Finally! This is <i>so annoying</i> for Spotify users. Every time the system starts up, and Spotify is configured to start at startup, but you haven't interacted with the window yet, then press the physical play button on the keyboard—instead of starting playback as you'd expect, the system starts Apple Music. It drives me mad.
I've been using macOS full time for about four years. Prior to that I had been running some flavor of Linux for about a decade.<p>I moved to macOS exclusively because I had had extremely bad luck with Asus hardware [1] and I wanted to guarantee that my next laptop had minimally-decent build quality, and I was working for Apple at the time so I had a considerable discount on Macbooks.<p>I still really like my laptop (it's about four years old and the hardware is still ship-shape), but I've grown really frustrated with macOS. It's not <i>horrible</i>, it's still Unix so I still have a decent command line and access to good dev tools, but I feel like I'm constantly trying to work around the direction that Apple is pushing. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally launched Apple Music, and as apps like this show, I'm clearly not alone.<p>Part of the issue isn't even that it's the default behavior exactly, it's that it <i>includes</i> all this crap I don't want. I don't want Apple Maps and Apple Music and all the other tiny little apps that depend on Apple services pre-installed. I wish there were a "minimal" macOS, that gave you a desktop and a terminal and a few other basic utilities [2], and that's basically it. It can't launch Apple Music if Apple Music isn't installed.<p>Once the community fixes up the Linux support on the T2 Macbooks, I'm moving over to NixOS minimal full time.<p>[1] I swore a blood oath to never buy an Asus product again; the laptop literally started to fall apart after only about a year of usage, and it was almost never transported anywhere (it lives right next to my bed). The plastic holding things together started to delaminate and I had to do a ton of surgery on it in the form of Gorilla Glue and clamps. Never again.<p>[2] Disk manager, for example.
This is the kind of abuse of power that I wish antitrust regulators would focus on.<p>Apple, Inc owns an operating system and a music app, and leverages its control of the OS to secure an unearned advantage for its music app over its rivals.<p>Apple is not the only perp here, every single large tech company abuses platform power for competitive advantage in unrelated industries.
I remember my Macbook 2019 Pro for its bad hardware: horrendous touchbar and terrible ports (no HDMI, no magnetic charging, no USB-A..)<p>But the software wasn't polished either: You can't use it in closed ("clamshell") mode, because it shuts down and you can't configure it. You need a 3rd party software to keep it on.<p>But you also can't keep it closed because then you can't reach the fingerprint sensor. You see: iPhones can't use fingerprint recognition because they don't have fingerprint sensors, iPhones use facial recognition. But Macs <i>do</i> have fingerprint sensors, but <i>can not</i> use facial recognition (for example using an IR camera like Windows Hello)<p>It's amazing how MacOS lacks features that everyone knows Windows has supported since XP days. ("When you close the lid > Power down / Keep running")
What does Apple gain by leaving off the setting to choose whether or not to open Apple Music? Surely their pro audio users don't want it popping up just because they connected headphones.
it's shocking apple gets a pass on this. Not only for anti-trust reasons (it's giving Internet Explorer), but also that this is starting to remind me of all of the junk/bad settings packaged on Windows PCs eons ago.<p>Honestly, in some ways, a clean windows install feels like it less junk on it than a fresh Mac install. Maybe soon people will be building custom MacOS install media like folks did in the XP days, to trim the fat and make the default settings non-insane.<p>Another example of this is Pages, which INSISTS on being the default CSV viewer, no matter how much I check the "use this application in the future box." My only alternative is to uninstall it completely.
superfocused utilities to provide inexplicably missing functionality in macOS are a time honored tradition, but this may be the absolute peak of that genre of app
Now I need one to prevent automatic clipboard sharing via handoff without turning off handoff completely.<p>Believe it or not Apple, some people use multiple machines for different purposes and automatically passing my clipboard between them is an annoyance at best. I'm happy with it just being shared while I explicitly remote from one machine to another.
<p><pre><code> launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
</code></pre>
Does this not solve for all activities, such as from pressing the right buttons by mistake?
Ah, this is a nice find! I've used Santa[1] to accomplish this with a silent block, which always felt like overkill when I was using it for solely that purpose.<p>1. <a href="https://github.com/google/santa">https://github.com/google/santa</a>
Every time I switch off my bluetooth Plantronics headset Apple music starts. Why? Because Apple.<p>Another clear sign Apple doesn't really care about it's users, it really cares about the bottom line, and getting people to sign up for their services.
