The perl process NotchStar starts for Now Playing
In Activity Monitor you may see perl running while NotchStar’s Home tab is open. It is Apple’s own /usr/bin/perl, started by NotchStar with a script bundled in the app. It reads what is playing. It runs only while the Now Playing card is on screen and ends when you leave Home, close the notch or quit NotchStar.
Why perl at all
Since macOS 15.4, third party apps cannot read Apple’s private MediaRemote framework directly. Apple’s own perl can. The open source MediaRemoteAdapter project (BSD 3 clause, by Jonas van den Berg) uses that to print the Now Playing state as JSON, and NotchStar reads that output.
Lifetime
- Starts when the Home card appears.
- Stops when the card goes away, which includes closing the notch.
- Stops on quit. When NotchStar quits, or is asked to end, it ends the helper first.
- Cleaned up after a force quit. A force quit cannot be caught, so at the next launch NotchStar ends any leftover helper whose script lives in a NotchStar app and whose parent is gone.
If the helper crashes or exits on its own, NotchStar switches to the AppleScript fallback so the card does not freeze.
Short lived helpers
Pressing a control starts a second, very short perl command that sends the key, then exits.
Read how notch apps read now playing for the full background, is NotchStar safe for the wider picture and the Now Playing page.
