Hi. I am still a relatively new user of MacOS - definitely still got lots to learn, including how to use the inbuilt music app (i am using the latest version of Mac OS). I like to have music on while i'm messing around on the computer, and am becoming increasingly frustrated that i just can't for the life of me get my head around the thing. The fact grid view appears to be the only way to work with it doesn't help folks like me who rely totally on voiceover i don't think. I wonder if anyone could point me in the direction of any existing audio or written guides on using the music app on the Mac, ideally something geared towards helping voiceover users. If one hasn't been produced already (and i've not managed to find one) could it be a topic a member of the AppleVis team might consider producing a podcost and/or other learning guide about? I know such a resource would be much appreciated by myself ☺️ many thanks in adbance for any advice
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I'm not a heavy user of the…
I'm not a heavy user of the Music app, but I could try to give you a couple pointers. Are you using Apple Music or a local music library?
Apple msic
Hi tyler. I subscribe to Apple music.
Music App on Mac
Here's my constructive response to your message.
Using Music on Mac is easy, but there are some VoiceOver navigation speed bumps that slow things down.
There are two primary areas you'll interact with: The sidebar and the music table.
Navigate to the sidebar. This is what holds your music categories and playlists. Interact. You will need to VO up and down through this list, as just the arrows or first letter navigation won't work.
The second area is the song list or grid depending on which category you have selected in the sidebar. You can flip between with two with VO-J.
To start, select the Songs category in the sidebar. VO-J. This is a list of every song in the Music app. You can either:
• Interact and VO up and down through the list. VoiceOver will read the entire row. you can customize this view by pressing Command-J.
• Interact. Focus on the song title field so VoiceOver reads out only the song title. Arrow up and down or type the first few letters of the artist's name. Focus SHOULD move to the correct row where you can hit return to start playback. This doesn't always work because Music is still a hot mess with VoiceOver, but you can command-tab away and then back to see if this will work.
Option-space will turn on Genius Shuffle which is nice if you want songs from a particular genre to randomly be served to you.
Hope this is enough to get you started.
Thank you kevin
Thanks very much for this kevin, i'll definitely be keeping hold of it during my next attempts to navigate the music app ☺️ at the moment i agree it's just one big mess to someone who isn't used to it. Why it can't be set up in some sort of simple list you arrow through or use first letter navigation i've no idea. Give me something like finder any day of the week lol ☺️
It's very frustrating
Apple music on Mac is really messy and quite difficult to use. I suggest writing to Apple Accessibility team and the more of us write, the chances for the better might be greater. Thank you Kevin for your hints.