[HN Gopher] Stop the Apple Music app from launching
___________________________________________________________________
Stop the Apple Music app from launching
Author : bobbiechen
Score : 592 points
Date : 2026-06-08 17:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lowtechguys.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lowtechguys.com)
| ericskiff wrote:
| Thank you, this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I mis-click my
| airpod and suddenly this app I've never used and don't want
| launches
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > this app I've never used and don't want launches
|
| I'm by no way an Apple fan, but why not uninstall the app if
| you don't need it?
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| It cannot be uninstalled
| callc wrote:
| _cough_ cough hey EU you hearing this shit?
| joxdosba wrote:
| If you for whatever reason do not want the security
| benefits offered by SIP, you can turn it off.
|
| Of course, doing so just to get rid of Apple Music would
| tend to be a bit crazy.
| nehal3m wrote:
| I'd say having to turn off System Integrity Protection as
| a prerequisite to uninstalling a music player is crazy.
| Spoken as someone who likes MacOS and Apple Music.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| The Apple Music thing bothers me and adds friction to my
| life every single day that I use MacOS.
|
| We're on a tech forum where everyone here is aware (or at
| least can understand) how SIP is useful for the security
| model on MacOS. But for plenty of people with this
| problem, SIP is only the thing you learn can disable so
| you can immediately make your life a little better.
|
| The crazy ones are Apple here, since this problem should
| not require disabling SIP to fix.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| The (shitty) logic here is that you don't 'own' the OS, but
| merely rent it, so "deal with it"
| parl_match wrote:
| You can disable the control that prevents deleting the
| app (SIP).
| mritun wrote:
| ^ How can you make such an obviously wrong statement?
|
| Drag Music app to Trash, and that it! Like you do with any
| other app.
| FloayYerBoat wrote:
| I hope this is a joke. You cannot delete it. It's
| considered "system" software.
| Savageman wrote:
| As a non power of Mac (only recently switched), I'll
| definitely try this.
|
| My repeated attempts to remove from Dock and hide it all
| failed: half the time I remove my ear buds the Apple
| Music pops up in the middle of my screen and auto-enables
| itself in the Dock...
| al_borland wrote:
| The Dock just contains a bunch of shortcuts. The app
| itself lives in the /Applications folder along with the
| rest of them that you can choose to add to your dock (by
| just dragging them down there and letting a spot open up
| for it).
| parl_match wrote:
| ^ How can you make such an obviously wrong statement
|
| Go ahead and try. It's not like "any other app".
| lynndotpy wrote:
| You can not do this on MacOS, at least on MacOS 26 on
| Apple Silicon without SIP disabled. I was:
|
| - Unable to drag from the Applications drawer to Trash
|
| - Unable to drag from the Spotlight search to Trash
|
| - Unable to drag from Finder (in ~/Applications) to Trash
|
| - Unable to delete (in Finder)
|
| - Unable to delete (through rm in terminal).
|
| This has been a bother for years across MacOS versions
| and I've tried variations of these, personally.
|
| In the future, you might consider not denigrating others
| in this way. It is hard to save face when you are wrong.
| And it is hard for others to provide an avenue for you to
| save face while also pointing out that your statements
| are not true.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| That doesn't work on my machine. Maybe it worked back in
| the snow leopard days.
|
| Now the app doesn't even have the "move to trash" item in
| the contextual menu like non-system apps do
| rossng wrote:
| I only recently discovered that not only can you not
| uninstall Apple's bloatware - you can't even hide it in a
| folder!
|
| I just can't understand why I have to have my list of
| useful apps interspersed with cruft like Books.app or
| Journal.app.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Same! And there is no obvious close button etc on the overtop
| blocking modal dialog either. It's a dark pattern.
| verdverm wrote:
| I've been using this for a while now:
| https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
|
| Source code for this one:
| https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/MusicDecoy
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| noTunes is one of the first things I install on a new mac.
| fartfeatures wrote:
| I'm very clumsy and I've never hit the play button by
| accident. What are you guys doing that makes it so easy to
| accidentally click the play button? Are you using the mac
| with the touch bar or something?
| creedleshrump wrote:
| For me it mostly happens when I press play on my airpods.
| If they connect to my mac instead of my phone it opens up
| apple music if I don't have another media player open.
| forsalebypwner wrote:
| For me, this constantly happens:
|
| - I'll pause a podcast I'm listening to on my iPhone or
| iPad, or just take my AirPods out of my ear for a moment
|
| - Like 5 minutes later, I'll squeeze the AirPod stem to
| resume playback. It will instead think that I want to play
| Apple Music on my Mac for some fucking reason.
|
| I don't think this behavior can be easily customized
| (somebody let me know if it can!)
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Just this week I was stuck in this state where my AirPods
| were receiving audio from the iPhone in my pocket
| (intended), but play/pause commands from the AirPods were
| sent to my Macbook in the other room.
| js2 wrote:
| For me it's my AirPods launching the Music app, something I
| rarely want. At the same time, it's one click in the menu
| bar to disable noTunes in the rare circumstances I want to
| use the Music app.
|
| It's made worse by the fact that I use my AirPods across my
| personal devices and my work Mac, the latter of which I
| have to switch them to manually (since my work Mac is not
| on my personal iCloud account).
|
| Anyway, however it happens, I often found the Music app
| launching on my personal and work Macs, and noTunes
| prevents it.
| plqbfbv wrote:
| I had to start using noTunes years ago because whenever I
| accidentally touched or removed my (Sony / non-Apple)
| bluetooth headphones, iTunes/Music would pop up without
| fail. Apparently they sent a "play" button press, so the
| application would pop up. Because it's a system
| application, you cannot delete it, there's no way to
| override the key, there's no way to disable it. So noTunes
| has been running for 7 years straight on my Mac.
| dwedge wrote:
| I use play/pause to start/stop the music on whatever I was
| listening to music on (Spotify usually, sometimes
| brain.fm). It's a background action, play music or stop
| music, no change to flow.
|
| If Spotify isn't running for whatever reason, or sometimes
| even if it is, Apple Music decides that what I actually
| want is for it to steal focus for 5 seconds while it loads,
| switch to a full screen window and pester me to subscribe.
|
| So in my case, the button click is intentional but the
| response isn't.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Same. noTunes works perfectly. There's no need to reinvent the
| wheel.
| tomComb wrote:
| It seems I need to leave this running for it to work? So it's
| not just a configuration changes.
| forsalebypwner wrote:
| When you first launch it, you'll notice a pop-up saying that
| this will automatically run when you login. There's no dock
| icon or menu bar icon. So no configuration changes needed.
| thinkontheclock wrote:
| Interesting, there's always been a menu bar icon for it for
| me. You can hide it, though.
| forsalebypwner wrote:
| I'm using "Music Decoy" and I don't see one. Possible
| noTunes has one.
| tomComb wrote:
| I guess you mean it runs automatically at Mac user login,
| so that it is running all the time.
| valentiniljaz wrote:
| Yes. Yes. Thank you. I wanted something like for years.
| bigyabai wrote:
| For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is the default
| behavior for a supposedly premium operating system.
