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Apple Music treats asian artists with romanized names as two different names
Hello, I'm trying to write a shortcut using Toolbox Pro that gets triggered by an accessibility trigger and then favorites the currently playing song. It's working pretty well, but I noticed that for some artists, especially asian ones, it simply doesn't work. While debugging, I noticed that the tool uses the same song ID, artist ID, everything as it should to search for the song and favorite it. However, I noticed that Apple Music treats artists with romanized names as two separate artists! https://music.apple.com/br/artist/王菲/41760704 https://music.apple.com/br/artist/faye-wong/41760704?l=en-GB You can see that the ID is the same (41760704). It seems that, when I search for the artist, the first artist (王菲) returns, so that when I open URLs on the web for the artist I can see a star next to the song name, meaning that it got a like. However, the romanized artist (faye-wong) doesn't have a like on the same song. This is very weird, right?
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140
Oct ’25
Mute behavior of Volume button on AVPlayerViewController iOS 26
With older iOS versions, when user taps Mute/Volume button on AVPLayerViewController to unmute, the system restores the sound volume of device to the level when user muted before. On iOS 26, when user taps unmute button on screen, the volume starts from 0 (not restore). (but it still restores if user unmutes by pressing physical volume buttons). As I understand, the Volume bar/button on AVPlayerViewController is MPVolumeView, and I can not control it. So this is a feature of the system. But I got complaints that this is a bug. I did not find documents that describe this change of Mute button behavior. I need some bases to explain this situation. Thank you.
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184
Oct ’25
Best Approach for Monitoring Music Playback State Across Multiple Apps?
Hey Swift community! I'm exploring building a macOS app that needs to monitor what's currently playing in music apps like Spotify and Apple Music (track info, playback position, play/pause state). I'm trying to figure out the most efficient architecture before diving in. The Goal: Monitor playback state across multiple music players to react to changes in real-time, ideally with minimal CPU overhead since this would run continuously in the background. Approaches I'm Considering AppleScript / ScriptingBridge Distributed Notifications Native Frameworks (Apple Music only) What's the recommended way to do this on macOS? Are distributed notifications reliable enough to avoid polling entirely? Is there a performance difference between AppleScript and ScriptingBridge for IPC? For Apple Music specifically, should I use MusicKit, MediaPlayer, or stick with AppleScript? Are there other approaches I'm missing?
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132
Nov ’25
Massive amounts of leaked memory with the tvOS 26 system player user interface
Hi, We identified massive amounts of leaked memory with the tvOS 26 standard player user interface as soon as chapters (navigation markers) are involved. Artwork images associated with chapters are not correctly released anymore, leaking memory in chunks of several MiBs. Over time apps will be terminated by the system due to excessive memory consumption. The issue was reported to Apple as tvOS 26 regression: Huge memory leaks associated with navigation marker artworks displayed in the tvOS standard user interface, filed under FB21160665.
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233
Nov ’25
Unexpected artist names in song table
Hi team, In the Apple Music Feed datasets, we've noticed some unexpected values in the song and album tables. The primaryartists column from either song or album may contain a "non-default" artist name such as the katakana name shown in the example below: select id, name, namedefault, primaryartists from amf_song where id = '1698723329' id | name | namedefault | primaryartists ---------------------------------------- 1698723329 | {default=California} | California | [{id=1264818718, name=チャペル・ローン}] select * from amf_artist where id = '1264818718' id | name | namedefault | namepronunciation | ---------------------------------------------- 1264818718 | {default=Chappell Roan, ja=チャペル・ローン} | Chappell Roan | {ja=チャペルローン} | Shouldn't the primaryartists column be showing the namedefault instead of the Japanese language version? When can we expect this bug to resolved? Thanks,
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467
Dec ’25
Repeat song listens not queryable
Hi all, I've been working on some personal programming projects and have gotten into using the Apple Music API. I'm currently looking to get a list of recent songs using the /v1/me/recent/played/tracks endpoint and it's working well. However, I know there are some songs I've listened to multiple times in a row, and those are not showing up as unique tracks when querying this endpoint. I'm only seeing a list of the different songs I've listened to lately, not a true list of the most recent plays on my account. Is this intended behavior or am I going about something incorrectly here? My query is using that endpoint & specifying the types to be only [songs]. Thanks in advance for any ideas or insight.
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344
Dec ’25
Apple Music playlist create/delete works but DELETE returns 401 — and MusicKit write APIs are macOS‑unavailable. How to build a playlist editor on macOS?
