How do I stop Apple Music from launching whenever I connect a Bluetooth headset to my MacBook?

SOLVED...I think.

OK previously I said that clicking the "repeat" and/or "shuffle" icons off and then shutting down Apple Music would result in it not re-opening automatically the next time a bluetooth device was connected. It worked for me for a while but then all of a sudden the fix stopped working and the f-ing application started opening again automatically. Super frustrating. Dove back into it again and I think I found the actual solution.

1) Turn "repeat" off by clicking the icon to the right of the play button until it is greyed out

2) Click the icon with three lines and three dots in the upper right hand corner of the application to show the "Playing Next" queue. Apple likes to autofill this queue with whatever random stuff they want. Select the "Clear Queue" button to empty it.

3) Advance the song that is currently playing to ~3 seconds from the end and allow it to finish playing. Make sure that the app does not begin playing a new song and that it is just sitting there idle with no songs displayed in the song bar.

4) Shut down the Apple Music app. Now try connecting your wifi headphones and hopefully the application will stay closed!

Hoping this works for you all! It seems to work on my computer. Of course if you ever do use Apple Music (intentionally or inadvertantly) then it is likely you will have to repeat these steps.

In my case, I've NEVER used apple music. It opens and prompts me to sign in. You have to escape the signin window and quickly hit CMD-Q to quit Apple Music before the signin popup comes back. Nightmare if you aren't fast with key combos as you can't close the app.

So while it seems you are addressing the but from within apple music, there should be a solution for people that have never used it. For instance in the old days there was an option about autoplaying (or not) CDs and DVDs in the optical drive. Default was autoplay which was annoying, but you could turn it off.

What I don't understand here is there is nothing for Apple Music to play. So even if I hit the play button or something on my headphones or keyboard... I wouldn't expect apple to try and force me into an app I have never used that has no music in it. Pretty lousy experience.

They need to have an option to disable auto-opening music/video apps so I can use whatever audio/video app I want (perhaps varying by file extension) and then allow media controls (play/pause/etc) to affect whatever the open and most recently used app is. If no app is open, don't do anything unless I have enabled the "auto-open" option and selected a default app.

Just dreaming here.

My new favorite issue is when I am watching a Udemy video on Safari that CrApple Music decides it needs to interrupt and start playing. On refresh of the Safari page, CrApple music also kicks in.

Here is the fix:

• Do not use CrApple Safari, Use Edge or Chrome, which is a browser actually known to work. If you are using a real operating system such as Windows, then you will be able to sync your passwords and settings there also.
• Do not load any of your music in CrApple Music. Use a third party solution which CrApple doesn't manage, and really has no awareness of. Honestly, it has no awareness of its own products as is proven by this thread.
• When you are finally done with CrApple products and want something that works, Windows has worked for me for decades. Microsoft doesn't seem to have the "We know best" complex on its users like CrApple does.

Also to secure your Macintrash from theft, humble yourself and tell everyone you have one. Nobody will want it, or want to steal it. You'll be stuck with it that way, unfortunately.

(0)

As noted previously, try https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes.

tt2

Thanks!

This solved my problem.-)

//Martin

Hey there and welcome to Apple Support Communities chopper-DeloitteAU,

We can certainly understand your concern and can help provide some insight.

We recommend checking out these steps for additional information on what to do if Apple Music keeps popping up when you connect your headphones. You can see if the app is set to open automatically by following these steps.

" Add or remove automatic items

1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu  > System Settings, click General  in the sidebar, then click Login Items on the right. (You may need to scroll down.)
2. Do any of the following:

• Add a login item: Click the Add button  below the list of items, select a document, folder, app, server, or other item, then click Add.
• Remove a login item: Select the name of the item you want to prevent from opening automatically, then click the Remove button  below the list.
• Allow apps to run in the background: Allow apps to perform tasks when the app isn’t open, such as checking for software updates or syncing data. "

For additional information, check out this link: Open items automatically when you log in on Mac - Apple Support

These steps will help ensure your device is working with ease and can fix common issues like the ones you’re experiencing.

Kindest regards!

Hi chopper-DeloitteAU,

It's possible that your headphones are sending a "play" command when connected similar to the function mapped to the F8 key. If no other media sources are present, Apple Music will launch with this function by default.

While there are no default settings to prevent this action, you may test with other Bluetooth headsets to see if a different set does not solicit the same reaction when paired.

Regards.

Graphicstation wrote:

Ugh... had such high hopes this would work, but did not. My Bluetooth soundbar, every time it goes into standby, then off, the music app launches, this happens at least 10 times a day to the point I'm ready to un-install Apple Music app.

As noted earlier in the thread, noTunes really seems to be a viable solution. I've seen multiple users report success.

tt2

I was able to get it to stop by changing the play setting on Apple Music. Click the little autoplay arrow next to the fast forward button until autoplay is disabled. Then close the program and test the connection problem. I think that when autoplay is on, the program thinks you want play to resume as soon as possible so it opens the app. Hope that works for you

The app lives in /System/Applications.