| imglorp wrote:
| It seems the fans are willing to put up with absolutely
| unlimited grief and inconvenience to drink the koolaid they're
| given. Some Apple PM made a edict 11 years ago that Music shalt
| be thine only audio experience on the platform. Lock it down,
| boys!
|
| The rest of us ask for a customizable experience.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| This "Apple customers are brainwashed cultists incapable of
| examining reality" schtick was tired a decade ago. No
| option's perfect. But Apple's current tradeoffs vs other
| options' trade offs continue to feel worthwhile to many.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Maybe it's tired to you. The reason why it's a decade-old
| shtick is because Apple spent a decade adopting Microsoft-
| tier design patterns. They push advertisements in the OS
| and first-party apps, and then refuse to improve the
| experience with iterative updates. It is an ongoing issue.
|
| > No option's perfect.
|
| Bullshit. I've used Linux and Windows PCs before, I have
| not heard a _single user_ want Apple Music to open when
| they put on their headphones. There is a perfect solution,
| but you lack the willpower to call Apple out for dark
| patterns. This should only be an opt-in feature, full-stop.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 1. Pressing play button plays music
|
| "Absolutely unlimited grief and inconvenience!"
| picofarad wrote:
| Pressing the stem on your AirPods, or pressing the play
| button, or pressing function enter on a Mac opens an
| undeletable application.
|
| If you dont have music, this just wastes a bit of time. If
| you have music, apparently it wastes a lot of time.
|
| Cherry or grape?
| imglorp wrote:
| I would like to choose which music app opens when I hit
| play. I my case it is not the locked one.
| autoexec wrote:
| If you get a Mac it means you're paying a premium for the
| carefully curated Apple Experience and if you don't like it
| you just need to Think Different and do only what Apple
| allows you to do and only in the way that Apple tells you to
| do it. Once you surrender to Apple there is no more grief and
| inconvenience, only joy because then It Just Works.
| eviks wrote:
| The OS isn't supposed to be premium since it's free, does that
| help figure it out?
| nkozyra wrote:
| You can't buy the OS directly, but it certainly isn't free.
| eviks wrote:
| How do you figure a price of 0 is a high price?
| rcxdude wrote:
| Because Apple's view seems to be that if you aren't using all
| of Apple's products, you're not their target audience.
| hmokiguess wrote:
| for me it's when I open an audio file and it automatically
| launches it AND adds it to my music library, the adding to
| library is what I hate, then I have to delete it and specifically
| choose "Keep file"
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Yeah, this sucks
| kccqzy wrote:
| Ah a long time ago when the Music app was still called iTunes I
| have configured all music files to be opened with quicktime
| player. It's been so long that I forgot the default was the
| Music app. To me it's absolutely clear that playing a file
| doesn't mean I want it in my library.
| fnordlord wrote:
| This was annoying to me too but it is pretty easy to fix. Just
| right click on the .mp3 or whatever file, Get Info and change
| the default application to your preferred app and then click on
| "Change all..."
|
| You have to do it once per file type but it's once and done.
| xoa wrote:
| Yes, at least in theory changing this is straight forward.
| Though:
|
| > _You have to do it once per file type but it 's once and
| done._
|
| I will note I have one Mac with one old user account where it
| will not remember this anymore across reboots (across macOS
| 15, plan to skip 26 and hope 27 is acceptable). I haven't had
| time to try to get into why, but it's occasionally
| irritating.
| isametry wrote:
| I wonder if SwiftDefaultApps might yield different results
| compared to the Cmd+I menu? It's a crude-yet-still-working
| preference pane for setting default apps in System
| Settings, rather than using example files:
|
| https://github.com/Lord-Kamina/SwiftDefaultApps
| hmokiguess wrote:
| Yeah opt-out is so annoying though, I prefer opt-in, let me
| pick the first time I try or use a sane default like
| Quicktime instead
| lachlan_gray wrote:
| Yes, so many times I've been jumpscared by work-related audio
| in my playlists because of this
| nottorp wrote:
| Lovely. I don't press the play button by mistake much, but if i
| touch my BT headphones wrong...
| drcongo wrote:
| I actually had to look at my keyboard as I'd forgotten there
| even was a play button.
| cestith wrote:
| My mac opens Music for func + enter. Sometimes I accidentally
| have the function button held down as I hit enter. Then
| whatever app I'm trying to use to type loses its focus to
| this app I never use.
| picofarad wrote:
| Yeah but does your Mac have a key combo to launch LinkedIn?
| Windows +1, Mac 0
| lxgr wrote:
| Reading this title made "The Miracle of Joey Ramone" by U2 play
| in my head.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Oh man, throwback to when they forced the U2 albums on to
| everyone's device for ReasonsTM
| cryptoz wrote:
| It's not even a throwback. That U2 album _still_ shows up if
| I accidentally open Apple Music. I haaaaate it. I disliked U2
| before any of this, but now I have absolutely sworn to never
| ever listen to any of their music.
|
| Google did the same thing with Transformers 2 I think. It
| still shows up as Purchased for me even though I _absolutely
| did not_ purchase that. Good way to ensure I never ever watch
| any Transformers movie!
| al_borland wrote:
| There was a website to remove it completely from your
| library, it launched in 2014 and was up for many years, but
| is now gone.
|
| These days you can delete the album from your library and
| set the Music app to not automatically download your
| purchases. If you want to go an extra mile, you can login
| to your iTunes account to view your purchases and hide it
| there too.
| kps wrote:
| Joey Ramone never wrote a song about U2.
|
| +1 point for Joey Ramone.
| sph wrote:
| The lack of applications like this is why macOS will always be a
| superior alternative to Linux.
|
| /s for the sarcasm impaired
| innagadadavida wrote:
| The same thing happens with iPhone and car bluetooth. It is super
| annyoing and many times, a podcast will be playing in the
| background while the car has FM/radio selected. This is
| incredibly frustrating and bad user experience. The worst part is
| it is not clear if this is Apple's fault or some buggy old
| firmware in the car's audio stack that is at fault (this happens
| consistently on 2017 Tesla Model S).
| tzs wrote:
| I too have seen conflicts between CarPlay and the radio. My
| car's a Hyundai.
|
| I mostly listen to the radio, with an occasional trip where I
| instead listen to a podcast or music via CarPlay.
|
| What I've found greatly helps is when I finish a trip where
| I've used CarPlay after I park but before turning the car off I
| open my phone, open control center, tap the now playing widget,
| tap the symbol on that for output selection, and make sure it
| is set to iPhone Speaker. I then hit the Media button in the
| car and select FM. That starts the radio playing. Then I stop
| the radio and shut off the car.
|
| Next time I use the car CarPlay connects normally but does NOT
| take over the media playback. If I hit the play button in the
| car it starts playing the radio.
|
| This works fine for me because as I said I mostly listen to
| radio. It is not that big of a deal the once a week or so that
| I listen via CarPlay to do those extra steps at the end of a
| trip.
|
| It would probably be a lot more annoying if I was frequently
| switching between radio and CarPlay.
|
| In either case I would definitely like a setting somewhere that
| makes it so the play button in the car plays whatever source
| was playing the last time you turned off playback.
