YouTube’s audio.
Nothing else.

FlowBar is a tiny menu bar app that streams the audio from long YouTube mixes — ad-free, tab-free, always in reach. No browser window. No video burning your battery. No interruptions.

See how it works

3,859 music enjoyers are already waiting

Universal build · Apple Silicon & Intel · No account, no tracking

It lives up here — not in your Dock

Three steps from link to listening.

No account. No browser tab left open. No video decoder eating battery.

01
Grab any mix

A video or whole playlist URL works. Copying one surfaces a “Play copied link” banner — or hit ＋ in the browser extension and skip the paste entirely.
02
It pulls audio only

The app resolves the audio stream and hands it to a native player. The video — and its ads — never download.
03
Play from the menu bar

Collapse the panel and keep going. Transport lives on your media keys, in Control Center, and one click away in the menu bar.

Focus music without
the browser tax.

FlowBar skips YouTube’s player entirely — audio streams straight to a native player. Ads never load, because they were never invited.

Ads never get a chance

It plays the raw audio stream only. YouTube’s player — and every ad inside it — simply never runs.

Queue hours of mixes

Paste a single video or an entire playlist URL. Scrub, skip, reorder — then favorite the keepers for next time.

Native Now Playing

Control Center, lock screen, album art — and your hardware media keys (F7/F8/F9) just work.

Menu bar, not Dock

It lives up where status items belong. Collapse the panel and forget it — still one click away when you need it.

One-click from your browser

Optional Chrome and Firefox extensions put a ＋ on every YouTube thumbnail. Queue the next mix without pausing what’s playing.

Picks up where you left off

Your queue and play position survive quits and reboots. Enable launch-at-login and it’s back before you notice it was gone.

Add to queue without
breaking flow.

Optional, but powerful. Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox add a ＋ to every thumbnail. One click sends the video to FlowBar over a loopback-only connection — nothing ever leaves your machine.

Queue music with blazing speed — stop having to copy and paste
Only communicates on your machine — invisible to the network
Works on search, home, subscriptions — everywhere

Optional — paste works fine without it.

One click — queues it

Small app. Clear boundaries.

◔First open takes one extra click

FlowBar is ad-hoc signed, so Gatekeeper asks once: right-click → Open. It’s not on the Mac App Store — by design for now.

⌂Nothing phones home

Traffic goes to two places only: the stream’s CDN, and a loopback listener for the browser extensions. No analytics, no accounts, no telemetry.

✓Requirements

macOS 14.4+ on Apple Silicon or Intel. Around 20 MB on disk. yt-dlp installs and updates itself — no terminal, no Homebrew.

Put YouTube audio in the menu bar.

Free · No account · Universal for Apple Silicon & Intel · macOS 14.4+