Spotify Lyrics on Mac: How to Keep Them on Your Desktop
Spotify lyrics on Mac vanish when you switch apps. Keep them on screen with a floating window or a lyrics wallpaper, and fix lyrics that aren't showing.
Spotify for Mac shows lyrics that scroll with the song: click the microphone button at the bottom right of the window. The catch is that Spotify lyrics on a Mac stay inside the app. Switch to your browser or your editor and the words are gone, which is usually the moment you wanted to glance at them.
There are two ways around that: a small floating window that stays above your other apps, or lyrics built into the desktop wallpaper. If Spotify shows no lyrics at all, skip to the fixes near the end.
Quick answer: in Spotify, click the microphone button in the playback bar to see the lyrics. To keep them on screen while you work, use a floating lyrics app, or Wallper's Lyrics layout, which plays the current song's words on your desktop wallpaper in time with the music, behind your windows.
How to see lyrics in the Spotify app on Mac
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Play a song in the Spotify desktop app.
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Click the microphone button in the playback bar, at the bottom right of the window.
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The lyrics fill the main window and scroll with the song.
The Now Playing view shows them as well, and the web player at open.spotify.com has the same button if you listen in a browser. If the microphone button is missing or does nothing, the song may have no lyrics in your country. Spotify has also moved the button more than once, so after an update, look along the whole bar before deciding the feature is gone.
Wherever you open them, the lyrics belong to Spotify's window. You can keep that window open beside your work, which spends a lot of screen on a few lines of text, or bring Spotify to the front each time you want to check a line.
Floating lyrics on Mac
Several small Mac apps show the current line in a window that floats above everything else, or in the menu bar, and most of them work with Spotify and Apple Music. Some draw the words in large type straight over the desktop. Because the line is always in your eyeline, they're handy for singing along or learning a song. For the same reason they get in the way when you're trying to concentrate, and sooner or later the window sits over a button you need and you drag it aside.
The menu bar only has room for one short line. On a MacBook with a notch, a long line can get cut off, and when the menu bar fills up, macOS hides the items that don't fit.
Most come from independent developers, so check when one was last updated, and that it supports your version of macOS, before you rely on it.
Spotify lyrics on your Mac desktop wallpaper
Wallper's Lyrics layout puts the words on the desktop itself. The album cover sits on the left with the title and artist under it, and the lyrics run beside it in time with the music. Your windows cover them the way they cover any wallpaper. Wherever the desktop shows between them, you see the line that's being sung, and nothing sits on top of your work.
The lyrics are set the way Apple Music sets them. The current line is bright and held a little above the middle of the screen, and the lines around it stay readable but soft. When the song moves on, the next line rises into place with a slow spring, and during an instrumental break three dots breathe where the words would be. Behind it all runs a slow gradient made from the colours of the album cover, so a dark record gives you a dark desktop.
Verse is the other lyrics layout. It drops the cover and centres the words on their own, with the song's name at the bottom. It's the quieter of the two and looks best on a large display. The lyrics wallpaper guide compares them in more detail, with screenshots of seven songs.
How to put Spotify lyrics on your desktop
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Download Wallper. It needs macOS 14.6 or later.
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Open Wallper's Settings: press ⌘, in Wallper, or choose Settings from the Wallper menu. Click the Media Sync tab.
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Switch on Turn on Media Sync. The pane sums up what happens next: "Choose a layout, and your desktop follows whatever you play."
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Choose Lyrics or Verse.
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Play a song in Spotify. The first time, macOS asks whether Wallper may control Spotify. Allow it, because the timing of the lyrics depends on it.
The words load within a moment and start following the song. Spotify is switched on by default in the React to list on the same pane. So are Apple Music and Browser, which covers YouTube Music and the rest of the web, including the Spotify web player. Other apps that play sound appear there the first time they do, switched off, so a video call never takes over your desktop. Switching Media Sync off in the same place brings your usual wallpaper back.
How the lyrics keep time with Spotify
Wallper gets its lyrics from LRCLIB, an open library of time-synced lyrics, and matches them to the song line by line. Spotify's own lyrics come from a different source, so the two don't always agree: a song can have words in Spotify and none on the wallpaper, or the other way round.