| nepthar wrote:
| Thank you. Thank you.
| skarz wrote:
| Every time I get in my car the Apple Music app prompts me to
| resubscribe with a full screen popup. Usually it tries 2-3 times
| before it stops.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I use both Apple Music and Spotify, and normally use the former
| in the car because it resumes its state from the last shutdown
| while Spotify does not. But when I do use Spotify, Apple Music
| is the app that comes up the next time I start the car. Pretty
| annoying.
| watersb wrote:
| From TFA, via StackExchange: launchctl unload
| -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
|
| will quit the process responsible for the madness (rcd, the
| "remote control daemon").
|
| You'll have to remember to re-load this thing if you want the
| default behavior. Or if you encounter other unexpected
| situations, to restore the default insanity.
|
| It might be easier to run this app instead; then you have an icon
| in your GUI desktop environment and an app you can simply quit to
| restore defaults. Plus this app allows you to assign any app to
| the "Play" media event.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Wow, thank you! I use and "like" youtube music, but it seems
| like every time I'd start a google meet call (IIRC) or
| otherwise interact with audio on my MacBook it would bring up
| Apple Music. If I quit it, it would pop back up the next time I
| had audio playing, but if I just left it running it would be
| fine. So I'd always have this Apple Music in my list of running
| apps. Kind of annoying.
|
| I ran the above and then quit Apple Music and tried a few
| different things and so far it hasn't come back up.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _you have an icon ... simply quit_
|
| FTA:
|
| _Uh.. how do I quit this app?_
|
| _The app has no Dock icon and no menubar icon so to quit it
| you 'd need to do one of the following:_
|
| _Launch Activity Monitor, find Music Decoy and press the
| button at the top_
|
| _Run the following command in the Terminal:_
| killall 'Music Decoy'
| riazrizvi wrote:
| It's very sad to see Apple using these lowbrow Microsoft tactics.
| Press ganging your users into launching your other shit product
| is brand cannibalism.
| letrix wrote:
| But why wouldn't pressing the Play button, when no media
| session is available, not open the music player?
| spankalee wrote:
| I don't use Apple Music, so opening their music player only
| wastes my attention and time. It happens if you accidentally
| press play on your headphones too. Then you need to quit
| Apple Music, for no good reason. And you can't uninstall it!
| Terr_ wrote:
| A similar scourge is encroaching on Google-branded android
| phones, as they add mandatory apps to cover stuff like
| supporting earbuds you don't own.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| Are you talking about the pixel buds app? They ask you on
| setup if you want it installed, and you can uninstall it
| anytime. Seems pretty far from "mandatory".
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yes, that's the example I had in mind.
|
| > you can uninstall it anytime
|
| I'm sure it tells you that... but _did you actually try_?
|
| The "uninstall" button is a lie: You cannot remove the
| app, you can only roll it back to some mandatory minimum
| version.
|
| > Do you want to uninstall all updates to this Android
| System app?
|
| If you "uninstall", the app still exists, and your only
| choice is to surrender and update it again. So yes, that
| "system app" is (as far as Google is concerned)
| absolutely "mandatory" on my phone.
| hadlock wrote:
| Apps I can't uninstall on my Pixel 9 or 10 (I forget):
| Gemini, Google TV, My Pixel, Now Playing, Screenshots,
| Wallet, Weather, YT Music
|
| Some of those might be system level stuff, but I don't
| know what the heck Google TV is, and I certainly am not
| signing up for whtever "YT Music" is. Probably some
| spotify subscription thing they will cancel like they did
| google play music and whatever came before that. But I
| can't uninstall any of these, or even delete the icons.
| They're just visual trash I can't hide from the launcher.
|
| I don't trust the digital music stores anymore,
| cumulatively I have probably $100 worth of music I've
| bought across 3-4 music stores in the last 25 years and I
| can't access any of it anymore. Meanwhile my MP3
| collection and WinAmp from high school continue to work
| without issue.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| It cannot assume which media player I want to use, so the
| best course of action is to do nothing.
| parl_match wrote:
| It's very reasonable that pressing "play" opens the default
| music player. They should let you choose.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| There are multiple different sources that the user might
| want to start playing. Browser tab A/B/C (example: web
| radios), a music application or music service website in
| a tab that's not even opened yet (eg: spotify), the last
| video tab they opened (ex: youtube).
|
| Whatever is the last thing that was paused should play
| IMHO. If nothing was paused, it should do nothing. Else,
| you open a pandora's box of possibly wrong choices that
| the user then has to close.
| parl_match wrote:
| > Whatever is the last thing that was paused should play
| IMHO
|
| That's currently how it works.
|
| This is purely an issue and complaint for when nothing at
| all was playing or open, and an app hasn't currently
| registered a handler.
|
| If you land on a fresh desktop from reboot and press
| play, what should happen?
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| In my experience, this is a more frequent issue. At least
| 1 time per day, I hit play hoping to play Spotify in a
| browser tab or some radio tab and for some reason it
| opens Apple Music instead. Sometimes it could be an issue
| on my side, ex: the tab is dead or not even opened.
|
| But whatever, the experience is bad: I have to wait for
| the Music application startup time, then click the
| context menu and select "Quit Apple Music". It feels like
| being forced to watch a product ad. Opening Apple Music
| is never what I want. Imagine if pressing shift opened
| TextEdit by default, that would be silly. Or doing CMD-v
| where you can't paste would automatically pop up some
| random app.
|
| I feel like no machine response is a correct UX pattern
| in this case. The absence of sound playback would
| indicate to me that I need to do something else to play
| sound.
| al_borland wrote:
| The best course of action would be to let the user specify
| their default music app to bind the keys to.
| lgcmo wrote:
| Let me change the default music player
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Because it's not the music player I choose to use. I would be
| ok with it, if I could change the default to e.g. VLC or
| Spotify.
| stringfood wrote:
| or turn it off entirely because guess what? Most people are
| accidently hitting this play/pause button or they hit it
| thinking youtube is going to respond and instead they get
| Apple's seriously shite music player. classic apple no
| respect for me and my choices.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| YouTube does respond to it though?
| stringfood wrote:
| sometimes you can have a youtube video that is paused,
| and you hit play/pause button thinking it will unpause it
| but for whatever reason that video seems to not be
| registering as being unpausable so OSX thinks there is
| nothing to unpause, so it opens itunes, it's one of the
| reasons apple was cited under geneva convention
| violations for unusual weaponry last year
| Barbing wrote:
| Mainly want that button for pausing a video to play music
| or vice versa. Don't love the logic (which will it play,
| or pause?) but maybe it's about as good as it could be
| without more complexity like first press pauses
| background playback, second press begins foreground
| playback. (Could probably script that now that I say it,
| an easy Hammerspoon or something.)
| wk_end wrote:
| If there's no media session available, "play" isn't an action
| that makes any sense, so it shouldn't do anything IMO.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, right? Seems obvious to me. If I press "Backspace"
| and there is nothing to go back to, or to remove, I expect
| the key to do nothing. Same for Escape, or Volume Up, or
| whatever. If it can't do what's expected, it does nothing.
