How to create a Google Play Music desktop app for Mac in 5 mins!

Although many Apple Mac owners get their music from iTunes, some people prefer Google Play Music. However, there isn’t a desktop player app. Here is how to create one in 5 minutes. Easy!

Why would you want to use Google Play Music? One reason is that it is simply a great music service. It is not tied to a particular operating system or device and it works on pretty much anywhere and on anything.

The best feature is that it enables you to upload 50,000 songs and store them online. These can then be streamed to any computer, phone or tablet. It is like having your own private music streaming service. And it's free!

I have used this feature to upload many of my old music CDs. I don’t even own a CD player these days, so being able to stream them online is great. I can listen to them anytime, anywhere, on my phones (Samsung Galaxy and iPhone), and tablet (iPad and Google Nexus), or computer (Mac and PC).

To play music on the computer, you must open a browser and go to Google Play, click the Music link on the left, and then click the My Music link. It is tedious and the browser title bar, adress bar, toolbar and so on, are annoying.

Unfortunatley, there is no desktop Google Play Music app. However, you can create one in 5 minutes, with no programming knowledge required.

Chrome without the clutter

This uses a little known and underused feature of Chrome that enables it to run without a title bar, tabs, menus, buttons and so on. It runs like a desktop app. In a previous article I showed how to run Google Keep in a window on the desktop like a Mac app.

The technique is the same for Google Play Music.

1 Open Automator

Open Automator in the Applications folder on your Mac and click the New Document button when it prompts you to select a file.

Automator then asks you what type of document you want to create. Click Application.

2 Add a shell script

Select Library in the first list and then drag Run Shell Script in the second list to the right side of the Automator window. An item appears called Run Shell Script.

Delete everything in the box.

Click and drag over the code below and press Command+C to copy it. Click in the Run Shell Script box and press Command+V to paste it in. This is all one line:

"/applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --app=https://play.google.com/music/listen#/artists

It should look like this:

3 Save the app

Select File, Save and save the app wherever you want, such as the desktop. Name it Google Play Music.

Automator is finished with, so close it.

4 Play your music

That’s it. You have your Google Play Music desktop app. Double click the icon to open it.

5 Find an icon

All Automator apps have the same robot icon, so let’s replace it with something more appropriate.

Google ‘free icons’ and lots of websites containing thousands of icons are listed. I went to Icon Finder and found a nice music icon. The PNG file was downloaded.

6 Copy the icon

Double click the icon and open it in the Preview app. Copy the icon to the clipboard.

7 Replace the Automator icon

Select the Google Play Music app you created with Automator and press Command+I.

Click the Automator robot in the top left corner and then press Ctrl+V to paste in the icon.

That’s it. You now have a great desktop Google Play Music app with a lovely icon. Double click it to play your music.

Change the startup screen

This is the command that does the job of opening Google Play Music as a desktop app:

"/applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --app=https://play.google.com/music/listen#/artists

See the artists at the end? Change it to:

• albums - Start with your Albums screen
• all - Start with a list of all your music tracks
• genres - Start with a list of all your music genres
• wmp - Start with a list of your playlists
• wms - Start with a list of Instant Mixes
• recents - Start with a list of recently played music
• Delete #/artists to start with the default home page

Download the app

If you can't follow the guide above, here is the Automator app zipped up google-play-music.zip

Have fun!