I’m trying to build a playlist editor on macOS. I can create playlists via the Apple Music HTTP API, but DELETE always returns 401 even immediately after creation with the same tokens. Minimal repro: #!/usr/bin/env bash set -euo pipefail BASE_URL="https://api.music.apple.com/v1" PLAYLIST_NAME="${PLAYLIST_NAME:-blah}" : "${APPLE_MUSIC_DEV_TOKEN:?}" : "${APPLE_MUSIC_USER_TOKEN:?}" create_body="$(mktemp)" delete_body="$(mktemp)" trap 'rm -f "$create_body" "$delete_body"' EXIT curl -sS --compressed -o "$create_body" -w "Create status: %{http_code}\n" \ -X POST "${BASE_URL}/me/library/playlists" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APPLE_MUSIC_DEV_TOKEN}" \ -H "Music-User-Token: ${APPLE_MUSIC_USER_TOKEN}" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d "{\"attributes\":{\"name\":\"${PLAYLIST_NAME}\"}}" playlist_id="$(python3 - "$create_body" <<'PY' import json, sys with open(sys.argv[1], "r", encoding="utf-8") as f: data = json.load(f) print(data["data"][0]["id"]) PY )" curl -sS --compressed -o "$delete_body" -w "Delete status: %{http_code}\n" \ -X DELETE "${BASE_URL}/me/library/playlists/${playlist_id}" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APPLE_MUSIC_DEV_TOKEN}" \ -H "Music-User-Token: ${APPLE_MUSIC_USER_TOKEN}" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" I capture the response bodies like this: cat "$create_body" cat "$delete_body" Result: Create: 201 Delete: 401 I also checked the latest macOS SDK’s MusicKit interfaces and MusicLibrary.createPlaylist/edit/add(to:) are marked @available(macOS, unavailable), so I can’t create/ delete via MusicKit on macOS either. Question: How can I implement a playlist editor on macOS (create/delete/modify) if: MusicKit write APIs are unavailable on macOS, and The HTTP API can create but DELETE returns 401? Any guidance or official workaround would be hugely appreciated.
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255
Jan ’26
Apple Music API no longer returns standalone singles as “single” albums
I’ve been using Apple Music API for quite a while now and a recent change must have happened which is quite disruptive. On many occasions, artists release singles from an album as part of promoting this album. For recent examples, Harry Styles released “Aperture” (a single) to promote his upcoming album “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally“. Similarly, Bruno Mars released “I Just Might”, a single from the upcoming album “The Romantic”. Previously, those would return at the endpoint ”artists/{artist_id}/albums” with a “- Single” suffix. But it seems a recent change happens where they only appear as playable tracks inside the album. This behavior is also evident in the Apple Music app itself. Those singles no longer appear under “Singles & EPs”. Instead, they would only be visible if the single becomes popular enough to be shown on “Top Songs“. Otherwise one would have to know to tap on the (future) album to discover if there are released singles. Meanwhile Spotify’s API returns those as singles properly, just like Apple Music API used to. This change must be recent but the question is if it’s intentional, and if so, how can the API be used from here on out to “extract” those singles and represent them?
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239
Jan ’26
AVAssetWriterInput.PixelBufferReceiver.append hangs indefinitely (suspends and never resumes)
I’ve been struggling with a very frustrating issue using the new iOS 26 Swift Concurrency APIs for video processing. My pipeline reads frames using AVAssetReader, processes them via CIContext (Lanczos upscale), and then appends the result to an AVAssetWriter using the new PixelBufferReceiver. The Problem: The execution randomly stops at the ]await append(...)] call. The task suspends and never resumes. It is completely unpredictable: It might hang on the very first run, or it might work fine for 4-5 runs and then hang on the next one. It is independent of video duration: It happens with 5-second clips just as often as with long videos. No feedback from the system: There is no crash, no error thrown, and CPU usage drops to zero. The thread just stays in the suspended state indefinitely. If I manually cancel the operation and restart the VideoEngine, it usually starts working again for a few more attempts, which makes me suspect some internal resource exhaustion or a deadlock between the GPU context and the writer's input. The Code: Here is a simplified version of my processing loop: private func proccessVideoPipeline( readerOutputProvider: AVAssetReaderOutput.Provider<CMReadySampleBuffer<CMSampleBuffer.DynamicContent>>, pixelBufferReceiver: AVAssetWriterInput.PixelBufferReceiver, nominalFrameRate: Float, targetSize: CGSize ) async throws { while !Task.isCancelled, let payload = try await readerOutputProvider.next() { let sampleBufferInfo: (imageBuffer: CVPixelBuffer?, presentationTimeStamp: CMTime) = payload.withUnsafeSampleBuffer { sampleBuffer in return (sampleBuffer.imageBuffer, sampleBuffer.presentationTimeStamp) } guard let currentPixelBuffer = sampleBufferInfo.imageBuffer else { throw AsyncFrameProcessorError.missingImageBuffer } guard let pixelBufferPool = pixelBufferReceiver.pixelBufferPool else { throw NSError(domain: "PixelBufferPool", code: -1, userInfo: [NSLocalizedDescriptionKey: "No pixel buffer pool available"]) } let newPixelBuffer = try pixelBufferPool.makeMutablePixelBuffer() let newCVPixelBuffer = newPixelBuffer.withUnsafeBuffer({ $0 }) try upscale(currentPixelBuffer, outputPixelBuffer: newCVPixelBuffer, targetSize: targetSize ) let presentationTime = sampleBufferInfo.presentationTimeStamp try await pixelBufferReceiver.append(.init(unsafeBuffer: newCVPixelBuffer), with: presentationTime) } } Does anyone know how to fix it?
