Now Playing Card is a GNOME Shell extension that shows track info and playback controls for every audio app and media tab open, all in one place – the panel or the Quick Settings menu.
GNOME’s default media controller (and the many now playing applets and add-ons I’ve written about in the past) is fine for what you’re playing at the time, but less good if you juggle multiple audio apps during your day.
With Now Playing Card, pausing one thing to start playing another doesn’t mean it vanishes. So the podcast and Spotify track you paused mid-way through to check out a YouTube video in your browser? They stick around, ready to resume.
Now Playing Card uses ‘cards’ for each player, with album art (size can be changed), player icon and a functional progress bar you can click on to seek (if the player supports it). Plus, playback controls, including loop and shuffle (where available).
Since multiple players being on pause could take up a lot of room in the applet, the extension uses an ‘accordion’ effect to make best use of space. Only one player card is enlarged at a time, the rest being compact until clicked.
It can also show the actively-plating track name, artist and control buttons on the panel too, which is the main use-case for these things (“what’s this track” – look up and see). You can choose the position, size, behaviour, etc of those via the extension’s settings.
Adding a bit of visual flourish to the label is an animated sound wave icon or, if you want to dial up the bling, a spectrum analyser with bars reacting to audio in real time. Mercifully, you can opt for no animated tic at all, if you’d rather.
A slew of visual customisation and behavioural settings are offered. Now Playing Card hides GNOME’s stock media controller in the notification/calendar pop-over (never sure what most people call it) when active.
I do find that applet text scaling is a little “off” compared to other applets I open, but perhaps accommodate multiple players – it can show up to 10 at a time – it kind of has to be smaller than standard to fit ’em in.
Not everything that plays audio and reports over MPRIS is something you might care about (browser auto-play videos, looking at you) so there is “ignore” list in settings to help you keep your card list from getting too noisy.
Want to try it? Now Playing Card is compatible with GNOME 45 to 51, which means if you’r reading from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS through to 26.10 you’re good to go.