Ambient music on iOS 18.4 and the return to the Apple's Music app | Hacker News Reader

Ambient music on iOS 18.4 and the return to the Apple's Music app

manualdousuario.net

53 pointsrpgbr39 comments

The Apple Music app on macos is one of the most horrible UI things I can think of.

Search: You must scroll to the top of the playlists, it's not in the toolbar and always clickable. ALSO: the switch between local/downloaded and all Apple Music is on the Other side of the Screen. It's pseudo-browse ( the back button is inline with the content, and there isn't a Forward button).

I haven't been able to find a way to not show the default view that takes up half the screen. It has an image of the album cover and some flat-ux "buttons" and a checkmark icon, plus a (...) and a 1/4 of the screen just empty.

I don’t say this easily, but the people behind this should be fired on the spot. It’s bad. Like a showcase on how not to design an app. I could probably write a whole essay on it.

If someone from Apple happens to read this, get that staff some UX design courses, have them read “About Face : Interaction Design” a couple of times. You are not going to beat spotify with this mess.

This. And the latency of actions, of loading, it abysmal.

I don’t care that it becomes of the network being online or not. Find a way. If the network is slow or off, why should I depend on it to access my own music library navigation of any page, that could feed on cached data, and suggest a refresh, rather than forcing one?

Or are all music player that shit now?

> Or are all music player that shit now?

If you mean the streaming ones compared to things like WinAmp, yes. Slow loading of the pages that should have been cached. No direct way to search your library, as in your library only, but the entire library, not just a playlist. Less smooth fade-in/-out on play/pause than WinAmp had decades ago. If there even is offline file support, it's an afterthought. No better organization than simple Albums/Playlists (ex. no tagging system).

Different view from someone new to macOS (bought my first Mac at the end of 2022): I love Apple Music. I have disabled the online stuff because I have no subscription and just use to listen to my local MP3's. I used MusicBee on Windows before and there is no other program on macOS besides Apple Music that comes close to the simplicity of it and I have tried a lot of them. I don't need much but it's embarassing that a lot of music players can't "just play my music folder randomly".

The web version is actually pretty decent, I use it on windows from time to time and it works great!

It also has some features that the MacOS one doesn't have like, a full screen lyrics view with some nice WebGL animations.

I didn't know about the web view. At least the search area stays visible.

> full screen lyrics view

Another gripe: In the app, when using the full screen player (there is also just a fullscreen mode) the lyrics can often be unreadable depending on the background colours that display. Also, you can't change the font size.

If you think the MacOs version is bad, try the Linux version.

> the switch between local/downloaded and all Apple Music is on the Other side of the Screen

I can relate. These days I’m primarily using it to search iTunes for music to buy. Switching back to purchasing (instead of streaming) has been a renewed joy.

On macOS, the Music app downloads all purchased media as non-drmd files, which I can point whatever preferred player to for indexing and playback.

Went oldschool and built my own player in 2024 https://xenodium.com/a-tour-of-ready-player-mode

It's not explicitly called out anywhere, but you can have this and the 'background noise' running at the same time. This 'chill' music with some dark noise mixed in is great.

It is a really bad piece of Apple marketing and naming that so many people don’t realize that Music the app and Music the subscription service are two different things.

The service and subscription can be turned off and disabled entirely, hidden from view in the Music app (formerly known as iTunes).

Apple’s old iPod sync workflow still works to this day (on your modern iPhone or on your old iPod), the iTunes Store is still a thing, and yes your computer can still rip CDs. I would even argue that it has greatly improved now that a lot of the functions complicating the experience like Podcasts and TV shows have been moved to other more appropriate apps.

All of this stuff not only still exists but Apple is about the only mainstream name in the business that will give you a decent music jukebox and digital music store experience anymore. So many other options are gone and the jukebox app landscape is quite bleak.

It’s the same mess for Apple TV. Is Apple TV an app? A service? A device? All three?? Do I need one in order to use the others? Who knows?

I recently installed an Apple TV in my parents house so I could watch my favorite shows on Apple TV using Apple TV on the Apple TV while visiting them.

When I told them I was installing an Apple TV, they thought they were getting a TV, not an Apple TV.

I'm sure their existing TV is fine for watching apple TV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIgKFyQ-GAQ

I couldn't find any apple tv on Apple TV. But I did find some banana TV on Apple TV to watch on Apple TV on the Apple TV. https://tv.apple.com/us/episode/banana/umc.cmc.bndisxwgzz4c3...

It's an app and a device. I do /love/ that on Android phones the Apple TV app can ONLY play Apple TV+ content whereas the Android TV and other Apple TV apps can play iTunes Store content which they may or may not allow purchasing in the app. It's a really great consistent system.

It's almost as though they're competing with Microsoft who can come up with the worst names.

