Apple Music’s app is one of its biggest weaknesses of its app-based streaming service, which seems…not ideal. Whether you’re on your iPhone or your Mac, the app has never been known for being particularly snappy; Reddit users in particular love to complain about it. If you’ve found the Apple Music app to be agonizingly slow, there are a few tricks to speed things up.
Disable Apple Music’s social features
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Apple Music includes a few social features ostensibly intended to help you discover new music shared by other users. Disabling them should reduce how often you have to suffer through the app’s loading animation.
To do this on iPhone, open the Music app’s Listen Now tab and select your profile icon. Disable Contacts on Apple Music and Allow finding by Apple ID. Next, tap Notifications and disable Friend Activity and Artists and Shows.
You can also disable these settings from the Music app on your Mac, where they’re located under the Account menu in the Music app.
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These tweaks should significantly speed up the time it takes for Apple Music to load search results, recommendations, and other pages.
Delete your Apple Music social profile altogether
If disabling social features doesn’t speed up the app, consider deleting your Apple Music social profile outright. You will lose access to the Friends Mix playlist and other music recommendations generated based on what your friends are listening to, and your publicly shared playlists may also stop working as intended, but the trade-off in speed might be worth it.
Again, open the Music app’s Listen Now tab and tap the profile icon in the corner. Select View Profile, tap the Edit button, scroll to the bottom, and select Delete Profile.
To do the same on the Music app for your Mac, click the Listen Now tab in the sidebar and click your profile icon. Click Edit and select Delete Profile.
In my experience, deleting my social profile definitely improved my performance. Apple Music’s loading bar appears less often, and even with a VPN enabled, songs don’t take much time to start playing.
Find an alternative Apple Music app
There are plenty of great alternatives that will make Apple Music feel a lot snappier than it does with the stock apps.
On your iPhone or iPad, you can try apps such as Marvis Pro ($7.99) or Soor ($6.99) , which allow you to use almost all of Apple Music’s best features, minus the bloat.
On your Mac or PC, Apple Music’s web player might also give you a smoother experience, especially if you’re on an older device. Open music.apple.com in your browser, sign in, and you’re set.