SongLit support.
Most problems come down to one of six things. If none of these is yours, write to us — a real person answers.
Get in touch: [email protected]
Please include your macOS version, the SongLit version from Settings → General, which music app you are using, and the song it happened on. It makes a real difference to how fast this gets fixed.
SongLit does not detect the song that is playing
macOS has to be told that SongLit may read your music app. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation, find SongLit in the list, and switch on Spotify or Music. Quit and reopen SongLit afterwards, because the permission is only picked up at launch.
You are normally asked for this the first time SongLit runs. If you clicked Don't Allow, the prompt does not come back on its own, and the switch above is the only way to grant it.
Also worth checking: Settings → General → Music Source. If it is pinned to Spotify or to Apple Music rather than set to Automatic, the other player is ignored on purpose.
The song is detected but no lyrics appear
Lyrics come from LRCLIB, a community lyrics database, and it does not have every song. Gaps are most common with very new releases, live recordings, remixes, regional releases and instrumentals. Playing the standard studio version of the same track usually finds a match.
SongLit cannot supply lyrics that the database does not have, and it does not host lyrics of its own.
The lyrics run early or late
Open Settings → Lyrics and move the Sync Offset slider, which shifts timing by up to two seconds in either direction. It applies to the line changes and the word-by-word sweep together, so the two never drift apart.
A song that is out by a lot rather than a little usually has imprecise timings in the database itself, and the offset will not fully fix it.
The lyric window has disappeared
Press ⌘L — it shows and hides the window from anywhere, even when SongLit is not the active app.
If that does nothing, check Settings → General → Lyrics Placement. Set to Menu Bar Only, SongLit runs deliberately without a window and without a Dock icon, and shows the current line in the menu bar instead. Switch it back to Window or Both.
Clicking the lyric window does nothing
Click-through is on. It makes the window ignore the mouse entirely so you can keep typing in the app underneath, which is what turns it into a true overlay. Turn it off under Settings → Window.
Translation is not working
Translation goes through public Lingva Translate instances, which are run by volunteers and are sometimes offline. SongLit tries several in turn before giving up, so waiting a little and playing the next song usually clears it.
Which music players are supported
The Spotify and Apple Music desktop apps on macOS, and no others. This is a platform limit: macOS exposes no public API for reading Now Playing information out of arbitrary applications — Apple restricted the private framework that once allowed it in macOS 15.4 — and a browser tab publishes no playback position at all, so there is nothing to synchronise lyrics against. If Apple ships a public API for this, support for other players follows.
Starting fresh
Settings → Cache → Clear All Cache deletes every cached lyric, artist record and image. Nothing is lost permanently — it is all re-fetched as you play — and it is the right first move if something looks stale or wrong.
Requirements
- macOS 15 or later
- The Spotify or Apple Music desktop app
- An internet connection, to look up lyrics and artwork
Reporting a bug or asking for a feature
Email [email protected]. Bug reports that name the song and say what you expected to see are the ones that get fixed quickest, and feature requests are genuinely read.