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>where I'm using bluetooth headphones, take the headphones off and put them back on, and music.app automatically opens and comes to the foreground of my desktop

I think your bluetooth headphones are sending a play command to your device when it's connected. I'm sure it's annoying, but I think your macbook is doing the right thing here.

I’m almost positive that this is what’s happening. With a pair of Sony XM3’s and various Apple devices I’ve never seen this behavior.

> your bluetooth headphones are sending a play command to your device

Yep this is what's happening. I have a car bluetooth addon that I purchased that does the same thing -- it sends Play commands to the phone on-connect repeatedly until something starts playing.

By default the phone will open Apple Music but if I already had been playing music on the Spotify app, it'll just start playing that instead.

> I just can't understand what the thought process was in making this a default behavior, let alone one that cannot be disabled.

I do not get the bluetooth-automatically-starts Apple Music behavior.

I haven't tried but I just checked the iMessages preferences and you can disable being contacted via your phone number or email addresses, with check boxes for each. As Macs don't have phone numbers I think this would work? I do use apple messages (which is why I didn't try disabling it), but use WhatsApp and signal more than I use the default.

I have no idea how good the mac's security might be, just pointing out my experience.

I agree that Apple could do better with eliminating their bundled apps, but I use third party calendar, address book, reminders, photo, etc with no issues. And I hear quite a few people are willing to use chrome (ugh) as their default browser and safari doesn't get in the way.

Your headphones are probably sending a play command to your computer. There should be some software you can grab that captures that command and routes it to the application of your choosing, or disables it entirely.

Unfortunately it's not built in, but I think it's your headphones doing something nonstandard because my Sony XM4s and AirPods do not fire this behavior when I put them in.

I'm using XM4s and have never done anything to change whatever their own default behavior is. And this doesn't happen on any other device except the Macbook.

I guess it's worth looking into to see if there is some outside of the OS way to force the OS to route requests to the application I already have opened and foregrounded that plays sound, but I would expect that to be the default behavior. What is a "play" request to music.app even supposed to do when I have never intentionally opened the app and don't have a playlist set up? It doesn't actually play anything since there is nothing to play. It just opens the app and takes over my screen.

This is pretty easily fixed and took 5 seconds to google a solution. I have like 4 or 5 pairs of various headphones form AirPods to Jabra devices and they all do this when I take them off or put them on. The Bluetooth settings all have options to turn it off.

>If you remove the headphones or put them back on, this will pause or resume playback. If you're not wearing the headphones, make sure there's nothing else around the sensor because it may activate and resume playback.[1]

[1]https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00229324

I also have bluetooth headphones I use with a mac, and that’s never happened to me. Is it a new thing with the M1 machines or something?

Haven't seen this either. Both my wife and I are on M1 MacBooks.

Nope, I’ve never had this happen to me on my M1 machine, Bluetooth or 3,5mm headphones. If you don’t have another media app focussed or active, pressing a media control button/key will open Music iirc.

It happens to me every time I connect my QC35s to a 2018 MacBook Pro. It's extremely annoying.

Doesn't happen on my 2018 MBP with my QC35 IIs.

No. It is generated by the headphones. Some Bluetooth devices, when activated, will try to restart playing and they send a “play” command to the host which responds with the most recent audio app. Many car audio systems do this, too.

> , or of choosing not to do either of those things if they don't want to. Obviously, you can currently install and use other applications that provide the same functionality, but you cannot uninstall or disable defaults.

With Apple Configurator you can disable Music and Messages. It’s not the most user-friendly method, but it is possible.

I think that might just be a bug. Or maybe something in your headphones is causing it to send a "play" command through Bluetooth? That will open the Music app if you have nothing playing already.

Given that the headphones cannot know if there's an app playing already, this should be configurable in the OS: i.e. allow selecting which app (or no one) to launch when receiving a Play command

Only allowing their own app to be associated with the default audio player is anti-competitive, at the very least

It should be configurable (it is, but only through Terminal), but it's also such a minor problem that I can't blame Apple for not wanting to create the API for third parties, design and build the UI, and then document, support, and maintain all of it for years to come. You have to pick your battles as a developer and being an OS dev is no different.

Happens on my non M1 Mac with Sony XM4s. I am pretty sure it is the headphones sending the play command to the computer. Apparently there is a setting in the Sony headphones app to disable this. But this did not work for me. Music.app still opens up everytime I remove the headphones and put them back on.