Apple Music (formerly iTunes) is a huge music management app for macOS and Windows. It has changed and evolved so much since its launch in 2001 that you may not know everything the software has to offer. It has grown almost as fast as the digital music industry.
Whether you've switched to Apple Music as your default audio player or are wondering if it's worth the switch, these little-known features will help you better understand the app's capabilities — beyond Basic features like streaming music from the web and playing local files.
Note: The instructions below describe the features as they appear in Apple Music for macOS. All of the same features are available in the Windows version, but may not be in the exact same place or on the same menu.
Build a radio station based on your favorite songs
If there's a track you particularly like in Apple Music, you can build a dedicated radio station for that track – as long as you're a subscriber to the Apple Music streaming service. With a specific song selected in the app, open the menu Song and choose Create Station. This is a really good way to discover new artists similar to your favorites.
Switch to mini player
Apple Music comes with a useful little player. To access this player, open the menu Window and choose Mini Player to view (click and drag on the player to move). Through Music > Settings > Advancedyou can find a checkbox to keep this player on top of other program windows on macOS, so you always have access to key playback controls.
Cut out the beginning and ending
You can set timestamps for individual songs in Apple Music to tell the app where to start and stop whenever the song is played on which device – for example, you can cut out the intro or outro. long. Right-click a track, then select Get Info and switch to tab Optionswhere you will find the fields Start and Stop. Click OK to confirm.
Adjust your suggestions
Not every track in your library is 5-star, and tracks you don't like so much shouldn't influence the recommendations you see on Apple Music – even if you want to keep tracks intact there. To make a song have less influence on suggested music, right-click on it and select Suggest Less.
Delete duplicates
You don't want your playlists and Mac storage to be unnecessarily cluttered with duplicate files, which can cause problems for both local and streamed music. Open the menu Filethen select Library and Show Duplicate Items. You can then view all the tracks in your library multiple times and delete unnecessary duplicates.
Switch to lossless audio
The Apple Music streaming service now supports lossless audio – up to 24-bit/192 kHz across the entire catalog – and you can switch to higher resolution audio if you don't mind the additional requirements. about bandwidth and download file size. To turn lossless audio on or off in the app, go to Music > Settings > Playback.
Add comments to the track
You can add commentary to any track in your library. Just right click on a song, then select Get Info and go to tab Details. You can use the comments field to label songs any way you like – like instrumentals, favorites, upbeat songs, or good oldies – and then set up a popular playlist. intelligent to select tracks using comment data.
Normalize volume
It's annoying that different songs are recorded at different volume levels, leaving you constantly searching for the volume slider when a new track starts. To prevent this from happening, open the menu Musicselect Settingsthen go to tab Playback and enable the feature Sound Check. Apple Music will then automatically adjust.
Skip songs when shuffling music
Many of us turn to the shuffle feature so we don't have to manually queue up albums and songs, but not all songs can be shuffled by choice – for example, you might want to cut ditch the long rock songs or spoken word skits. To do this, right-click a song, then select Get Info: on tabs Optionsplease check the box Skip when shufflingthen click OK.
Create group playlists
Here's a new feature you might have overlooked: You can now work on playlists with others in Apple Music, which is perfect for parties or long road trips, for example. . With the playlist on screen, click the invite people button on the right (head and shoulders icon), then select Start Collaborating to select collaborators.
Customize layout
Apple Music offers more layout flexibility than you might realize. If there's a playlist on your screen, you can open the menu View to choose between different groups for your tracks (incl Songs and Albums). You can also choose how to sort and filter tracks on the screen (for example, by artist name or number of plays).
