noTunes For Mac

Apple Music and iTunes have a bad habit of launching automatically when connecting certain Bluetooth headphones or just pressing the Play button on your keyboard. It’s especially annoying if you don’t have a subscription and use a different music service.

noTunes is a very simple open-source app that prevents both Music and iTunes from being launched, either manually or automatically. It runs in the menu bar and can be enabled or disabled with a single click, while also giving you the option of hiding the menu bar icon altogether.

If your keyboard has media keys, like all Apple keyboards, you’ll know that tapping the Play button will cause the Music app or iTunes to start, depending on your version of macOS. This is normally overridden if the button should pause or resume playback in another service, but I’ve had situations when I was trying to restart a track in Spotify and it just opened the Music app.

Another common occurrence is for the apps to be launched when certain types of third-party Bluetooth headphones are connected. This doesn’t always happen, but it’s very annoying when it does.

noTunes solves the issue by simply checking for the Music/iTunes processes and shutting them down as soon as they are detected. Of course, that means you won’t be able to launch them manually either, but you can always disable the app’s functionality from the menu bar.

Speaking of the menu bar icon, it can be hidden from its context menu at any time. To restore it, you will need to use a Terminal command, as outlined by the developer here.

If you’re having problems with Apple Music or iTunes turning up uninvited, noTunes is a good solution, at least until Apple decides to provide additional customization options or resolve auto-launching bugs.