing until there is a tab.

## Requirements and permissions

- macOS 14.0 or later.
- Accessibility permission (required): this is what lets Pokoe catch media keys before macOS does. It cannot read the screen or files with it.
- Automation permission (per player, when asked): some players take commands through AppleScript, so macOS asks once per player. Allowing it for a browser lets Pokoe name a SoundCloud or YouTube tab and find it while paused; the tab filtering runs inside the browser, so the addresses of other tabs are never handed to Pokoe. Media keys already reach a playing browser without this permission.

## Price and privacy

- Free forever. No account, no subscription, no purchases.
- No analytics, no telemetry, no tracking. Now-playing data never leaves the Mac.
- The only network requests: cover art lookup when a player does not provide artwork, and Sparkle update checks against a static file on this site.
- Full policy: https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/privacy/

## Performance

Native Swift, about 23 MB of memory, 0.0% CPU when idle. Nothing polls in the background between key presses (verified in a 52 hour profiling soak test).

## Download

- Download (DMG, notarized and Developer ID signed): https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/Pokoe.dmg
- Updates ship through Sparkle: https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/appcast.xml
- Changelog, every release: https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/changelog/
- Privacy policy: https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/privacy/
- Landing page: https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/

## Author

- Stijn Hanegraaf: https://stijnhanegraaf.com/ (this site's /llms.txt has the full profile)

This page (https://stijnhanegraaf.com/pokoe/) returns this file as Markdown when requested with `Accept: text/markdown`.

Last updated: September 2026