iOS 16.2 Gapless Playback

As the original poster mentioned, this is getting so old. This year the issue popped up in April then it was fixed with an update. Now in December the issue has popped up again. I am getting extremely frustrated with Apple and their developers. Pretty poor development and release cycles where a bug keeps getting introduced again. Poor QA and poor development procedures. Seems like developers cannot merge code correctly if they keep introducing a bug that was supposedly fixed. I'm talking from experience since I'm a senior software engineer with decades of experience. Usually when bugs keep coming back its because the developer had a merge conflict and was lazy and just fixed it with taking their version, while reverting code that was correct. Can Apple start looking at their software release process and stop bringing back old bugs?

I can’t believe that we’re ending 2022 and Apple still haven’t provided a robust gapless playback to Apple Music. One iOS update will fix the bug and then another one comes along and breaks it again. It makes for such an annoying and unenjoyable listening experience. Given how much we pay in subscriptions, you’d hope that Apple developers could have found a solid fix by now and given it the attention it deserves.

This: iOS 16.3 RC (20D47) - Releases - Apple Developer

It's a release candidate: it's not being distributed to end-users yet.

We can install it and test things on their behalf before it gets released to everyone.

Currently experiencing the same issue. It frustratedly takes you out of the moment when listening to an album in which the artist intended to have a seamless transition between songs. Fix this Apple Music please!

Yes I have this too. I use the HomePod for endless white noise for sleeping and it’s so annoying that every few minutes it stops for like a second or two. I thought it might have had something to do with the new HomeKit Architecture upgrade but maybe it’s just an iOS/HomePod 16.2 issue.

Yes, I've been experiencing the same lack of gapless playback on my new iPhone 14 with IOS 16.2. Today, it inserted a 3 second gap at the end of the 9/12/90 Playing in the Band -> Crazy Fingers by the Grateful Dead while in my car. It was very annoying. I hope Apple fixes this ASAP.

I have had a tough day with this issue. I purchased a concert recording by one of my favorite artists and I thought there was a corrupt download as this issue was fixed after iOS 15.4...I had to buy the download again and I wasted money and time on this, today on Christmas. I am on an iPhone 12 Max.

As a fix, I am using Foobar 2000 and the playback of gapless recordings is flawless...it just has a wonky looking interface.

Yes just bought a new iPhone 14 512 GB for music and already hearing gaps between songs. Soooo frustrating! You would think for the money they charge for these supposed upgraded phones I was forced to upgrade, I’d be getting better technology. Had this issue before with my 256 GB iPod before around 15.4. Apple please fix this issue so I can enjoy listening to my music on your high priced device that doesn’t work properly.

I wish I had seen this before upgrading.

Same here (iPhone 13 mini with latest iOS): the same transition at times works as intended, at times has that annoying gap that renders listening to live recordings and workout mixes almost useless.

It's a big problem when I use my iPhone and iPad for LesMills class. But I found a possible solution. You can try to remove the MUSIC app (like totally delete it), reinstall it from App Store, and then re-import songs. Gapless is back!

I've tried this solution on my iPhone 11 Pro and iPad 6th Gen.

Not a great idea to be honest. I tried it last year. Took me hours to get all albums and separate songs I had as well on the phone and it didn't do the trick after I checked. Better to wait for the next update mate. Last wait was around 2,5 months as that's the service they give you @Apple......

Apple has become like a ****** hardware wholesaler of very expensive products. They don't test iOS updates before they release them and then have you wait for months before they fix a mistake they released a year before as well. And then they create this ****** forum where we can help each other fixing the errors their developers have created! Shame on Apple.

I am having the same issue and was actually relieved to hear that it's an iPhone software problem. For me, it affects work. As a fitness instructor (dance teachers will be in the same boat), that 1/2 beat of silence between every second or third song puts us 1/2 beat off in our choreography and makes for a stilted, much less professional class.

I'm frustrated that I have to hold my breath with every iPhone update to see if it will adversely affect my job!

This is by no means a solution, but a workaround I found rather effective for me: considering that you're not very likely to switch between tracks while the fitness class is in progress (otherwise you wouldn't need gapless playback), would importing a full-length mix as a single file instead of importing it "split" into tracks work for you?

I'm doing this for training mixes right now and, although not being optimal, it works.

Instead of ripping a CD with iTunes and then syncing it to the iPhone, I'm just ripping it with CDex (I use a very old version for that, I wouldn't advise anyone to use any of the recent ones), then adding the mp3 file to the iTunes library, and copying it manually onto the iPhone.

Still I'm hoping Apple get their stuff together and solve this issue (hopefully forever this time), but at least I have a workaround to exploit now.

Hopefully soon, I'm not that keen on installing a development release (although being a release candidate it's most likely final) on my phone.

I'm already doing that on my PC after all (Windows user here: everything that gets pushed to Windows Update is a beta, if we're lucky).