|
| Feels like at one point all the people who spent decades
| building OSes and desktop environment left Apple and
| Microsoft, and the people left are brand new developers who
| only been using computers for the last 10 years or
| something. Or something something executives/management,
| whatever fits your worldview better.
| ryandrake wrote:
| No other key on my keyboard opens an application. I don't
| see why there should be one special key that operates
| that way.
| okamiueru wrote:
| The insufferable part is not letting you disable it.
| coldtea wrote:
| The search key opens the Spotlight panel, and the speech
| key opens Dictation...
| kps wrote:
| Probably gaming metrics. "87% of users used my team's
| program this month!" Who cares if 87% of those did it
| unintentionally? That's some other team's problem.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| Exactly this. The telemetry stats will bubble up to some
| level of management and it will show, "after making the
| play key launch the music app more people are using it".
| That's it. Explanations won't fit on the slide deck. In
| fact it probably isn't even that much, it would just be a
| graph with "line goes up" after the making play launch
| the music app.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Dating Fireball just posted about how broken SwiftUI is
| for basic things AppKit was doing correctly in the late
| 90s (undo/redo)[0].
|
| I think peak productivity for desktops was probably hit
| about 10 years ago. Most things since then are worse, and
| the best things from macOS (drag and drop everything
| nearly anywhere, consistent keyboard shortcuts and
| interfaces, scriptability of everything, etc.) were never
| copied by other systems.
|
| Now systems are being designed to follow Node JS-style
| development which doesn't work like a normal thing
| anywhere and native apps are just as bad as electron apps
| from a usability perspective...
|
| At least they can be vibe coded since Interface Builder
| is no longer needed?
|
| 0 - https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/swiftui_only_makes
| _it_eas...
| kevincox wrote:
| I think playing something when I hit the play button
| makes a lot of sense. (The headphones auto-play is a bit
| less obvious than the keyboard key, I would probably want
| that to do nothing in this case.)
|
| The issue IMHO is that this is not configurable. Apple
| Music may even be a reasonable default (being the built-
| in music player). But it should provide options for Apple
| Music, whatever other apps I have installed, or nothing.
| deinonychus wrote:
| But why wouldn't the OS developer, when many people don't use
| Apple Music, not offer users the ability to pick what the key
| does?
| bloody-crow wrote:
| Because this OS developer is also trying to sell you their
| Music service subscription. I'm sure having this setting
| would hurt some of their internal KPIs and therefore would
| never be implemented.
| Barbing wrote:
| I think they're wrong for this, though I'd read a
| steelman of why not
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a strong argument for tight integration-the
| argument for NOT allowing customization is much weaker.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| > not open the music player?
|
| I'd be fine with it doing that if it actually opened what i
| listen with. The OS can clearly see i spend 100% of my time
| in another music player (Spotify), opening Apple Music is at
| best a poorly designed UX.
| kqp wrote:
| It doesn't, it opens Apple Music. Apple has a longstanding
| problem with giving their own apps privileged roles that they
| don't expose to competitors. What concessions exist in
| browsers, maps, and music player are all the result of being
| forced into it by various lawsuits. Let's not play games
| about what's going on here.
| albedoa wrote:
| This question is fascinating. The reason why pressing the
| Play button when no media session is available should not
| open the music player is because there is no media session
| available. Why would launching Apple Music be the desired or
| even expected behavior?
| lynndotpy wrote:
| One scenario:
|
| 1. You have an iPhone, a Macbook, and AirPods.
|
| 2. You are listening to a podcast or song on your iPhone
| using your AirPods.
|
| 3. You press your AirPods stem to pause the podcast or song
| on your iPhone.
|
| 4. You press your AirPods again, expecting to continue the
| podcast or song on your iPhone.
|
| 5. Your AirPods are now connected to your Mac, which is
| opening Apple Music. This takes a long time to complete.
|
| Note that you can not remove the Music app from MacOS without
| serious compromises to MacOS. It is a slow, awful resource
| hog that I personally never want to use, and it rubs me the
| wrong way. My impression of Apple is much lower for it.
| bloomca wrote:
| You can't uninstall Apple Music as far as I am aware, so it
| is not just a "music player" but a specific app, which I
| personally don't use. For the play button I at least see the
| point, but it opens it when you insert an audio CD, for
| example. Even Windows asks what to do in a notification.
| Barbing wrote:
| > You can't uninstall Apple Music
|
| Internet Explorer bundling was an instruction manual!
| mihaaly wrote:
| Because this f%#n sh*t is jumping at you and is in your way
| promoting itself and want to configure and engage right away,
| or start some random item remained there when you in interim
| loss of your senses tried this crap, every time you press
| play instead of 8 or 9 by mistake, accidentally! But you
| don't want to start it, ever, anyway, that's why!
| tolciho wrote:
| But why isn't there an easy option to turn the "feature" off?
| Why the kluges and workarounds for Apple going downhill
| (Microsoftean is indeed a good term here) for a while now?
| Same story for the nasty notifiction system, the annoying
| finder "spacebar may preview some random file hopefully
| without too many security vulns" (the low contrast design
| whereby you think Firefox is in foreground but it's actually
| the Finder is another bad design element that contributes to
| mixing up what the active app is), etc etc etc
| overgard wrote:
| Because the key press is ambiguous and probably unintentional
| if nothing is open. If the question is "play what?" then it
| shouldn't guess
| LollipopYakuza wrote:
| Spotify is open almost all of the time for me. If no song is
| playing, it's likely that it's paused. So I press play
| expecting it to resume, and sometimes Spotify is actually
| just not open.
| vasco wrote:
| Because i have no songs and never used apple music and every
| time it opens (because I pressed the key by mistake) within
| seconds it gets closed. Doesn't even need ai to figure this
| out.
| shiandow wrote:
| I am utterly confused why pressing play would reasonably do
| anything other than playing something, or possibly pausing
| something.
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| At least give the user the option.
| mihaaly wrote:
| These kind of things backfire very hard. I will never ever use
| Apple Music whatever products, never. Just like those drawn to
| this remedy like flies to sugar. They make so shitty and
| offensive user experience that supporting them by not avoiding
| the vicinity of it is a crime against humanity! Basically
| supporting bullying kind of behaviour.
|
| Why not to have a simple way to turn this offensive behaviour
| off? Nonsense. It is intentionally offensive and forceful!
| Straight forceful behaviour that needs to be cut down at the
| sprout! Otherwise it will multiply and suffocate you down the
| line.
|
| Too much of the product designers adapt this arrogant attitude,
| Apple is just a (sizeable) drop in the sea!
| some_random wrote:
| Are you kidding me? You are not being "press ganged", when you
| try to play music the music player shipped with the OS is
| opened.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| your point would carry more weight were it possible to switch
| the default music player
| selectnull wrote:
| Apple Music can not be uninstalled. That's pretty much "press
| ganged" in my book.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| I'm not trying to play music. I'm not even logged into the
| Apple Music app.
|
| I'm just trying to put my bluetooth earbud in my ear to make
| a Teams call, and 1/3 of the time I get an onboarding prompt
| to join Apple Music on my work computer. Can't turn it off.
| lysace wrote:
| They are obsessed with killing Spotify. That's why they are
| doing such customer hostile things, despite being Apple.
