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I recently upgraded to Big Sur and I now have a media player icon which I don't really use or need. Is there any way to hide it?

It's the far left icon in the screenshot below:

enter image description here

jaume
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orschiro
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    Apple is really good at giving people annoying nonsense they don't need or want. The idea that I have to come find this question on SO to figure out how to disable something like this is ridiculous – None Jul 30 '21 at 10:40

2 Answers2

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You can hide the "play" icon in the menu bar as follows:

  1. Launch System Preferences.

  2. Open Dock & Menu Bar.

  3. Scroll down and select "Now Playing".

  4. The "Show in Menu Bar" option controls whether the "play" icon is displayed

    enter image description here

    Unselect it to hide it for good, or change the value to "when active" to only display it when playing music.

jaume
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  • Is there a way to remove it from Control Center? – Matthew Read Sep 29 '21 at 20:32
  • @MatthewRead Well, System Preferences doesn't offer any control to remove it, and I don't know of any command that can achieve that. You may want to post a question though, someone may have the answer you are looking for... – jaume Sep 30 '21 at 09:56
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    It worked in MonTerey MacOS also. Thanks. – Kamlesh Feb 09 '22 at 15:47
  • I have tried both this and the item below and the icon immediately re-appears. – Maury Markowitz May 02 '22 at 14:07
  • is there a way to select which apps should be in the list after clicking the button? i have spotify and MS Teams, and when I press the play button (F8) it plays ringing sound of ms teams which is pretty annoying :D – hocikto Jun 09 '22 at 12:37
  • @hocikto Good question, not that I know of... – jaume Jun 09 '22 at 17:20
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    About my question - I found out that BeardedSpice app is working quite good as a replacement for the default Media button – hocikto Jun 30 '22 at 07:36
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You can also ⌘+click and drag it off the bar.

Matthew Read
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