MUSIC ASSISTANT Now Playing (pushed app, with album art)

AWTRIX TC002 - Now Playing (pushed app, with album art) — Home Assistant Blueprint

What it does

This blueprint shows artist and title on two lines, album art and a
progress bar for any media_player entity on an AWTRIX TC002 (52×16),
sent as a pushed app over MQTT using AWTRIX's native layout feature.
No Berry script needed on the clock itself.

Requirements

• An AWTRIX TC002 clock, flashed to AWTRIX NG firmware, with MQTT
  configured.
• Any media_player entity in Home Assistant that exposes the standard
  media_title/media_artist/entity_picture attributes — Music
  Assistant, Sonos, a Denon receiver, Chromecast, etc. all work.

Installation

1. Import the blueprint into Home Assistant:
   Settings → Automations → Blueprints → Import blueprint, and paste the
   raw URL of tc002_now_playing_pushed.yaml (see attachment).
2. Create a new automation from this blueprint.
3. Pick your media_player entity.
4. Enter your TC002's MQTT prefix (found under System → MQTT in the
   clock's web UI).
5. Pick an app name (letters, digits, _ and - only) — this is the name
   the app appears under in the clock's rotation. If you also run the
   older Berry-script version of "Now Playing" on the same clock, use a
   different name here so the two don't collide.
6. Optionally enter your Home Assistant base URL (e.g.
   http://192.168.1.10:8123, no trailing slash) if you also want to show
   album art — leave it empty if you don't want album art.
7. Save. Note: on some Home Assistant setups a new automation doesn't
   become active until Home Assistant is restarted (reloading automations
   isn't always enough) — if nothing appears on the clock once something
   is playing, try a restart.

How it works

• When playback starts, the automation publishes a single MQTT message to
  <mqtt_prefix>/cmd/apps/pushed/<app_name>, using AWTRIX's layout
  feature: a 16×16 box for the album art (or a plain colored square if no
  art is available), a box for the artist, a box for the title below it,
  and a progress bar spanning the full width at the bottom.
• A tick every 15 seconds keeps the progress bar updated.
• When playback stops, an empty message is sent, which removes the pushed
  app from the clock (AWTRIX NG's default behavior).
• Missing data (e.g. no title/artist for a radio station, no album art, no
  progress info for a livestream) is handled gracefully: the clock then
  shows "...", a plain colored square instead of art, or no progress bar —
  instead of breaking.

License

Free to use, no license.

Changelog

• 2026-10-24 — Fixed a bug where the display fell back to a
  single-line, double-size rendering (the old enlargeApps quirk) on
  some setups: the published version was missing the layout block that
  makes AWTRIX always render at the full 52×16. Also removed the
  Music Assistant-only entity filter, so any media_player entity can be
  picked now. Thanks to strusic for reporting both issues and confirming
  the fix.

Built by Freddy Stapersma (discocandyproductions) for the AWTRIX
community. Thanks to Blueforcer for pointing out that this doesn't need a
clock-side script at all — everything here is a plain pushed app using
AWTRIX's built-in icon, progress and layout fields.