Unfortunately looks like System Integrity Protection (SIP) prevents you from removing or making it so this is not an executable file.

% sudo chmod -x /System/Applications/Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Music
Password:
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Applications/Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Music: Operation not permitted

You can reboot to recovery, disable SIP with `csrutil disable` and then you can probably remove it... but chances are this will break other things as apple seems to want to hard-wire their music app/service into macos so you can't remove it or turn it off.

You should be able to select a default music player in the same way you can select default video player or browser. And the bug about auto-starting the music player when bluetooth headphones hang up a call should be fixed. Really annoying if you need to escape the apple music login prompt and quickly quit the apple music app before the login prompt pops up again a second later.

[Edited by Moderator]

My new laptop (M3Max MBP) is running 14.4.1 and still has the same problem.

Seems to occur every time I'm using bluetooth headset for a video call. As soon as the video call ends (browser stops using the bluetooth headset/mic device) apple music app opens. I've never used apple music app and don't want to. So this is super awful user experience.

I feel like maybe Apple folks are in a little bit of a filter bubble using the same app/hardware combinations and so they don't run into these bugs/UX-issues themselves...or they would have been annoyed and fixed them already.

I don't know why but in the last years it feel like the user experience and bugginess of macOS has been getting worse and worse. I'm a tech guy (devops and software dev) and usually have no problem figuring out problems between the chair and the keyboard (ie network mis-config issues on linux)...so it really seems like these are real issues that just somehow don't get noticed in the Apple world.

Thanks but this app is an always running process that monitors for launching apps and then force kills it if it is itunes or apple music. I could do the same thing with a simple bash script.

So basically it is a hack/automation of me manually closing apple music every time. It isn't a real fix to the underlying user experience bug. I shouldn't have to resort to hacks to work around a bug that has been present since at least Big Sur if not earlier.

There are two issues UX here, the autolaunching of some music player and the selection of music player of choice if autolaunching is the preferred behaviour. There is also a potential bug which is whether or not it is intended/expected behaviour that a music player should launch when a bluetooth headset connects. In this case the bluetooth headset was already connected to macOS the difference is the device becoming available again for other apps at the end of a conference call. So this to me feels closer to a bug than just a bad UX choice (or lack of choice).

macOS/osx used to have to have a setting that was something along the lines of "should I auto-launch movie/quicktime when DVD is inserted". You could easily say...no thanks...just because I insert a DVD doesn't mean I want to play it.

Maybe this only affects a small number of mac users or nobody at apple uses the very uncommon Bose QC__ bluetooth headsets for conference calls.

firtree wrote:

I downloaded the NoTunes app but it doesn't launch. What's the secret?

Apple Music is driving me crazy. It seems with every "upgrade" I dislike Apple more and more. I've been using Apple since the late 80's. Love has consistently turned to the opposite. What is this crappola they keep giving us?

Try If an app is not from the Mac App Store - Apple Support.

tt2

Another thought... it may be related to "resuming" (music) after a call interrupted music that was playing.

Imagine the behaviour where you are listening to music and have an incoming call (e.g. facetime/whatsapp/etc). As the call rings the music is paused (or at least when you answer). When you hangup the call the music generally automatically resumes. So there is some type of play/resume or call over signal that is triggering a play/resume as soon as a web call ends.

The bug in this case is that apple music is trying to play/resume when it was not running/playing in the first place and has no music in the library and has never been used (ever) on any of my devices.

So the question is... are the bluetooth headphones sending some bogus signal or is this related to some "call" API that is being used at an OS level for web calls and how the call ended event is happening.

AFAIK people with airpods don't have this problem, and maybe that is what everyone at apple uses...which is why they haven't noticed/fixed this bug. So is it an OS level thing with (web)call apis or is it something on the bluetooth protocol. If it is on the bluetooth side... then are all the third party manufacturers doing something wrong or do the airpods do something special to avoid this behaviour.

This might be totally off base, but just another idea about what logical area the bug may be in.

Would be logical that most web calls on macOS (zoom, meet, teams, whatsapp, signal, facetime, etc) are using Apple's CallKit APIs (or something similar) to coordinate audio with other apps on the OS (ie pause music when a call comes in).

> coordinate your calling services with other apps and the system.

CXEndCallAction | Apple Developer Documentation

Just guessing as I don't have access to the CallKit or macos source. But I poked around Signal and their webrtc video/audio calling definitely integrates with CallKit. CallKit just lets the os coordinate when a call is happening/ending. Music apps likely use different API that may hook into same events behind scenes...for instance here is an example of how music player resumes after a call or siri interruption:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/63184647/

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfaudio/avaudiosession

As Music/iTunes was/is deeply integrated into macos, they may not be using public APIs or event hooks. For instance you can't turn off Music or prevent it from launching (you can only kill it as it launches using helper scripts).... so there has to be some OS-level code (or service you can't disable) that is listening for certain events/states and launching the app.