|
| Similar situation in the past: Microsoft vs Netscape.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > lowbrow Microsoft tactics
|
| It's funny you say this because when I read the solution my
| first thought was _that 's such an Apple thing_.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Probably a generational and professional divide. I switched
| to Apple after a decade of coding on Windows, in 2006 when
| they were known for introducing UNIX as a commercial platform
| that effectively killed planned obsolescence in consumer
| software platforms. I'm still on their system today enjoying
| the fruits of that pivot that Steve Jobs effected with the
| NeXT team.
| r0fl wrote:
| I deleted mine because of this problem
|
| I have the podcast app and so many times I would click an AirPod
| to resume and it would play a random song
| stmw wrote:
| This is great! We need something similar for
| knowledgeconstructiond and several other overly insistent Apple
| software components.
| tobadzistsini wrote:
| Or just switch to an Android phone.
| hollowonepl wrote:
| Only with GraphenOS
| scraft wrote:
| This software doesn't work on an Android phone.
| cestith wrote:
| I have an Android phone. It's really not a replacement for a
| Macbook Pro though.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| I wish there was a way to stop it from ever appearing as
| spotlight result - when I type 'music', the first result (always)
| should be the music app I use, not their stuff
| Terr_ wrote:
| Recently I've been using a mac more, and--even with the low bar
| of Windows default search--I've been very disappointed with
| Spotlight.
|
| For example, it keeps polluting my results with things like
| preinstalled system music demo files. There's no option to
| exclude the location, nor to selectively disable "Garageband"
| results while keeping other apps I actually do use for work.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Yeah, I hear you - and sometimes, when you get it to do what
| you want, some system update will force a reindex and you are
| back to square one.
|
| On the bright side, there are a few power scripts that allow
| a much more custom experience (particularly if you are an all
| keyboard shortcuts person), but I am not the kind that wants
| extras there.
| hollowonepl wrote:
| This is nice, I recently vibe coded my own media player as I
| mostly listen to my own digitalized audio library and all
| software available today sucks to cover my scenario or consumes
| way too much resources by my taste... but random triggering Apple
| Music happens so often and it's so annoying. Good article
| explaining how the trick works, should be easy to self-implement
| without installing another 3rd party software from nowhere known
| source
| alin23 wrote:
| Dev here, thanks!
|
| Although it's a pretty well known source in the macOS apps
| community (lowtechguys.com) with source code available right on
| the front page (https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/MusicDecoy) and
| the code does basically nothing. There's not much to be afraid
| of.
| bound008 wrote:
| PSA: Its Unix. sudo chmod -x
| /Applications/Music.app
|
| edit: sorry about that. this used to work before the Music.app
| moved to /System/Applications
| paulgb wrote:
| I wish it were that simple. ~: sudo chmod -x
| /Applications/Music.app chmod:
| /Applications/Music.app: No such file or directory ~:
| sudo chmod -x /System/Applications/Music.app chmod:
| Unable to change file mode on /System/Applications/Music.app:
| Operation not permitted
|
| (Mac OS Tahoe 26.5)
| cestith wrote:
| % ls -la /System/Applications/Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Music
| -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 66201040 Apr 30 09:12
| /System/Applications/Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Music
| scraft wrote:
| PSA: don't run random commands people on the internet tell you
| to run, it turns out those people haven't even run those
| commands themselves..
| titzer wrote:
| I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my
| entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I
| had ripped myself from CD, but I had a handful of albums I bought
| of iTunes and even some TV shows. When they wholesale abandoned
| iTunes and deleted from Mac OS in favor of...whatever Apple Music
| is, I knew I'd never trust them again.
|
| I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even used
| AIMP for a while, but nowadays I think I'll just vibe code my own
| with my own interface and rely on the local file system and
| folder mounts to do the job. I really love this new era where I
| can just use AI to build a custom thing for myself and forget
| about all the predatory crap out there, especially from the OS
| vendors. I don't need streaming, I don't want it. I would have
| kept buying albums off iTunes, but since it sucks so much I'll
| just buy it on CD, thanks.
| asdff wrote:
| Why vibe code anything? VLC would fit the bill. Even quicktime.
| titzer wrote:
| It's mostly that I want my own list management, key
| combinations, navigation, etc. Once the entire UI is my
| oyster, I realized I don't have to settle for how someone
| else decided to lay out the menus, etc. 25 years ago I would
| just learn all the key combos and be set, but 12 major
| iterations later, few to zero of those UI skills and muscle
| memory state has survived. So now, I can do my own and no one
| can take it away from me :)
| hedora wrote:
| I strongly recommend going this route (speaking from
| experience).
|
| It is shockingly easy to build an opinionated UI for these
| things in a web browser. You need to implement m3u
| generation (or use a js web player), and some sort of
| hierarchical hyperlink based nav that matches your muscle
| memory. You should be able to use an existing service to
| grab cover art and metadata for newly ripped disks (unless
| those services disappeared over the years).
|
| If you want to use a native GUI/TUI toolkit, I'd be shocked
| if an LLM had any trouble laying it out after a few rounds
| of refinement. (It definitely will not have any trouble
| doing this for web stuff.)
| titzer wrote:
| I've been vibe coding some music tools and after some
| researching let Claude get going with imgui
| (https://github.com/ocornut/imgui) to build a tool I use
| for local authoring. It's pretty pixel-dense and looks
| alright to me. It runs on MacOS and Linux, which is
| enough for my needs now. Claude has been pretty decent at
| getting audio stuff going on MacOS and can even tap into
| various accelerators in MacOS libraries. It's had no
| problems loading and playing mp3s and m4as, which is the
| majority of my collection. I'll probably prototype an
| music manager off of that. It'd be great if it works out
| for Android as well.
| hedora wrote:
| I constantly have trouble with VLC (long standing bugs, where
| it gets confused and fails to play audio after dvd menu
| clicks, etc).
|
| I've had mixed luck getting llm's to configure mpv (which
| involved writing lua or something for basic functionality!),
| but there are audio sync issues with it.
|
| I miss the days when something like totem would just work and
| default to playing with deinterlacing and audio set
| correctly.
|
| Configuring VLC is like solving a 200 variable boolean
| satisfiability problem or something. Also, the workarounds
| for core bugs come and go over time, so Reddit suggests
| toggling removed settings.
| talon8635 wrote:
| I absolutely love vlc
|
| The iOS app is such a permanently buggy mess that I
| eventually had to bail after years of use with persistent
| issues that wouldn't get fixed, and new bugs popping up. It
| can play hyper obscure formats, but the basic UI functions
| are very unstable
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I think you must have very different needs if VLC is a
| substitute for iTunes/Music. For me, iTunes/Music is a music
| catalog app for managing my 9000+ MP3s with artists, album
| covers, playlisted based on various criteria, etc... where as
| VLC is an app for playing back single media files.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I manage my 9000+ MP3s with the filesystem. It has all the
| cover art, it's organized any way I want, and has playlists
| based on any criteria I want. Then I use any music player I
| want, and can drop the files onto any device I want.
