In Tahoe, how do I move the play controls in Music?

Found it. Per tidbits.com (link below), you can disable Liquid Glass on a per-app basis. Stop the Music app, open the Terminal app and enter the command

defaults write com.apple.Music com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

then restart the Music app. This will revert the two most noxious changes to the app in my eyes: returns the controls to their rightful place at the top of the window, and restores the status bar at the bottom of the playlist in "View as Songs" mode.

You can revert to the godawful Liquid Glass nonsense by repeating the process and replacing YES with NO, if such a perverse urge should occur to you. More details about the process (and options to implement this system-wide) available at this link (many thanks to TidBits for publishing this):

TidBits article on disabling Liquid Glass

Stonewall Ballard wrote:

The Music app in Tahoe puts the main window play controls at the bottom, partly covering the song listing. How can I move this to the top where there's all that empty space?

As of right now I do not see this as possible...

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rscinbc wrote:

Found it. Per tidbits.com (link below), you can disable Liquid Glass on a per-app basis. Stop the Music app, open the Terminal app and enter the command

defaults write com.apple.Music com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

then restart the Music app. This will revert the two most noxious changes to the app in my eyes: returns the controls to their rightful place at the top of the window, and restores the status bar at the bottom of the playlist in "View as Songs" mode.

You can revert to the godawful Liquid Glass nonsense by repeating the process and replacing YES with NO, if such a perverse urge should occur to you. More details about the process (and options to implement this system-wide) available at this link (many thanks to TidBits for publishing this):

TidBits article on disabling Liquid Glass

This doesn't work on 26.1.

Looks like they've broken this workaround in 26.1. Music app has reverted to the unusable mess that originally shipped with Tahoe, and doesn't seem to be affected by the defaults command any more. Back to "firmly opposed" regarding migrating my daily driver MacBook Air to Tahoe.

I think the only thing we can really do is leave feedback on Apple’s page. I did this once before when they removed the search field in Songs view, there was enough pushback that Apple eventually reverted it. Hopefully the same happens here. Nothing to lose by letting them know! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Feedback - Apple Music - Apple

I can also confirm that 26.1 broke the "workaround" command-line fix. The controls are stuck at the bottom. The change also makes it difficult to see how many seconds/minutes a song has been playing and how many seconds/minutes are left until it is over. Previously that information was always displayed and now you have to hover the mouse pointer over a small specific area on the control panel to make that information visible. So for example trying to skip over the first 60 seconds of a song is now a chore. My theory is that whoever suggested and approved this change is NOT musical.

I totally agree and have filed a feedback report but looking at my iPad it's obvious that the Music App has been optimised for the mobile iOS26 where the play bar placement needs to stay where it is while the listing can be scrolled beneath.

So once again us iMac users get hung out to dry!

I've left feedback too.

It's not about what you get used to; it's about windowing. A Mac window can be moved down, so the bottom of the window goes off the bottom of the screen. You can't do this upwards, so it makes sense to put the controls at the top so they don't disappear off the screen.

This is basic UI design and it needs to be sorted out.

in 26.3 command line also does not work: it disables liquid looks but controls stay on bottom ... unfortunately. Every time I startup music on my old i9 macbook (non tahoe but ventura I think) it's such a relief to see the old interface...

please apple make an alternative 'old-school' option for Music in tahoe

Used the Feedback page.

You're welcome. To be fair, that article just dropped yesterday, and it didn't mention the Music app by name. Just had enough details to make me think, "Hmmm, I wonder if this would clean up some of the mess they've made of the Music app."

Since I posted earlier, I've noticed that it fixed another annoying problem. I have my playlists carefully arranged in nested playlist folders, and whenever I selected a song and used the context menu to show that song in a particular playlist, every last playlist folder and subfolder in the sidebar would expand. Since applying this fix it doesn't do that any more.

Finding this has brought me one step closer to migrating to Tahoe on my daily driver MacBook Air. Up to now I've upgraded my Mac mini to Tahoe but this and a couple other quirks have discouraged me from making the switch on my Air. I'll probably still wait until Adobe blesses Photoshop and Lightroom as Tahoe friendly, but I'm no longer firmly opposed to it.

Can you share exactly what you did. I tried entering in the following command into terminal and follow the steps, but after putting in the Code, closing Apple Music and then launching it again, the UI did not appear at all, but then after reverting the code it went back to the standard. Look with the play back controls at the bottom. Would love to change this. Can you share with work for you? Thanks so much.

I closed the Music app first, issued the defaults command exactly as it appeared in my post above, then restarted the Music app and it immediately appeared with the UI looking much like it did in Sequoia.