Songs View Jumping to Random Spots After Action

After YEARS of having this issue, Apple Help was finally able to think of a creative solution (work-around).

Background: The issue seems to be related to the Scroll Bar itself and how it receives inputs.

The fix that worked for me: Go to System Preferences > General > "Click on the scroll bar to": 'Jump to the spot that's clicked'

If you select that option, it seems to stop happening. If this works for you then you're probably like me thinking "I can't believe it was that simple and I've been suffering for so long."

I just reported the issue to Apple, as recommended by several other commenters. However, I noticed that it doesn't seem to be happening on the latest version. I wrote the following to Apple:

The title says it all. When I rate a song with either the stars or the heart, the playlist jumps to a different scroll position in the list. This is happening in 1.2.5.7 on MacOS 12.7.2.

I can verify that it's not happening on 1.4.1.29 on MacOS 14.1.2, so you must have found and fixed it. Any chance of backporting it for those of us with hardware that works perfectly well, but can't be upgraded to the latest Apple Music (which is bundled with an OS not supported on this hardware)

FWIW, I had the same issue... until I hadn't:

- The Songs view jumping randomly and wouldn't let me scroll in any predictable way,

- Going to an Artist or an Album by typing its first letters didn't work any more in any predictable way either.

For the sake of precaution, I had waited for Monterey 12.1 before I updated yesterday 26-Dec... only to find that my 30K+ song library was now almost unusable (unbrowsable). Disappointed, cursing, and so on...

And then I noticed something, a status message on the lower left corner of the Music app saying something about checking audio levels (I can't remember the exact message). I clicked on it, and there was a count down... more exactly a counting up through my entire library of 30K+ songs/tracks. Somehow the Music app was in the process of scanning through the entire Library audio files.

Then I had doubts, because we've all seen how the Music app (and formerly iTunes) is very bad at handling multitasking. For ex when you have music streaming to AirPlay speakers, using the GUI to curate the library at the same time (or importing more music) would occasionally disturb playback.

Now that the scanning process has completed after a day of frustration, the issue no longer occurs. No more jumping randomly in Songs view, and searching for albums or artists with the keyboard works again.

Anything that sounds familiar to you? I realize some of you guys have had the issue for 2 months already, but for me it only lasted for one day after the upgrade to Monterey 12.1. Fingers crossed though.

Hi,

Until Apple fix this bug, I found a temporary solution.

When I want to go through all my songs (making new playlist or others) I first turn off wifi/network. Music application stops refreshing all the time and the jumping stops. When I finished I turn on the network again.

The 15.2 update fixed random jumping when adding songs to a playlist but it still jumps when you convert a song to an MP3.

You are not alone. I've been hard rating songs in playlists and everytime I edit a song's rating it jumps to a random other place in the playlist. Very frustrating! Also, when I press command+L to jump to the current song, the song is displayed at the bottom of the playlist where it used to be at the top. I have reported the bug on https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-music.html

Hope Apple fixes these issues in the next update! :)

2 issues will rectify itself if you turn off 'Sync Library' in Music > Preferences > General

1. No more auto jumping in Songs playlist after any editing action
2. The Now Playing menu bar will behave as expected; as in it will show the playing time and remaining time & the scrubber will show accordingly where you are in the music track

As soon as you turn it back on, these 2 issues return.

I've submitted a bug report via Apple Feedback

@Monqueles: Confirmed!

The bug did not occur (yet) being offline, when adding titles to lists or editing metadata/attributes of Apple Music local titles.

This would let me come to the next suspicion:

The bug could have something to do with the background process synch behavior of Apple Music. I'm working with an Apple cloud music library. So, when changing lists and song's attributes locally - by when would the cloud music library be 'informed'? Is there a listener pattern monitoring local updates and giving information to further synch processes? And if yes, does this process then modify the pointer's position of the cursor in the local list's original window?

Furthermore, and maybe interesting: When starting and running Apple Music in Safe Mode (Option + Command pressed before starting Apple Music) this bug does not occur (!) - as, I would assume, Safe Mode suppresses a couple of background processes - probably this unsolicited and potentially buggy synch behavior as well.

But this observation is not a solution - but, in the best case just a potential evidence where this bug might come from, and where Apple developers could have a look to eliminate the root cause.

--

this under: MBP16", 2021, 32GB with macOS Monterey 12.3.1 and Apple Music version 1.2.3.56

I have just bought a Mac Studio and have the same problem with Apple Music / Library / Songs.

I have found that tapping the up arrow (you may have to do it twice) returns you to your previous position after making changes.

Hope this helps in some small way. Certainly saves me a lot of time. Let's hope Apple is onto it by the time Ventura comes out.

Guys one workaround that helped me was creating a playlist out of whatever songs/library I was working on. Playlists do not jump around after you make a change etc. Not a fix for every situation but surely a helpful tool for some.

This is very clearly related to Cloud Music Library Sync. Someone else mentioned and I want to reiterate:

Any change you make to metadata gets sync'd to Cloud Music Library and then appears to bork (technical term) the view in Songs view. ANY change to the view gets you back in business. (change to another view, CMD +L, etc.) This is very time consuming for the user and has gone on long enough. Apple needs to fix this. Period.

In the meantime turn off Cloud Sync and do it manually (File - Library - Update Cloud Library). Ugh.

Hopefully this helps:

I've found that while in the Songs area if you add the "Cloud Status" column SOME of the problems get better. For example: the screen still jumps after making a change BUT now the up/down arrow solution that returns you to currently playing works again!

This is working for me - your mileage may vary - but Apple seriously does need to fix this fully.

Ventura!!! LET'S GO!!! It's fixed for me!! Finally...what a headache relieved.

It still jumps a tiny fraction of an inch but not enough to even notice or cause any need to scroll back up etc. Man this is awesome.

The fix that worked for me: Go to System Preferences > General > "Click on the scroll bar to": 'Jump to the spot that's clicked'.

Depending on which version OS you have, you can also find it by using the search tool within System Preferences. Type in "scroll bar"

After working with Music in this buggy state for the past couple of months it seems that the view jumping after changes are made to your library is directly related to the cloud music library.

The view jumping is an irritation but I've realised that when the view jumps, it is actually confirmation that the changes I make are successfully synched to the cloud music library. The opposite is also true, when the view doesn't jump after making changes it indicates that changes made are not successfully being synched to your cloud music library (i.e. the next time you open the Music app it seems all changes you made previously were lost, this is because it didn't properly sync to your cloud music library).

For a workaround to this issue please see my post at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253505541?answerId=256740907022#256740907022 (here I use deleting songs as an example, but the same goes for changing the star rating of a song to test whether your cloud library is successfully synching from your Mac).

Hope this is helpful to someone else as well ;)