{"id":53155,"date":"2026-09-28T15:23:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T22:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=53155"},"modified":"2026-09-28T15:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T22:23:53","slug":"macos-golden-gate-music-app-still-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2026\/09\/28\/macos-golden-gate-music-app-still-crap\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Golden Gate Music app still crap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The latest thing in my &#8220;Apple really needs to get their shit together with the macOS Music (iTunes) app&#8221; file:<\/p>\n<p>If you have a compilation album where the tracks aren&#8217;t numbered (common for things like mashup compilations), the tracks display and play in alphabetical order\u2026but they display alphabetically by <em>track title<\/em>, and they play alphabetically by <em>artist<\/em>.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-28-at-2.07.00PM.png\" alt=\"Screenshot of Apple&#39;s Music app showing a &#39;Bootie Mashup Top 10 September 2026&#39; album. The tracks are listed alphabetically by track title, but red arrows show how they play alphabetically by artist.\" title=\"Screenshot 2026-09-28 at 2.07.00\u202fPM.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"749\" height=\"569\" \/><figcaption>In a sane world, the tracks would be played in the order they&#8217;re displayed. Apple&#8217;s Music app hasn&#8217;t existed in a sane world for years.<\/figcaption>Also still broken: Shuffle by album. (See <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2025\/09\/29\/macos-tahoe-music-app-breaks-shuffle\/\">my post from almost exactly a year ago about this issue<\/a> in macOS Tahoe.)<\/p>\n<p>In Album view, check <code>Controls &gt; Shuffle<\/code>, and make sure that Shuffle is set to <code>on<\/code> and <code>by albums<\/code>. Double-click the Albums option in the Library section of the sidebar to start audio playing. The first track of the first album by the alphabetically first artist (in my case, A-Ha) starts playing, and the &#8220;shuffle&#8221; option gets turned off (both in the menu and in the control toolbar).<\/p>\n<p>Same behavior when starting from Songs view.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure if there&#8217;s even a way to get shuffle by album working in <em>any<\/em> context at this point.<\/p>\n<p>Also, you used to be able to use a modifier key (I can&#8217;t remember if it was option or command, but I think option) to skip to the next album rather than the next track (or to jump the start of the current album). That functionality seems to be gone as well.<\/p>\n<p>I have a large collection (> 43K tracks, 142 days, or 330 GB) of music that lives on my computer. I often like to listen to albums, instead of individual tracks. The combination of those two factors means that &#8220;shuffle by album&#8221; (and &#8220;skip to the next album&#8221; or &#8220;start this album over&#8221;) were some of my more frequently used features of Music\/iTunes. And it&#8217;s been pissing me off for years now that these seemingly simple ways to listen to music are broken.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve looked at other music players, some of which are album centric, but\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most of them are built to tie into Music (the streaming service), not Music (the app\/iTunes) playing local files.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Those that do work with local files don&#8217;t have the ability to work with the Music\/iTunes &#8220;Music Library&#8221; file, which means they can&#8217;t update play counts, dates, ratings, or any of the other metadata.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Because I have far more music than I can (or want to) keep on my iPhone, I have lots of smart playlists set up in Music\/iTunes that control what music is on my iPhone at any given time.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Because non-Apple music apps can&#8217;t update the Music Library file, play counts and dates don&#8217;t get updated, and the smart playlists never update. So if I want the smart playlists to update so that the music selection on my iPhone updates, I&#8217;m locked in to using Apple&#8217;s Music app(s).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If Apple would\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>get their shit together for music lovers who prefer to own their music rather than stream everything and make Music\/iTunes a first-class local audio player again, or<\/li>\n<li>allow third-party music apps to update track metadata in the Music Library file,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2026then I&#8217;d probably be fine. Either option would work \u2014 but both would be best, because then Apple&#8217;s software would suck less, <em>and<\/em> third-party developers would be able to do more.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, I don&#8217;t expect that to happen anytime soon, if ever.<\/p>\n<p>(This rant <a href=\"https:\/\/tenforward.social\/@djwudi\/117350738755510476\">originally a Mastodon thread<\/a>.)<span hidden class=\"__iawmlf-post-loop-links\" data-iawmlf-links=\"[{&quot;id&quot;:17592,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/tenforward.social\\\/@djwudi\\\/117350738755510476&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260928223036\\\/https:\\\/\\\/tenforward.social\\\/@djwudi\\\/117350738755510476&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-09-29 06:11:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-09-29 06:11:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest in my ongoing string of grumbling about Apple&#8217;s lack of care for the non-streaming aspects of their macOS Music (iTunes) app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2039,2035],"tags":[118,5824],"class_list":["post-53155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-music","tag-apple","tag-apple-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}