Cloudist Play and Watch on Mac: Menu Bar, Shortcuts and More
Cloudist Play (music) and Cloudist Watch (video) are native Mac apps, not iPhone apps stretched to fit a bigger screen. Both are free on the Mac App Store, under the same App Store listing as the iPhone and iPad apps. Here's what you get once Cloudist is running in a window.
A Real Menu Bar
Cloudist on Mac has a proper menu bar, laid out the way Mac users expect, instead of leaving every action buried in an on-screen toolbar:
- App menu — About, Settings… (⌘,), Hide, Quit
- File — Add Account…, Refresh Library (⌘R)
- Playback (Cloudist Play) or Video (Cloudist Watch) — the playback controls for whichever app you're in
- View — Search (⌘F), your library tabs (⌘1–⌘9), and Now Playing in Cloudist Play
- Window — the usual minimize, zoom and full screen controls
- Help
Everything you'd reach for while listening or watching is one click or one shortcut away, without digging through the app's own UI. The Playback menu in Cloudist Play groups play/pause, next and previous track, volume, shuffle and repeat together; the Video menu in Cloudist Watch keeps play/pause and the two skip actions in the same place. Since both apps were built from the same codebase, the surrounding menus — App, File, View, Window, Help — look and behave identically whichever one you're using.
Keyboard Shortcuts
The Playback menu in Cloudist Play and the Video menu in Cloudist Watch carry shortcuts, and a few more live in View:
| Action | Cloudist Play | Cloudist Watch |
|---|---|---|
| Play / Pause | Space | Space |
| Next track / Skip forward | ⌘→ | ⌘→ |
| Previous track / Skip back | ⌘← | ⌘← |
| Volume up / down | ⌘↑ / ⌘↓ | — |
| Shuffle / Repeat | menu toggle | — |
| Search | ⌘F | ⌘F |
| Refresh library | ⌘R | ⌘R |
| Switch tabs | ⌘1–⌘9 | ⌘1–⌘9 |
| Settings | ⌘, | ⌘, |
Space plays and pauses in both apps no matter where you are in the window — the one exception is while you're typing in a text field, so Space still types a space there instead of stopping your music or video. That means you can be scrolling a playlist, searching your library, or sitting in Settings, and Space still does the one thing you expect it to do.
Not every action in the app needs a shortcut to feel at home on a Mac. Shuffle and repeat, for instance, are menu toggles in Cloudist Play's Playback menu rather than key combinations — you reach for the menu bar the same way you would for any other Mac app's less-frequent actions.
Right-Click Menus
Right-click a track or video and you get the same menu as tapping the ⋮ button on it — no separate desktop-only menu to learn, and nothing that only works with a mouse and not a trackpad. In Cloudist Play, right-clicking a track gives you download (or clear download if it's already downloaded), add to playlist, edit, and delete. In Cloudist Watch, right-clicking a video gives you download, add to playlist, and delete. Watch's menu has no edit option.
Because the right-click menu mirrors the in-app ⋮ button exactly, there's nothing Mac-specific to relearn if you already use either app on your phone. Whatever you can do by tapping the three dots on a track or video, you can also do by right-clicking it on your Mac.
A Window That Remembers
The Cloudist window opens at 1280×800 the first time you launch it, and won't shrink below 1024×680 after that — small enough to sit next to another app, large enough that your library and player controls never feel cramped. Resize it or move it to a different spot on your screen, and Cloudist remembers both the size and the position the next time you open it, so you're not resizing or repositioning the window every single session.
What Works Differently on Mac
Almost everything in Cloudist Watch works the same on Mac as it does on your phone: your cloud video library, playlists, downloads, playback controls, Skip Back and Skip Forward, all of it. The one difference is that videos from your device's own local storage, and the thumbnail extraction that goes with them, are only available on iPhone and Android. Everything that comes from your cloud accounts, which is most of what Cloudist Watch is for, works exactly as it does everywhere else.
Get the Update
The Mac experience is part of the latest update to both apps, Cloudist Play 1.0.34 and Cloudist Watch 1.0.28. Learn more about Cloudist Play and Cloudist Watch, or grab them here:
- Cloudist Play (music): App Store · Google Play · Web
- Cloudist Watch (video): App Store · Google Play · Web
On a Mac, the same App Store links above take you straight to the Mac App Store page, since it's the same listing as iPhone and iPad.