Apple Music crashing since updating to iOS 16.4

Since updating my iPhone 14 Pro to iOS 16.4, Apple Music has been crashing in a peculiar way. When listening to a smart playlist on shuffle, it plays the first song through and then crashes 1-2 minutes into the second song. This doesn’t happen if I have the playlist downloaded, just when it’s streaming. Talked with several customer service reps today. Here’s what we tried with no luck. Toggled Bluetooth and screen time off and back on. Deleted the smart playlist and created it anew. Reinstalled the Music app. Wiped the phone and restored from a backup. Wiped the phone and tried it on a fresh device with none of my apps and data. Customer service had me do a screen recording of it and send it to them which they have escalated to a higher department. Any ideas?

iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Mar 29, 2023 5:40 PM

Best reply

Metaligoat

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Apr 13, 2023 11:50 PM

This is my scenario on 16.4.1 with music stored locally on the phone:

click either Songs or Albums
click Shuffle
song starts playing but all buttons become unresponsive. Playback stops about 20 seconds later (guessing, I didn’t time it) and app crashes.

This is NOT occurring when shuffling within a playlist, individual artist, or single album. It is only happening when shuffling the entire library via Songs or Albums. I have not added or removed anything from the library since prior to the 16.4.1 update, and it was working then, so it seems reasonable to conclude the issue was introduced with 16.4.1 (or possibly 16.4, I don’t remember if I used an all library shuffle while on that version, but I definitely did on 16.3.x and prior with no issues). I don’t remember the exact song count but I think it’s somewhere in the 10k-12k range.

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38 replies

May 20, 2023 6:46 AM in response to slothpower

16.4.1 seems to improve music a little bit, however, Bluetooth still crashes constantly with my car stereo.

16.5 has done absolutely nothing to improve on 16.4.1.

I completely reset my network settings, erased, and repaired all my Bluetooth devices, and even completely restored my iPhone from my back up… nothing fixes the Bluetooth problem.

16.x will go down as being one of the worst iOS versions next to 8.0.1 bricking phones…

Jul 9, 2023 7:42 PM in response to slothpower

Song art is no problem for me, but trying to add custom artwork to a playlist first gives me the spinning rainbow ball and then Music crashes. This ALWAYS happens, even with empty playlists. Exceptionally annoying, considering that I use the Music app pretty much all day, all week. I like organizing my songs and playlists in a certain way, and I like putting custom artwork on my playlists for the aesthetic and knowing what's where. This has been happening at least since Mojave. And yes, it's the same for songs, audiobook files, and compilations.

Jul 22, 2023 1:20 AM in response to LUVtan66

Yeah, there is still a huge Bluetooth problem with iOS 16.5.1. Ever since 16.4, Bluetooth has been unreliable. Randomly disconnecting from my car, having problems reconnecting. Sometimes when it reconnect, it will play the song for a second, cut out for a second, play again, cut out again. Usually about 10 or 12 times before the song actually stays playing. I took my laptop out to the car, Bluetooth ran perfectly on it…. iOS 16.x.x sucks! I hope to God 17 fixes this crap

Nov 11, 2023 5:24 PM in response to slothpower

Apple Music doesn’t clear the cache. It’s a bug with the JavaScript code that downloads songs from the server. The smaller your device’s SSD is, the more it will crash (e.g. 128 GB iPhone SE). It’s less noticeable on 1TB iPhones, which is why some people say it works fine.

You have to manually delete the app and that will clear the cache. It might free up 30GB, depending on how much data/music you consume.

However, deleting the app may delete your playlists.

So, I would export all playlists from Apple Music on a Mac, to make an archive, and then delete Apple Music on your iPhone to free up 30GB. It will behave normally until your iPhone runs out of space (again).

I hope that makes sense.

Mar 29, 2023 9:26 PM in response to MissLydia17

Same here. It's frustrating. I have it on shuffle. If I delete a song it starts playing the next one but the screen freezes. After 10-15 seconds the app crashes. Terrible