Stop the Apple Music app from launching

bobbiechen 605 points 242 comments June 08, 2026
lowtechguys.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (20 comments)

ericskiff

Thank you, this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I mis-click my airpod and suddenly this app I've never used and don't want launches

verdverm

I've been using this for a while now: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes Source code for this one: https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/MusicDecoy

valentiniljaz

Yes. Yes. Thank you. I wanted something like for years.

bigyabai

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is the default behavior for a supposedly premium operating system.

hmokiguess

for me it's when I open an audio file and it automatically launches it AND adds it to my music library, the adding to library is what I hate, then I have to delete it and specifically choose "Keep file"

nottorp

Lovely. I don't press the play button by mistake much, but if i touch my BT headphones wrong...

lxgr

Reading this title made “The Miracle of Joey Ramone” by U2 play in my head.

sph

The lack of applications like this is why macOS will always be a superior alternative to Linux. /s for the sarcasm impaired

innagadadavida

The same thing happens with iPhone and car bluetooth. It is super annyoing and many times, a podcast will be playing in the background while the car has FM/radio selected. This is incredibly frustrating and bad user experience. The worst part is it is not clear if this is Apple's fault or some buggy old firmware in the car's audio stack that is at fault (this happens consistently on 2017 Tesla Model S).

nepthar

Thank you. Thank you.

skarz

Every time I get in my car the Apple Music app prompts me to resubscribe with a full screen popup. Usually it tries 2-3 times before it stops.

watersb

From TFA, via StackExchange: launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist will quit the process responsible for the madness (rcd, the "remote control daemon"). You'll have to remember to re-load this thing if you want the default behavior. Or if you encounter other unexpected situations, to restore the default insanity. It might be easier to run this app instead; then you have an icon in your GUI desktop environment and an app you can simply quit to restore defaults. Plus this app allows you to assign any app to the "Play" media event.

riazrizvi

It's very sad to see Apple using these lowbrow Microsoft tactics. Press ganging your users into launching your other shit product is brand cannibalism.

r0fl

I deleted mine because of this problem I have the podcast app and so many times I would click an AirPod to resume and it would play a random song

stmw

This is great! We need something similar for knowledgeconstructiond and several other overly insistent Apple software components.

tobadzistsini

Or just switch to an Android phone.

dlev_pika

I wish there was a way to stop it from ever appearing as spotlight result - when I type ‘music’, the first result (always) should be the music app I use, not their stuff

hollowonepl

This is nice, I recently vibe coded my own media player as I mostly listen to my own digitalized audio library and all software available today sucks to cover my scenario or consumes way too much resources by my taste… but random triggering Apple Music happens so often and it’s so annoying. Good article explaining how the trick works, should be easy to self-implement without installing another 3rd party software from nowhere known source

bound008

PSA: Its Unix. sudo chmod -x /Applications/Music.app edit: sorry about that. this used to work before the Music.app moved to /System/Applications

titzer

I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I had ripped myself from CD, but I had a handful of albums I bought of iTunes and even some TV shows. When they wholesale abandoned iTunes and deleted from Mac OS in favor of...whatever Apple Music is, I knew I'd never trust them again. I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even used AIMP for a while, but nowadays I think I'll just vibe code my own with my own interface and rely on the local file system and folder mounts to do the job. I really love this new era where I can just use AI to build a custom thing for myself and forget about all the predatory crap out there, especially from the OS vendors. I don't need streaming, I don't want it. I would have kept buying albums off iTunes, but since it sucks so much I'll just buy it on CD, thanks.

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