A friend is currently trying to explain to their company why Office 365 Copilot is not an acceptable substitute for GitHub Copilot.

I wish this was a joke.

Yes to all questions.

I hear you, but at least it's not as bad as Google's version. What's Google Music All Access called now again?

Theirs seems pretty good for music now that they’re using the YouTube brand. YouTube music is a Spotify competitor, YouTube premium gets you ad free YouTube and some other stuff and also comes with YouTube Music.

Though then they use the same brand for their US cable-ish TV service and I have no idea how any of that fits.

If you’re using the Music app and putting your collection into it consider buying the itunes match subscription. This automatically uploads all your songs and syncs them to all your devices. I download ALACs from albums I buy on Bandcamp and put them into Music, it’s definitely the best feature.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108935

Don't you have to be careful because you will get censored version of explicit songs for example?

EDIT: I see iTunes Match is also limited to 256 Kbps.

Its pure insanity. Tracks change their metadata seemingly on a whim. Tracks that I own straight up disappear from albums for reasons that the user is never notified of. Its always the most popular tracks which makes me think its about licensing..

Anyway the situation is dire. I'm moving my music into PlexAmp, which has a CarPlay app. This is 99% of my use case! :)

Yeah, that's precisely because I disable everything Apple Music/iTunes related from the Music app prior do bringing my own mp3 files over it.

I have had mixed results with iTunes Match. I like the idea of it, and it's good when it works, but Apple never really sorted out the streaming vs. sync-to-library thing. Most of my old playlists seem to have broken. Album art often gets replaced. And downloads are the same 256kbps AAC that Apple introduced in 2007 as iTunes Plus.

> My excitement soon turned to frustration when I discovered that the Music app had to be installed for the iOS 18.4 ambient music feature to work.

Not true. I don’t have the Music app installed and ambient music works fine. It does not play in the Music app, it has it’s own lightweight media player UI which looks almost the same but is separate from the Music app.

I don’t have Apple Music installed, tried this and it works fine for me.

Oh, that's odd. First time I tried, without the Music app installed, it refused to work (even though it didn't throw any error message). Only on the second attempt, the Music app reinstalled, it worked for me.

I'll investigate further. Thanks for the heads up!

Anyone know if there is something like this for Linux? I like the idea, but don't use a Mac. Sure, I can collect ambient music and loop them in Rhythmbox bt I love the idea of a background music utility to enhance work.

This is for iPhone. But there are many YouTube channels, things like Poolsuite FM, or endless internet radio stations (di.fm, zen radio).

If it's less about music sources and more about a headless/minimal Linux app then I'm not helping much. :)

Additional tangential (certainly not helping to answer the question but I can't resist an opportunity to share) shout outs to Warmth (and his ARCHIVES record label), and the Deep Breakfast Series (I love the entries from Owl, Clearlight, Inhmost, ASC, Jamie McCue aka Silent Season, ASIP and Patrick Russell), among many, many others.

https://archivesdubmusic.bandcamp.com/album/parallel

https://on.soundcloud.com/ShxKh8itMgmfmqei7

1. From youtube `yt-dlp` some of your favorite 10hr ambient sound videos. 2. `mpv` said file 3. done

4. extra step: randomize the starting point so that you won't learn the pattern by heart. `mpv --start="${STARTPERC}%" "$file"`

This browser extension doesn’t have ambient music yet, but various noise types: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noice-noise/ (there is a Chromium version too). There might be an internet radio thing you could run from VLC. There might be something on the horizon with that plugin.

Blanket¹ is an option, but it doesn't have any music by default, only sounds. You can add your own sounds/music to it, but it won't randomize it or play like a playlist.

[1] https://apps.gnome.org/Blanket/

https://mynoise.net/

I’m probably in the minority but I really don’t enjoy the track selections in this feature and it’s pretty much just easier and better to pin some Spotify playlists and use those.

it seems to be the case that it downloads some of these and can play offline. i know spotify can run offline as well, but this is a bit more convenient. doesn't quite replace spotify or apple music, but is faster to jump to. spotify app just continually gets slower for me.

EDIT: nm - I misread that I was still online. It did download some, and I'm now running offline, but I can't switch to a different style (chill, sleep, etc) once I go offline.

I do this. I have about a dozen Spotify playlists saved to my phone and laptop for offline use.

Often times, the tracks didn't match the style I selected, in my opinion. For example, if I select the Chill style, I don't want an energetic "4 on the floor" beat oriented track.

I think I'm just super picky and really don't like 75% of the track selections on the styles I tried.

Here's a couple (they are safe-for-work) I like a lot when coding:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3w2YAQaYubicd1Me32ZBrY

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5YaENkqeE9CnQJYwztoxfX?si=...

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