Where to start... With the full intention of swapping from Spotify to Apple Music, I've been using Apple Music exclusively for several months and am shocked at the constant friction with the user interface across all platforms.
Just some examples that come to mind:
- Obstructed "Add song to library" button - this one gets me every time, with the "Add" button always being under the "..." menu. All you can do directly on the track is favorite/star it, view your song queue, or use basic playback options. Also, the "..." menu is generally strange, with stuff like "View Credits" and "Share Lyrics" that add bloat.
- "Search" icon on iPhone - tapping the Search icon moves the icon you just pressed, so you will trigger the microphone-activated search if you double tap the same place twice. To search by typing, you have to tap twice in two different locations.
- Collapsing UI on iPhone - when using the search button, the other UI controls all collapse into a single "Home" icon to the left of the search bar, meaning an extra tap is needed to navigate to anything that was collapsed besides "Home".
- Artist pages don't show saved songs - there is no "songs you've liked" section for specific band pages, nor any custom information whatsoever based on your history, etc. and instead you are forced to use the "My Library" search toggle to find your saved songs.
- Adding songs to your Library via CarPlay - another iteration of the first problem, but I can't believe how many presses it takes to add a song to your library while driving ("..." > "Add to library" > "Add song")
- No cross-device awareness - more a missing feature than purely UI, but there doesn't seem to be any equivalent to "Connect to a device" like in Spotify, or really any awareness at all across devices when it comes to songs that are playing on an iPad vs. an iPhone, etc.
- "Play Next" button on Windows - straight up broken, does not queue songs at all, or will move songs to the top of a queue to sit there forever and never play.
- No minimize to Quick Access in Windows - If you click the X for the app window, it's game over and the music stops without any option to minimize the app to Quick Access.
- Search on Windows - the results dropdown does not allow right-click interactions, and failed interface interactions (like a mis-click) will clear the suggested search results until the search text changes.
- "Recently Searched" on Windows - only one entry appears in this space at a time.
The macOS version definitely has the most pleasant interface and overall user experience, but you'll still find inconsistencies there, like gestures that work on the iPhone but don't carry over (e.g., swiping track titles to play the next one).
Seeing as all music services largely exist for the same reason, I'd love to see healthier competition in the space, but this many pain points lead to that out of touch and inaccurate "Apple knows best" feeling that just can't hang with actually competent software.
The interface needs serious work to be more comparable to its counterpart, beyond coats of paint like Liquid Glass. I was pleased to see AI playlists appear unexpectedly like Spotfiy's had for a bit, but of course, they're half-baked in Apple Music.
I'll add that I finally seem to be breaking out of the samey-sounding algorithm loops I felt trapped in for the first few months. That became a major con for Spotify, with the algorithm quality feeling like it took a sharp decline over the last few years.
I have not tested the Android version of Apple Music, but I struggle to imagine it would be the preferred experience.