Hacker News Reader

Comment by bound008 | Hacker News Reader

> The play/pause media key automatically starting the Music app

$ sudo chmod -x /Applications/Music.app

This was a common complaint I have heard from those coming from Windows/Android and even Linux... It's unix.

Also, the play/pause key works with other apps. Other default apps can be set.

Many other valid points in this article and thread, but I don't know why people expect the default behavior of the play button to behave any differently when no media is playing. Music.app may have an upsell, but it's still a place to organize your own personal music library. No cloud or SaaS required.

View on HN

Play/pause always starts the Music app, regardless of your preferred music player. It's annoying for those of us who don't use the built-in Music app at all.

Your command doesn't work. The music app actually lives at `/System/Applications/Music.app`. And since Monterey, I think, even sudo won't let you modify data in that folder because of macOS's built-in protections that cannot be disabled:

  chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Applications/Music.app: Read-only file system

Even disabling SIP and booting into safe mode doesn't let you do this.

If you haven't seen it yet, NoTunes[1] does a great job of fixing the hijacking of the play button or when bluetooth headphones are connected or disconnected.

1: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

I think the complaint is that it shouldn't hijack the button in the first place.

There are solutions, but on some level this is no different from telling Windows users to just tweak some registry keys. It all leads to the same place.

Solutions aplenty yes, just not for, say, my mother. Not providing a normal way for users to select a an alternative default (like competitor Spotify), is disproportionally inconvenient relative to the benefits for Apple.

Accidental music app launches by my pinky finger brushing the play/pause touchbar control strip button, well.. let's just say it happened more then once. Absolutely maddening.

Firstly, .app is a bundle, so

sudo chmod -x /Applications/Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Music

Secondly, on modern macOS you'll have to disable system integrity protection for this to have a chance of succeeding.

> It's unix.

Unix has ads?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com