If you download the free Apple Configurator 2 app, you can create a provisioning profile that disables Apple Music, too. It takes only a moment to install it on the local system, no MDM required.
Now I want this for my phone<p>When I plug it into the car, it automatically starts playing the same song on Apple Music<p>I want it to start playing Spotify instead, but that can’t be configured<p>Either I turn off CarPlay altogether, or I let it do what it wants
The need for such an app is beyond stupid on Apple's side, and I'm saying this as an Apple Music user.<p>I am an Apple Music user and I have Sennheiser headset that connects both to my iPhone and Mac. Great, no problem up to here.<p>However, when I, say, browse Instagram on my phone, after closing it on my phone, Apple Music opens and starts playing.<p>Every. Single. Time.<p>I don't want a software that prevents Apple Music launch, I don't want to delete Apple Music (even if it was possible) as I sometimes DO use Apple Music on my Mac, I just don't want to to open and start playing the topmost song in my library on my Mac every single time after any inline media on Instagram stops playing on my iPhone.<p>This bug has been present for many macOS and iOS versions for many years, and Apple does nothing about it.<p>After reading it again, I think "beyond stupid" is an understatement.<p>Unbelievable.
What’s the technical reason for the launch? Lots of people report Music launching when they connect a headset, but it doesn’t happen to me with my Mac and headset. Do some headsets (like many cars…) issue a ‘play’ command to the device after connection?<p>Not trying to argue that Apple shouldn’t provide a way to stop this - just curious about why it happens at all.
For me, this works for the "play/pause" button on the keyboard but not if you have your Airpods double-tap or squeeze gesture to also do "play/pause" - that also launches Apple Music! Has anyone else reproduced this?
I had this app for ages but never set it up correctly.<p>Protip: install via brew, change defaults to open spotify instead and hide icon. Instructions here:<p><a href="https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes">https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes</a>
This could be a useful alternative:<p><a href="https://github.com/quentinlesceller/macmediakeyforwarder">https://github.com/quentinlesceller/macmediakeyforwarder</a>
So how do I prevent iTunes starting anytime I want to quickly listen to a music file.
Its super annoying since it takes a while, pop ups, and i have to right click to close it. Preview doesn't work for some reason in my system. And i just want to play the track for a couple seconds to know what it is, then move on to the next one to find what I'm looking for. Itynes takes like a minute. And I hate it when apps ignore the x button from closing them.
That really don't happen to me. Now if it could rip out dictation support that would be wonderful. It happens multiple times a day that macOS pops up "Would you like to enable dictation"... No, I would like to never ever talk to my computer.
Reminds me of the last six months before I switched from JPEG to WebP on my web sites. I still had a 2013 Mac Mini that didn’t support WebP in Safari because Apple hadn’t built WebP into the system libraries and they chose not to support my machine. That was enough reason for me to not make the switch (any economic benefit is diminished if you have to keep two copies of each image.)<p>I felt so infantilized because something that is just a userspace thing is locked to the OS.<p>To their credit, Apple did eventually enable WebP for those mac’s but I hate being dependent like that and having to develop software for people who are likewise dependent.
Ah, helpful. I've had to stop using my Bluetooth headphones with the laptop because you can't stop Music from launching. Infuriating that macOS doesn't have a toggle for that behaviour (but I can understand why.)
Yeah wow what a great operating system that needs a whole other program to keep a particular one from launching. I'm totally going to recommend MacOS to my mother, aunt, uncle, cousin, cybernetic dog and everyone else for the great user experience of being forced to do what apple HQ wants
Another frustrating behavior form Apple is:<p>* My macbook will leave bluetooth on while it's closed and asleep.<p>* My BT headphones will connect to my phone and laptop if they're both on me. (It supports 2 simultanous connections)<p>* If I play music or podcasts I can pause through the headphones<p>* If I try to play it again it the "Play" action goes the macbook. (Which is effectively off so nothing happens)<p>* I now cant play anything on my phone. Hitting play on the app will fail.<p>* If I open the macbook now it will open Apple Music<p>* Otherwise I can hit the play/pause on my headphones then hit play on my phone it will work again.<p>What a bizarre useless behaviour. Why not just turn bluetooth OFF when my laptop is asleep. (It will also remain connected to wifi hotspot prevent my phone from auto-disabling wifi hotspot which has caught me a few times)