| hedgehog wrote:
| iTunes and iPhoto both. Given how good the tools are getting,
| and how much existing sample code is available, it seems likely
| someone will do a good job of reincarnating them in the near
| future. Apple broke the apps I used most on the Mac and then
| they added the bubblicious design crime UI, no thanks.
| al_borland wrote:
| I found a WinAmp clone, written in Swift and AppKit, in the
| App Store yesterday. It was a month old, and from the
| description (ex. "No Electron, no bloat." and "No telemetry,
| no tracking, no accounts") it was almost certainly vibe
| coded. All the things it was saying were things I like, but
| written in a very AI way.
| hedora wrote:
| I think this is going to finally bring about the year of
| the open source desktop.
|
| I'll happily install that if I can see the source code,
| read it all in a sitting, and it is not terrible.
|
| (Note that, in this model, if I want to futz with key
| bindings or other UI tweaks, I can just ask an LLM to
| change it. No configuration UI required! Just like evilwm.)
| Stitch4223 wrote:
| The specification would matter more than the source it
| produces. Specify it right and share it with the world. Code is
| basically a winamp skin on the OS level.
| Matl wrote:
| There's great hand crafted library managers/players out there
| like https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org etc.
| al_borland wrote:
| You can turn off the cloud service in Apple Music and still use
| it with your local tracks and music downloaded from the iTunes
| Music Store (which still exists).
|
| I did this for most of last year. I had all local music in
| Apple Music, disabled the cloud stuff, and synced it all to my
| iPhone by plugging it in with a cable, as if it was an old
| iPod. It all still worked.
| titzer wrote:
| Fool me once.
| auxiliarymoose wrote:
| Yep, I've been importing CDs to Apple Music (which I buy from
| my local music store) and adding them to my Android phone for
| personal listening. It's a great way to spend money on music
| in a way that supports local businesses!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Turning off the cloud service just does the syncing thing
| right? What about turning off the Apple Music service so that
| the only thing visible is your local content? That's what
| pisses me off the most.
| al_borland wrote:
| That's what I meant by cloud services. It hides the Apple
| Music part so it defaults to your local stuff.
|
| Thought if I remember correctly, search was still showing
| it, which was a little annoying. But it depends on how much
| you search.
|
| I'm currently using the service right now, so I can't
| really check if anything has changed since last year when I
| was doing it.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I've only ever used Apple Music with local content. On iOS
| the only indication to me that non-local content is even
| possible is the radio tab at the bottom of the screen.
|
| On MacOS I _think_ it opens to the online home page, but I
| use it so infrequently I 'm not sure. I pretty much only
| use it to buy music from iTunes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've recently tried syncing local content to my phone,
| but to find that content on the phone is difficult. The
| phone really wants to show me Apple Music stuff. I have
| to Library->Downloaded->Songs. Going to Artists or Albums
| just shows me "Download Music to Listen Offline". I
| really just don't want to spend the time I previously
| spent on my iTunes library all over again. I was really
| just trying to quick&dirty add content. They've made this
| unnecessarily difficult and I despise them for it.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Just go to the Library tab in the phone app. That's where
| your own stuff is located.
|
| I have over 8000 songs synced to my phone, 100% from
| local files on my computer.
|
| I never activate the "library sync" BS that Apple tries
| to force on you, because historically it has replaced
| your copies with incorrect or "remastered" (AKA
| dynamically compressed to hell) versions from Apple
| servers.
|
| I've even caught it switching "library sync" on without
| permission during an update.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Please re-read what I wrote. I know where the local stuff
| is. It doesn't fix the glitch that app is
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| VLC on iPhone has served me more reliably than Apple
| Music.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Sadly it doesn't quite go away even when you've turned
| everything off: https://davids.town/dear-apple-please-fix-
| ios-music
| dijit wrote:
| You can, but basically every menu assumes Apple Music as a
| service, and its worse with each version.
|
| You can technically still buy albums, but you can really tell
| its only there because it was forgotten about.
| butlike wrote:
| Buy albums from Bandcamp. You can download them in multiple
| different formats and the artist gets one of the best cuts
| californical wrote:
| Check out Swinsian.
|
| It is basically old iTunes with some UI improvements and modern
| features built around somebody who has their own library to
| manage. Been around for a long time.
|
| It's great software that I'm willing to pay for in today's
| world for sure.
| hedora wrote:
| I had an OO perl replacement for iTunes back in the day (to
| learn OO perl, mostly). It had a web frontend, and also handled
| ripping and cd metadata with "insert disk, up arrow enter". It
| failed to eject the disk iff there was a problem with the rip /
| transcode / metadata. I had 3-4 CDROMs in a desktop for
| parallelism.
|
| Maybe I should have an LLM port to rust. It was under a
| thousand lines of code.
| senderista wrote:
| `bless` your heart
| picofarad wrote:
| Yeah but then no rust comment...
|
| Easy as [mpg]123
| ezfe wrote:
| The Music app reads the same library and has the same core
| music-oriented functions as iTunes. Is the interface what
| you're missing?
| bombcar wrote:
| My main complaints are that it's clearly store and
| subscription first, local music and playlists a distant
| second. Still works however.
| ezfe wrote:
| I don't really understand what you mean - yes, it is
| designed for Apple Music, a tab for browsing for new music,
| etc.
|
| But it still has library views for songs, albums, artists,
| and playlists. That's the whole thing. Additional tabs to
| support modern music streaming don't devalue those tabs.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| vibe code your own, implement some kind of yt-downloader?
| torrent downloader,etc, maybe some album art. hm might make one
| myself.
| picofarad wrote:
| Yt-dlp doesn't do metadata though, at least the way I hold
| it. So I end up with "unknown - Unknown - file title" or the
| like when they're playing.
|
| Stuff designed to rip mp3 streams got this right.
|
| I'm probably holding it wrong.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Yeah, used to rip online radios with a winamp plugin. it
| placed the songs in folders per day and got each song name
| right.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| Add --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata
| rmunn wrote:
| And then load up MusicBrainz Picard to tag it after-the-
| fact; I've found some cases, usually on more obscure
| music, where Youtube metadata was _close_ to right but
| wrong on some details. But it had enough details to allow
| Picard to find the correct album, and then the file(s)
| was /were tagged _correctly_.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| That's the difference? I still use the Music app and it still
| behaves exactly as it did before they renamed it. I do not
| subscrbe to Apple Music. I still have my entire digital music
| libray in iTunes/Music and it functions as it always did.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| iTunes is the single worst most rage inducing software I have
| ever experienced. It is the only software that has brought
| myself and numerous family members to literal tears. Its
| concept of "syncing libraries" in the early iPhone era was so
| unbelievably broken.
|
| I wish I believed in software hell because then I would be
| happy knowing that's where iTunes existed.
| rmunn wrote:
| iTunes was responsible for my moving from iPhone to Android.
| My first phone was an iPhone 3G. But I could not simply
| transfer .mp3 files onto it from Linux; I had to run iTunes
| to transfer music onto the iPhone, and that meant loading up
| a VM running Windows just to run iTunes. (And pass the USB
| slot into the VM, and set up file sharing... it was all
| doable, and not that hard, but it wasn't _simple_ ).
