Apple Music (formerly iTunes) is a massive 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 it 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 whether it's worth switching, these lesser-known features will give you a better understanding of what the app is capable of—beyond the basics like streaming music from the web and playing local files.
Note : The instructions below describe the features as they are in Apple Music for macOS. All of the same features are available in the Windows version, but may not be located in exactly the same place or on the same menu.
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If there’s a song you particularly like in Apple Music, you can build your own radio station around it — as long as you’re an Apple Music subscriber. With a specific song selected in the app, open the Song menu and select Create Station . This is a really good way to discover new artists similar to your favorites.
Apple Music comes with a handy mini player. To access it, open the Window menu and select Mini Player to view it (click and drag on the player to move it around). Through Music > Settings > Advanced , you can find a checkbox to keep this player on top of other program windows on macOS, so you can always access the main playback controls.
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 long intros or outros. Right-click a track, then select Get Info and switch to the Options tab , where you’ll find Start and Stop fields. Click OK to confirm.
Not every track in your library is 5 stars, and you don't have to let tracks you don't like influence the recommendations you see on Apple Music—even if you want to keep them. To make a song less influential in your suggested music, right-click it and select Suggest Less .
You don’t want duplicate files to clutter up your playlists and your Mac’s storage unnecessarily, which can cause problems for both local and streamed music. Open the File menu , then select Library and Show Duplicate Items . You can then view all the tracks in your library multiple times and delete any unnecessary duplicates.
Apple Music now supports lossless audio—up to 24-bit/192kHz across its entire catalog—and you can switch to higher-resolution audio if you don’t mind the extra bandwidth and download size. To enable or disable lossless audio in the app, go to Music > Settings > Playback .
You can add comments to any track in your library. Just right-click a song, then select Get Info and go to the Details tab . You can use the comments field to label the song any way you like — like instrumental, favorite, fun, or old school — and then set up a smart playlist to select tracks based on the comments data.
It’s annoying when different songs are recorded at different volumes, leaving you constantly searching for the volume slider when a new track starts. To prevent this from happening, open the Music menu , select Settings , then go to the Playback tab and turn on Sound Check . Apple Music will then adjust automatically.
Many of us turn to the shuffle feature to avoid having to manually queue up albums and songs, but not all songs can be shuffled by choice—for example, you might want to cut out long rock tracks or spoken skits. To do this, right-click a song, then select Get Info : on the Options tab , check the Skip when shuffling box , then click OK .
Here's a new feature you might have missed: You can now collaborate on playlists with other people in Apple Music, which is perfect for parties or road trips, for example. With the playlist on screen, click the invite people button on the right (the head and shoulders icon), then select Start Collaborating to choose collaborators.
Apple Music offers more layout flexibility than you might realize. If you have a playlist on your screen, you can open the View menu to choose between different groups for your tracks (including Songs and Albums ). You can also choose how to sort and filter the tracks on your screen (for example, by artist name or number of plays).
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