Every Apple Music icon explained: Your complete guide to mastering the app

All the tiny signs, symbols and icons on the Apple Music app’s Now Playing screen lack labels — and it’s not obvious at all what they do. Do you know what tapping the infinity symbol does? How about the two wavy lines? 

This quick guide runs through all the Apple Music buttons and controls, so you can get acclimated to its interface. Keep reading or watch our short video.

Apple Music signs, symbols, icons and buttons explained

Apple Music is full of awesome features. But unless you pay close attention to blogs like ours, you probably don’t know them all. Especially if you’re a recent switcher from Spotify.

This guide will show you all the features in one of Apple Music’s most important interfaces: the Now Playing screen. You launch this important screen by tapping the minimized floating bar wherever you are in the app.

As mentioned, it’s full of cryptic-looking icons — here’s what they all do. 

Table of contents: Apple Music signs, symbols, icons and buttons explained

1. The basics: Play/Pause, Rewind, Skip, Favorite
2. Live Lyrics and Karaoke mode
3. AirPlay and SharePlay
4. The Playing Next menu
5. Shuffle, Repeat, Autoplay and Automix
6. More Apple Music tips

The basic Apple Music buttons: Play/Pause, Rewind, Skip, Favorite

Let’s start with the basics. What are the triangle icons in the middle of the Apple Music app’s Now Playing screen? They’re the least cryptic of all the symbols in the app. The Play ▶️ button plays and pauses music. Tap Previous Track ⏪ to go back to the beginning of the song, and tap it again to go to the previous song. Next Track ⏩ skips to the next song in the queue. 

These symbols originated in the 1960s, when music was stored on reels of magnetic tape. A right-pointing arrow came to symbolize “Play,” to show the direction the tape would move through the reels. “Fast Forward” and “Rewind” were represented by two arrows, because it would advance or rewind the tape at high speed. 

If you’re listening to a track you really like, you should tap Favorite (the star button). Over time, Apple Music will learn more about your taste from your favorite tracks. 

Apple Music buttons: Live Lyrics & Karaoke mode

The quotation mark icon in the bottom left of the Now Playing screen turns on Live Lyrics, which minimizes the playback controls to show song lyrics perfectly timed to the music. You can tap the bottom of the screen to show the controls again temporarily, or tap the album artwork in the upper left to turn off Live Lyrics. (Note: This only works if Apple Music has lyrics for the song in question. If not, the Live Lyrics button will be grayed out.)

If you’re in Live Lyrics mode, you can tap the microphone button on the right to turn on Sing, which quiets down the vocals so that you (and your friends) can provide your own. In other words, it’s a karaoke mode. You can slide up or down on the Vocal Volume slider to adjust how muted the original track should be. If it’s a song you’re still learning, I recommend keeping it on around halfway.

AirPlay and SharePlay

Just to the right of the Live Lyrics button at the bottom of the Apple Music app’s Now Playing screen, you’ll see a button that controls audio output. If you don’t have AirPods or other headphones connected, you’ll see the AirPlay icon. Tap on it, and you can choose where the audio plays: out of your speakers, headphones or nearby devices you can AirPlay to, like a Mac or Apple TV. If there’s an active Apple TV nearby, you can tap the All Speakers & TVs button below to switch to controlling that instead, with your phone acting as a playback remote. 

If you’re in a car or connected to a Bluetooth speaker, you might see a SharePlay button as well. SharePlay lets other people control playback and add songs to the queue. It’s a great solution for long car drives — you don’t want to pass your phone around if you need it for directions, but other people can still choose the tracks. They don’t need an Apple Music subscription, either — just the Music app.

The Playing Next menu

The button at the bottom right of the Now Playing screen toggles the Playing Next menu.

The “Queue” section shows you all the songs you’ve lined up to play next. For more on how to do that, read our guide: How to quickly queue songs on Apple Music (and clear the queue).

Swipe left on a song in your queue to remove it. Or you can tap Clear to remove the whole queue. The “Continue Playing” section below it will show the songs that come up next from whatever playlist or album you started playing from. 

Scroll up in the list to see your playback history. Tap on any of these songs to go back. 

Shuffle, Repeat, Autoplay and Automix

There are four buttons at the top of the Playing Next menu; here’s what they do, from left to right:

• Shuffle will randomize the rest of the songs in the Queue and Continue Playing lists.
• Repeat will play all the songs in your Playing Next over again when it runs out. Tap once to enable repeat, tap again to have it only repeat once, and a third time to disable it.
• Autoplay adds similar songs to the end of the queue so you don’t run out of music.
• Automix blends the end of one song with the beginning of the next. It adjusts the key and tempo like a DJ to make the transition natural, and may skip through long silences or quiet parts at the end of a song. 

More Apple Music tips

• Apple Music Replay shows you the top songs, artists, albums and more detailed stats for a whole year, and makes an annual playlist of your top tunes.
• Apple Music Classical is a bespoke app and interface (free with an Apple Music subscription) for playing classical music.
• Queue songs to automatically build a playlist. You can set a song, album or playlist to play next, or add it to the end of the queue, with simple gestures and controls.  
• Karaoke Mode turns down the vocals so you can sing along at a party or in the car.
• Music Haptics let you feel the beat of the music right in your hand.

D. Griffin Jones

D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate computer enthusiast since 2002, when he got his first PC — but since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned back. His skills in graphic and web design, along with video and podcast editing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His collection of old computers is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices, dating back to the early ’80s. He brings all of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, into his work for Cult of Mac.