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

All the little characters, symbols, and icons on Apple Music’s Now Playing screen lack labels — and it’s not at all obvious what they do. Do you know what tapping the infinity symbol does? What about the two squiggles?

This quick guide walks you through all the Apple Music buttons and controls so you can get used to its interface. Continue reading or watch our short video.

Apple Music Marks, Symbols, Icons and Buttons Explained

Apple Music is full of amazing features. But if you don’t pay close attention to blogs like ours, you probably don’t know them all. Especially if you are a new switch from Spotify.

This guide will show you all the features in one of the most important interfaces of Apple Music: the Now Playing screen. Tap the minimized floating bar to launch this important screen, wherever you are in the app.

As mentioned, it’s full of mysterious looking icons – here’s what they all do.

Contents: Explanation of Apple Music marks, symbols, icons and buttons

1. Basics: Play/Pause, Rewind, Skip, Favorite
2. Live lyrics and karaoke mode
3. AirPlay and SharePlay
4. Next playback menu
5. Shuffle, Repeat, Autoplay and Automix
6. More tips for Apple Music

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 Play screen? They are the least mysterious of all the symbols in the app. Tea Play ▶️ Button plays and pauses music. Tap Previous track ⏪ to return to the beginning of the song and tap again to the previous song. Another clue ⏩ skips to the next song in the queue.

These symbols originated in the 1960s when music was stored on reels of magnetic tape. The arrow pointing to the right came to symbolize “Play” to indicate the direction the tape would travel between the reels. “Fast Forward” and “Rewind” were represented by two arrows as the tape would fast forward or rewind at high speed.

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

Apple Music Buttons: Live Lyrics and Karaoke Mode

The quotes icon in the lower left corner of the Now Playing screen will turn on Live lyricswhich minimizes playback controls and displays lyrics perfectly timed with the music. Tap the bottom of the screen to temporarily re-display the controls, or tap the album art in the upper left corner to turn off the live lyrics. (Note: This only works if Apple Music has lyrics for the song. If not, the Live Lyrics button will be grayed out.)

If you are in Live Lyrics mode, you can turn it on by tapping the microphone button on the right singwhich mutes the vocals so you (and your friends) can provide your own. In other words, it’s karaoke mode. You can scroll up or down Vocal volume use the slider to adjust how muted you want the original track to be. If it’s a song you’re still learning, I recommend leaving it halfway through.

AirPlay and SharePlay

Just to the right of the Live Lyrics button at the bottom of Apple Music’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 AirPlay icon. Tap it and you can choose where the audio will play: from speakers, headphones, or nearby devices you can AirPlay to, such as a Mac or Apple TV. If there’s an active Apple TV nearby, you can tap All speakers and TVs button below to switch to control, with your phone acting as a playback remote.

If you’re in your car or connected to a Bluetooth speaker, you can see a SharePlay button too. SharePlay allows others to control playback and add songs to a queue. It’s a great solution for long car journeys – you don’t want to take your phone if you need it for navigation, but other people can still pick up the tracks. They don’t even need an Apple Music subscription – just the Music app.

Next playback menu

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

The “Queue” section shows all the songs you have lined up to play next. For more information on how to do this, check out our guide: How to quickly queue songs on Apple Music (and clear the queue).

Swipe left on a song in the queue to remove it. Or you can tap Clear to delete the entire queue. The “Continue Playing” section below it will show the songs that follow from the playlist or album you started playing from.

Scroll up the list to view your playback history. Click on any of these tracks 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:

• Stir shuffles the rest of the tracks in the Queue and Continue Playing lists.
• Repeat when exhausted, it will play all the songs in the Next Play list again. One tap to enable repeat, another tap to repeat it only once, and a third tap to disable it.
• Automatic playback adds similar songs to the bottom of the queue so you don’t run out of music.
• Automix blends the end of one track with the beginning of another. Adjusts key and tempo like a DJ to make transitions natural, and can skip long silences or quiet parts at the end of a song.

More tips for Apple Music

• Apple Music Replay it will display the best songs, artists, albums and more detailed statistics for the whole year and create a yearly list of your best songs.
• Apple Music Classical is a custom app and interface (free with an Apple Music subscription) for playing classical music.
• Queue songs and automatically create a playlist. With simple gestures and controls, you can set a song, album or playlist to play next or add it to the end of the queue.
• Karaoke fashion mutes vocals so you can sing at a party or in the car.
• Musical haptics allowing you to feel the rhythm of the music right in your hand.