You’re the type of person that hates having a ton of tabs open, right? I certainly am.
Specifically, I dislike having open tabs in the background when they are doing things—especially playing music. I figured that I’m not the only one and that’s why I decided to publish this topic on how to turn Brain.fm into a Mac app.
For those of you that don’t know Brain.fm is a service that provides music for concentration, relaxation and sleep. Brain music—I suppose you can call it—has a lo-fi sound to it. The interesting thing about Brain.fm is that tracks are familiar, but never quite the same.
Fluid App
So we’re going to turn this website into a Mac app with a little React Native. Just kidding. There’s no code involved at all. Although when I set out to do this, I was prepared to build something.
What we’re going to use is a simple tool called Fluid App. It’s brilliant actually. It essentially turns any website you like into a Mac App with a small amount of configuration.
So head to the Fluid App website and download the software. The free version will suffice, but it is a great tool. Consider the paid version if you find yourself using it a lot.
Configuring Fluid App
Once you’ve downloaded and installed Fluid App, open it up. You should see some configuration options like the one pictured above.
There are a handful of fields available. Let’s fill them out as follows:
- URL: http://brain.fm/app
- Name: Brain.fm
- Location: Applications
- Icon: Use Website Favicon
If you want to create a custom icon you can, but I think Brain.fm’s favicon is sufficient here.
Launching your Brain.fm Mac app
Now you can simply search for “Brain.fm” or open it from your applications folder—just like Pandora or Spotify!
Once it is open, you can choose to keep it in your dock as well.
Caveats
This solution is 90 percent of the way there. It moves the Brain.fm web app out of the browser and into it’s own window where it is more easily managed.
The big missing part of this is shortcut keys. If you’re used to using the spacebar as a pause and play toggle, you won’t be able to do that here.
