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Comments (197)

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  jxmorris12
  > 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)
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  titzer
  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.
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  riazrizvi
  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.
• NobodyNada
  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.
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  hmokiguess
  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"
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  ericskiff
  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
• emaro
  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.
• dkga
  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!
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  delduca
  I use https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
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  skarz
  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.
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  gausswho
  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??)
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  lxgr
  Reading this title made “The Miracle of Joey Ramone” by U2 play in my head.
• Terretta
  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
• 2dvisio
  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.
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  Cider9986
  I have a better one: curl https://alx.sh | sh https://asahilinux.org/fedora
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  watersb
  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.
• RgrTheShrubbr
  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.
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  hollowonepl
  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
• boutell
  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!
• microflash
  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.
• flawn
  https://github.com/tombonez/noTunesthis is the OG app.
• ios-contractor
  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!
• stmw
  This is great! We need something similar for knowledgeconstructiond and several other overly insistent Apple software components.
• r0fl
  I deleted mine because of this problemI have the podcast app and so many times I would click an AirPod to resume and it would play a random song
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  nottorp
  Lovely. I don't press the play button by mistake much, but if i touch my BT headphones wrong...
• brikym
  I'be been using a tool called NoTunes for years. https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes Fuck that app and fuck your subscription Apple.
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  bound008
  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
• blinded
  I still use itunes for music that I've purchased. But all the features now push you towards streaming and its exhausting.
• jorisw
  I had been using the app noTunes for this.
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  verdverm
  I've been using this for a while now: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunesSource code for this one: https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/MusicDecoy
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  ronnier
  Would also love to stop the dictionary app from opening
• anon
  undefined
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  bigyabai
  For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is the default behavior for a supposedly premium operating system.
• rbbydotdev
  launching apple music on play, seems very similar to microsoft's early anti trust case and internet explorer
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  dlev_pika
  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
• 7777777phil
  Thank You!
• sph
  The lack of applications like this is why macOS will always be a superior alternative to Linux./s for the sarcasm impaired
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  innagadadavida
  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).
• partloyaldemon
  Ok. Now help me get spotlight to index my mirror-style Google Drive. Seems only this level of genius could accomplish it.
• nepthar
  Thank you. Thank you.
• abhinavsns
  There is another app called notunes that I have been using for ages.
• valentiniljaz
  Yes. Yes. Thank you. I wanted something like for years.
• P-Nuts
  brew install notunesAnother fix for this bollocks
• Lapsa
  [dead]
• throfktjj
  Just uninstall it! Mac is simple if you know how to use it!
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  tobadzistsini
  Or just switch to an Android phone.