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122
Jan ’26
Xcode 26.3: Simulators incorrectly shown as "build only device" — Run (Cmd+R) fails while Build (Cmd+B) and command-line build/deploy succeed
Product Xcode Version 26.3 (26C5131e) Platform macOS / iOS Simulator / iOS Device Classification Bug / Incorrect UI Behaviour Reproducibility Always (persists across restarts, scheme recreation, DerivedData clearing) Date Encountered February 20, 2026 Hardware Mac mini (M2) running macOS Test Device iPhone SE (2nd generation), iOS 26.3 Summary In Xcode 26.3, attempting to run an iOS app on any simulator destination using Cmd+R fails with the error: "A build only device cannot be used to run this target. Please select an available device or choose a simulated device as the destination." This occurs despite the selected destination being a valid iOS Simulator (not a "build only" device). The same project builds successfully using Cmd+B within Xcode and builds, installs, and runs correctly via the command line using xcodebuild, xcrun simctl, and xcrun devicectl. Steps to Reproduce Open a valid iOS project in Xcode 26.3. The project in question has target name "h", product name "DiabetesHbA1cPrediction", bundle identifier "com.diabeteshba1c.DiabetesHbA1cPrediction", with IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET set to 26.0. In the scheme/destination picker toolbar, select any iOS Simulator destination (e.g. iPhone 16, iPhone 17 Pro, or any other available simulator). The destination name appears correctly in the toolbar without any "build only" annotation. Press Cmd+R (Product > Run). Xcode immediately displays the error: "A build only device cannot be used to run this target." Press Cmd+B (Product > Build) instead. The build succeeds with no errors. Expected Behaviour Cmd+R should build and launch the application on the selected simulator, just as it does in previous Xcode versions. The user had been running simulators successfully for the prior week before this issue appeared. Actual Behaviour Xcode refuses to run the app, treating every simulator destination as a "build only device." The error appears instantly upon pressing Cmd+R, before any build activity begins. Cmd+B succeeds normally, confirming the project and scheme configuration are valid. Workarounds Attempted (All Failed) The following troubleshooting steps were performed, none of which resolved the Xcode UI issue: Changed IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET across multiple values (26.2, 18.0, 26.0) in all build settings within project.pbxproj. Deleted and recreated the Xcode scheme (removed .xcscheme files from xcshareddata and xcuserdata, let Xcode auto-create a new scheme). Deleted the entire DerivedData folder (rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData). Selected multiple different simulator destinations (iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro) — all produced the same error. Verified the scheme’s Executable setting (confirmed it was set to the correct .app target). Changed "Show Run Destination" setting between Automatic and Always. Quit and restarted Xcode completely. Confirmed that simulator device names in the destination dropdown appeared normally, without any "build only" suffix. Working Workaround: Command-Line Build and Deploy The project builds, installs, and runs correctly when using command-line tools, confirming the project configuration is valid: Simulator deployment: xcodebuild -scheme h -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 16' build xcrun simctl boot 7F0DF8DA-E4A3-41B2-A2E4-B1F528753189 xcrun simctl install booted xcrun simctl launch booted com.diabeteshba1c.DiabetesHbA1cPrediction Result: App launched and ran correctly in the simulator. Physical device deployment (iPhone SE 2020, iOS 26.3): xcodebuild -scheme h -destination 'id=00008030-001128DC2E51402E' build xcrun devicectl device install app --device xcrun devicectl device process launch --device com.diabeteshba1c.DiabetesHbA1cPrediction Result: BUILD SUCCEEDED, app installed and launched on the physical device without issue. Key Observations The disconnect between Xcode’s UI-based Run (Cmd+R) failing and the command-line build/deploy succeeding with identical configuration strongly suggests this is an Xcode IDE bug in the run destination resolution logic, not a project configuration issue. Cmd+B succeeds in Xcode itself, meaning the build system correctly recognises the project, scheme, and destination. The failure occurs specifically in the “run” pathway where Xcode evaluates whether the destination supports execution. The simulator dropdown shows destination names without any "build only" label, yet Xcode internally treats them as build-only when the Run action is invoked. This behaviour started occurring in Xcode 26.3. The same project and simulators worked correctly in the preceding week under the same Xcode installation. Environment Xcode version: 26.3 (26C5131e) macOS: Running on Mac mini (M2) iOS SDK: 26.3 Available simulator runtimes: iOS 18.6, iOS 26.2 Physical test device: iPhone SE (2nd generation), iOS 26.3 Project type: SwiftUI iOS app with HealthKit integration Signing: Automatic, with valid provisioning for both simulator and device
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