The Handoff feature in macOS and iOS lets you move seamlessly between devices, but it doesn’t work with Apple Music at all. With PlayOff, a cool new app by iOS developer Martin Powlette, you can start streaming a song through Apple Music on your iPhone and immediately pick up right when you left off on your Mac without missing a beat, and vice versa.
PlayOff uses Apple’s official MusicKit APIs that permit third-party apps such as PlayOff to use your Apple Music account and access your playlists, songs, recommendations and other content in a secure, officially sanctioned manner.
Privacy-focused users needn’t worry because PlayOff doesn’t collect user data. Like the Handoff system, this app takes advantage of Bluetooth for device proximity information.
For those wondering, no you don’t actually have to pair your Mac every time you want to use PlayOff. Once the app is running on both your Mac and iPhone, you just tap the device you want to play from and it automatically finds the song and current position for you.
And just like with Handoff, PlayOff cannot hand off your playback to a device that’s outside of Bluetooth range. The software identifies the currently played song (and its playback position) on your other devices so that you could pick up exactly where you left off.
I know what you’re thinking… Yes, you can just find where you left off and then drag the scrubber on another device to the time you left off, but that’s so last century.
PlayOff currently works with single songs, meaning you cannot continue playing an entire playlist, but that’s something that will be addressed in the near future.
As a matter of fact, Martin is already hard at work on the next update to PlayOff that will bring some cool enhancements like a native iPad interface, automatic audio output switching (similar to AirPods) and the ability to hand off an entire playlist to another device.
Apple, please extend Handoff to work with Apple Music! Once you try how cool it is to continue listening your music on another device uninterrupted, you never want to go back.
Such a feature would especially benefit HomePod owners: imagine starting a song on your Siri-driven speaker and continue that playback on, say, CarPlay or your iPhone.
To learn more about the app, visit the official PlayOff website. The Mac client is available for free on Mac App Store. PlayOff for iPhone is a $1.99 download from App Store.