|
| So my next phone was an Android phone. And I could just plug
| it into a USB slot, and it showed up as an attached drive,
| the same way a thumbdrive did. _Simple_ file transfer, at
| last.
|
| That was nearly twenty years ago, and I have never bought an
| iPhone or iPad since.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yeah, the smart playlists were awesome ("play unrated tracks I
| haven't heard in over a year, from albums I gave at least 3
| stars") for those of us who went deep into curation. I miss it.
| fizwidget wrote:
| I still use smart playlists in Apple Music. Your comment
| seems to imply they removed that functionality?
| kmfrk wrote:
| Even worse when you're on Windows. What's the point of the
| cloud if it only works halfway decently on Mac.
|
| Makes me feel like an idiot for doing something as outlandish
| as paying artists for their music.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| The Music app IS iTunes. They just renamed it and continued
| from there. I have all of my ripped music in there just like
| before; in fact, that's the ONLY music I have in my library.
|
| So don't worry! The same trash UI is available to you... except
| now even worse, thanks to "Liquid Glass" and brain-dead
| decisions like moving the playback controls from the empty area
| at the top of the screen into the content-browser area... where
| they reside on a "transparent" bubble that overlaps other
| graphics and text.
| thought_alarm wrote:
| iTunes didn't go anywhere.
|
| Just about everything I watch or listen to is served from the
| same iTunes Library I've had for over 20 years. It's more
| important to me now than it has ever been.
| haunter wrote:
| foobar is the best https://www.foobar2000.org/mac
| sylens wrote:
| If you keep your media accessible through Plex or Jellyfin, I
| recommend checking Chromatix[1] out - simple and no frills
|
| [1] https://chromatix.app/
| wodenokoto wrote:
| While I'm not sure Apple Music is the music app we deserved,
| iTunes had become this gigantic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink
| kind of monstrosity and I think it was the right call to split
| it up.
|
| Worse, the fun, here's your music collection as a wall of cover
| images didn't sit well with consumers who just wanted, I don't
| know, get fed music and not curate themselves and I guess
| that's how we ended up with mediocre.
| ios-contractor wrote:
| I have Galaxy Buds Pro and I'm using this awesome client
| https://github.com/timschneeb/GalaxyBudsClient to disable all
| touches but sometimes the client isn't running in the background
| and the Music app just gets in my way, so this is great!
| jxmorris12 wrote:
| > The app does absolutely no work in the background. It works by
| simply existing as a running process, thanks to having the same
| bundle identifier as the Music app.
|
| I love clever, low-or-no-code engineering solutions like this.
| You typically need to understand a systems very deeply to reach
| this level of elegance. In this case, one has to understand
| exactly what happens when the play button is pressed in Mac OS,
| how bundle identifiers work, etc. And the outcome is an app with
| almost no code at all - just a collision - it's beautiful.
|
| (As an aside, coding agents are terrible at this kind of thing;
| I'd guess Codex as of right now would write some overpowered
| application that polls in a loop looking for Music App starts and
| killing them)
| lucideer wrote:
| On the contrary, this feels like a great (hypothetical) example
| of how to use coding agents effectively.
|
| > _Codex as of right now would write some overpowered
| application that polls in a loop looking for Music App starts
| and killing them_
|
| Most human engineers would also do this. It's a relative rarity
| to find someone writing things this elegantly.
|
| Similarly, if you asked an agent to "Stop the Apple Music app
| from launching", it would likely try to do what most humans
| would do. Otoh if you asked an agent to explain why the Apple
| Music app launches, based on the discoveries it presents to you
| from its investigation you would quickly discover for yourself
| that asking it to make a zero code app that collides with Music
| is the best course of action.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| This is true. Outcomes correlate with the quality and depth
| of the conversation. The quality and depth correlates with
| the users understanding of computers
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Absolutely. Coding agents as a research companion to the
| curious are phenomenal, but they also amplify all the worst
| tendencies of "when all you have is a hammer".
| abustamam wrote:
| I always say that coding agents amplify existing practices.
| If an engineer decides to just throw code at the problem and
| iterate from there without an LLM, then they'll do something
| similar with an LLM, just at scale.
|
| If their tendancy is to research a problem and understand why
| it's happening and design a solution, then their LLM assisted
| code will do that as well.
| xiaoyu2006 wrote:
| Reminds me that when I was in high school, my father used to
| regulate my gaming sessions with Apple ScreenTime. I changed
| the BundleIdentifier in my game's info.plist to
| `com.apple.systempreferences` and sign the .app with my own
| developer cert to bypass this. Was a lot of fun before got
| caught physically.
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| Myyy codex with my skills would never! Never do such a thing.
| boutell wrote:
| I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE!
|
| I actually nuked my music library off my Mac to mitigate this
| problem, but it's still a nuisance when the app launches.
|
| Thank you for sharing this!
| rbbydotdev wrote:
| launching apple music on play, seems very similar to microsoft's
| early anti trust case and internet explorer
| NobodyNada wrote:
| I needed something like this a few months ago. I use my MacBook
| to run my (musical) keyboard rig for live performances, and use
| low-latency wireless headphones for monitoring. The headphones
| have a transmitter dongle that plugs into my laptop, and the
| dongle sends a "play/pause" command if I press a button on my
| headphones...causing Music to launch and begin playing audio out
| of my default output device. It doesn't even care whether my
| headphone transmitter is selected as the default output device;
| in a complex multi-device setup, I can press a button on my
| headphones and it will happily play audio out of _some other
| device_.
|
| This is problematic because if I were to accidentally hit the
| button in the middle of a set, and it decides to default to
| whatever interface is connected to the P.A. system, then now I've
| just started blasting some random song at full volume to everyone
| in the venue.
|
| (It's not an immediate problem for me anymore because I've
| reworked my hardware setup such that the dongle connects through
| my audio interface rather than directly to my laptop, meaning my
| laptop no longer receives "play/pause" commands from it. There
| were additional reasons for this rework, but preventing this
| misbehavior was absolutely part of the consideration.)
|
| It's absurd that a premium device marketed to creative
| professionals has unconfigurable behavior like this which is so
| unacceptable for a live show.
| delduca wrote:
| I use https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
| ghrl wrote:
| Yeah, I used that too on my last Mac. But the page explicitly
| states the benefits of this approach (preventing it from
| launching all together without doing anything vs listening for
| the launch and killing it). It also does not use a menu bar
| icon, which is also good considering the limited space.
| blinded wrote:
| I still use itunes for music that I've purchased. But all the
| features now push you towards streaming and its exhausting.
| throfktjj wrote:
| Just uninstall it! Mac is simple if you know how to use it!
| jorisw wrote:
| I had been using the app noTunes for this.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| I have a better one: curl https://alx.sh | sh
|
| https://asahilinux.org/fedora
| vasco wrote:
| This comment is almost at the quality of "install gentoo" but
| it lacks the panache and vintage that 4chan has.
| bigyabai wrote:
| This retort would hit a lot differently if macOS wasn't an
| advertisement-infested shithole of an OS in 2026.
|
| I'm a classic macOS fan, but it's time for us to admit that
| it's not a premium OS anymore. It's a service upsell layer.
