{"id":52464,"date":"2025-09-29T16:37:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T23:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=52464"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:37:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T23:37:27","slug":"macos-tahoe-music-app-breaks-shuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2025\/09\/29\/macos-tahoe-music-app-breaks-shuffle\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Tahoe Music (app) breaks shuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sigh. Shuffle by Album seems to be broken in Apple Music (the app, not the service; what is it with companies giving their apps and services identical generic names?) under macOS 26 Tahoe.<\/p>\n

After starting Music, if I go to my library’s Album view (that is, songs that are downloaded and stored locally), the shuffle icon in the new control bar appears to be glowing (with a bad effect\"The), but if you check options, through the menu bar, Controls > Shuffle<\/b> shows “Off” and by “Albums”. If I switch that to “On”, I get about a two-second SPoD (Spinning Pizza of Death) \u2014 which seems really<\/em> odd for an audio player on an M4 Mac Mini \u2014\u00a0before it responds again.<\/p>\n

Pre-Tahoe, I could either hit “play” or double-click the “Albums” item in the Music app sidebar, and Music would randomly choose an album, play it through, then randomly play another album.<\/p>\n

Now, If I hit the “play” control, Music starts playing the first album in however the album list is sorted; I usually keep my Album display sorted by year, so it always starts playing the oldest item in my collection (Victrola 88049, Enrico Caruso performing “Ideale (My Ideal!)”). If I double-click the “Albums” item in the sidebar, Music starts playing the first song of the first album sorted alphabetically by artist (for me, that’s “Take on Me” off of A-Ha’s Hunting High and Low<\/cite>). Either way, though the shuffle icon is still glowing, checking the menu bar’s Controls > Shuffle<\/b> shows that that’s now set back to “Off”.<\/p>\n

If I let it play as-is, it just plays through the album. If I set Shuffle back to “on”, then it start shuffling by song, not by album. Well\u2026sometimes. Right now, I can’t get it to shuffle at all, even though Shuffle is turned on, both in the menu bar and with the glowing shuffle icon in the control bar.<\/p>\n

Revised original line: Shuffle is either partially broken (only shuffling by song, not by album) or entirely (not shuffling at all), possibly randomly choosing (…shuffling?…) between the two options.<\/p>\n

I know Apple’s gone all-in on their streaming Music service, but I really wish they still had a few<\/em> people assigned to making sure they had a decent basic audio player. Music just gets worse and worse for those of us who have extensive non-streaming collections.<\/p>\n

Environment:<\/p>\n