Every few seconds Wallper checks the song's position against Spotify, so a seek, a pause or another app briefly taking over doesn't leave the words behind. If you clicked Don't Allow at the permission prompt, the wallpaper still follows each song and its colours, and only the timing of the lyrics suffers.
When the next song starts, the old lines leave at once and the new ones fade in as soon as they've loaded, so you never read one song's words over another's. A song with no synced lyrics shows its cover and title instead.
Lyrics are kept on your Mac, so a song you've played before shows its words straight away. The cache has its own size and a delete button under Storage in Wallper's Settings.
Spotify app, floating window or wallpaper: which to use
| Spotify's lyrics view | Floating lyrics app | Wallper's Lyrics layout | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the words appear | Inside Spotify's window | Above your apps, or in the menu bar | On the desktop, behind your windows |
| While you work in another app | Hidden | Visible, on top of your work | Visible wherever the desktop shows |
| Where the lyrics come from | Spotify | Depends on the app | LRCLIB |
| Other players | Spotify only | Most also follow Apple Music | Apple Music, YouTube Music and apps you switch on |
| What you need | Nothing extra | A third-party app | Wallper on macOS 14.6 or later |
If you keep windows maximised or work in full screen, you'll rarely see the desktop, and a floating window suits you better. If your windows leave some of the desktop showing, the wallpaper keeps the words in view without covering anything. In the Lyrics layout the cover takes the left side and the words run from about the middle of the screen to the right, so a narrow window on the left leaves every line readable. And if all you want on screen is the song's name and cover, the Spotify widget guide has lighter options, from the menu bar to iPhone widgets.
Why Spotify lyrics aren't showing on your Mac
In the Spotify app
Start with the song. Spotify doesn't have lyrics for every track, and what it has depends on your country; instrumentals and brand-new releases are the usual gaps. Play a well-known song, and if its lyrics appear, nothing is broken.
If no song shows lyrics, work down this list:
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Check your connection. Spotify loads lyrics online, so offline mode or a dropped connection can leave the view empty.
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Open the same song in the web player at open.spotify.com. If the lyrics show there, the problem is the Mac app.
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Update Spotify, or log out and back in. This usually brings back a missing microphone button too.
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If the lyrics view stays blank while everything else works, turn off hardware acceleration in Spotify and restart it.
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As a last resort, delete the app and download it again from spotify.com.
On a free account, a Premium prompt in place of the words means Spotify is limiting lyrics on that plan.
On your desktop wallpaper
If the wallpaper doesn't change at all when you play something, check that Turn on Media Sync is on and that Spotify is switched on in the React to list. Wallper also runs one thing on the desktop at a time: a playlist, Media Sync, or a wallpaper you set by hand. The last one you chose wins and the others switch themselves off, so starting a playlist turns the lyrics off. Switch Media Sync on again in Settings › Media Sync to bring them back.
A song that shows its cover and title instead of words has no synced lyrics in LRCLIB yet. Spotify may still have lyrics for it, since the two libraries are separate.
If the words run ahead of the song or fall behind, open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Automation, find Wallper and switch Spotify on. Without that permission, the timing of the lyrics suffers.
On the Lock Screen
Lyrics never appear there, by design. macOS plays the Lock Screen as one pre-rendered video and starts it whenever it likes, so nothing can know how far into the song you are. On macOS 26 and later, switch on Use it on the Lock Screen too in Settings › Media Sync, and the Lock Screen shows the song's colours as a moving gradient.
Read next
For the album cover, a record player or plain colours instead of words, start with how to put Spotify on your Mac wallpaper. All twelve layouts are side by side in the music wallpaper guide. The lyrics layouts have a guide of their own, with Apple Music and YouTube Music as well as Spotify:
Lyrics Wallpaper for Mac: Live Song Lyrics on Your Desktop
A lyrics wallpaper for Mac that follows the music: the words of what you play in Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube Music, line by line, plus setup and tips.