| picofarad wrote:
| The difference being that install Gentoo would be 15 pages of
| instructions, not just pipe this into sh.
|
| If I were on my computer, it'd actually link the Gentoo
| script that we used to bootstrap it on AWS.
| genewitch wrote:
| http://projectftm.com/#UrG-0V2gGFxdB6JRAZ1dHg there we go
| 2dvisio wrote:
| Sharing as I've not seen this mentioned by anyone. I have
| achieved something similar with Karabiner and the custom
| reassignment of the play button to actually run Spotify and play
| the last song from there rather than Apple Music and it worked
| like a charm.
| emaro wrote:
| I tried to stop this a while ago and searching the internet did
| not yield great results, so I ended up creating a Shortcut that
| runs when the Music app opens to close it again. This actually
| worked well until that time I wanted to use the Music app for
| real.
|
| So annoying and not great UX from Apple imo. Thanks for this.
| gausswho wrote:
| After I discovered my Mac Mini was downloading animated
| wallpapers until filling up 80Gb of space, then doing it all over
| again every time I reboot, I decided I'd had enough and installed
| LuLu firewall and blocked every outbound to apple.com. I don't
| use any of their services anyway, and some of them approach
| malware suspicion (keyboard input analytics daemon??)
| cj wrote:
| I encourage you to look into Little Snitch.
| Ringz wrote:
| Whats the difference between LS and LuLu. I have an old LS
| license and after I switched to LuLu I didn't miss anything.
| hod6654 wrote:
| Is there a consensus on what can be blocked in LuLu/LS without
| breaking any functionality?
| partloyaldemon wrote:
| Ok. Now help me get spotlight to index my mirror-style Google
| Drive. Seems only this level of genius could accomplish it.
| ronnier wrote:
| Would also love to stop the dictionary app from opening
| kibae wrote:
| Also the ability to uninstall bloatware like Chess. When I
| switched my browser away from Chrome I kept typing "c, h,
| return" in spotlight out of habit and kept opening Chess.
| Terretta wrote:
| On the plus side in MacOS 27, once it _is_ playing, dragging the
| playhead makes it grumpy and to fix it you get to quit or go
| _full screen_ :
|
| - _Media Playback Known Issues: In apps like TV, Podcasts, and
| Music, the window controls may become unresponsive after dragging
| the playhead to adjust the playback position. (177984877)_
|
| - _Workaround: Use keyboard shortcuts or the menu bar to close,
| minimize, or enter full screen mode._
|
| * * *
|
| Super clunky compared to the imminently more practical workaround
| for wrong-size gifs in Messages, STOP LOOKING AT IT:
|
| - _Messages Known Issues: GIFs and pasted images might render as
| the incorrect size. (177657977)_
|
| - _Workaround: Scroll until that message is offscreen_
| microflash wrote:
| Since I don't care about Apple Music at all, I just lock the
| ~Music/Music folder. It prevents the app to launch while still
| keeping the key functional in other apps.
| 7777777phil wrote:
| Thank You!
| P-Nuts wrote:
| brew install notunes
|
| Another fix for this bollocks
| flawn wrote:
| https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
|
| this is the OG app.
| abhinavsns wrote:
| There is another app called notunes that I have been using for
| ages.
| dkga wrote:
| I signed up for Apple's subscription which includes Apple Music.
| We are a Spotify family, but I then cancelled our premium
| subscription to avoid duplicate spending. I embraced Apple Music
| with an open heart in spite of the reservation from my family
| members. I liked that DJ feature that joined songs. But
| everything else felt subpar to Spotify. In particular, with AM I
| feel that they were always pushing US pop/rap music to me, even
| as I was listening everything from old Tunisian singers to
| Denmark's Magtens Korridorer. But overall it just felt that
| Spotify folks really liked music as an Art form, whereas AM
| really wanted you to listen to whatever they were
| featuring/pedalling. Like that song lyrics translation feature
| introduced by Spotify - only if you enjoy songs in languages you
| might not yet understand you would think of such a nice feature!
| brikym wrote:
| I'be been using a tool called NoTunes for years.
| https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes Fuck that app and fuck your
| subscription Apple.
| RgrTheShrubbr wrote:
| For everything that Apple does great. They really do drop the
| ball on the dumbest things. I used to use iTunes in place of the
| Apple Music app for my library and connecting my old iPods, and
| now with Retroactive being discontinued I haven't found a great
| alternative other than just buying an old Mac and I unfortunately
| don't have the space for one.
| philippemnoel wrote:
| I've been wanting this for so long. This is so clever.
|
| Slightly concerned Apple would patch this by preventing others
| from using the same bundle identifier as their official apps,
| though?
| masonwan wrote:
| Thanks for the solution! I've been bothered with this issue for
| ages.
|
| Many times Apple Music also triggered by the Bluetooth devices
| which is super annoying.
|
| Apple really needs to implement a way to remove Apple Music
| completely.
| thought_alarm wrote:
| I use the built-in `hidutil` utility to remap F3-F9 to my
| preferred keys.
|
| F3/F4 are remapped to the keyboard backlight brightness.
|
| F5-F9 are remapped to be plain old function keys.
|
| This post has a lot of great info:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555475
|
| This is the mapping I use on an M1 MacBook:
| hidutil property --set '{ "UserKeyMapping":[
| {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000FF0100000010,"HIDKeyboardM
| odifierMappingDst":0x00FF00000009}, {"HIDKeyboardModi
| fierMappingSrc":0x0000000c00000221,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst
| ":0x00FF00000008}, {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0
| x0000000c000000cf,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x00070000003e}
| , {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x000000010000009b
| ,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x00070000003f}, {"H
| IDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000000c000000b4,"HIDKeyboardModi
| fierMappingDst":0x000700000040}, {"HIDKeyboardModifie
| rMappingSrc":0x0000000c000000cd,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0
| x000700000041}, {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x00
| 00000c000000b3,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x000700000042}
| ] }'
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| brew install notunes
|
| Then launch it once to say you approve
|
| startup Ventura and later: Navigate to System Settings Select
| General Select Login Items Click the + under Open at Login and
| select noTunes
|
| https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
| thallavajhula wrote:
| I really like your approach. Smart. Personally though, I like AM
| opening up when I hit the PLAY button on my keyboard.
| vachina wrote:
| Or delete the Music app... zero processes required.
| melonpan7 wrote:
| This is clever, I typically use Cider on my Mac or Linux machine,
| the notification that music is trying to play from another device
| (the cheapest plan only supports 1 simultaneous stream) is really
| annoying. I think it happens when I connect or take off my
| Airpods connected to my iPhone.
| martin_drapeau wrote:
| I'm so happy to have fallen on this. Apple Music launching on my
| Mac when I put on my AirPods drives me crazy.
| 101112131415 wrote:
| I can't go into music app because it blocked b a school and its
| guilderland
| 101112131415 wrote:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id3...
| akeck wrote:
| I vibe coded a similar thing using a combo of launchctl commands
| and Apple Script (closes Music app if it's open) with MS Copilot
| of all things. It works pretty well.
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(page generated 2026-06-09 04:01 UTC)