"Show Artwork" setting keeps turning on in Music / Songs view despite having repeatedly turned it off

Question

"Show Artwork" setting keeps turning on in Music / Songs view despite having repeatedly turned it off

I have deselected the View Options > "Show Artwork" setting in Music many times - and yet it keeps turning on every time I open Music in Songs view.

Any idea why this is happening and how I can stop it? Having searched the community / Google I see this has happened for people as far back as iTunes in 2010. I have followed all instructions in those posts and yet the problem persists. This is a new and, quite frankly, irritating situation for me.

TIA for any suggestions!

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Mar 22, 2021 12:39 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Mar 23, 2021 9:36 AM in response to The_Ramshackler

Ah, Big Sur rather than Catalina. I'd forgotten that option had been restored.

With Music closed open ~/Music/Music, right click on Music Libary.musiclibrary and click Show Package Contents. Select and copy the file Preferences.plist, save the copy to your desktop, then delete the original file and empty the trash. Launch Music. Your preferences will be reset so you need to review these. Hopefully you will now be able to reliably control the show artwork option.

tt2

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Answer 2

Mar 23, 2021 9:16 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for the suggestion. Alas that didn't work. FYI I'm attaching screenshots which show a) the column that keeps getting displayed and b) the setting I keep de-selecting which, as visible in screenshot, keeps getting automatically activated every time I launch Music.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Mar 23, 2021 4:29 AM in response to The_Ramshackler

Try holding down option+cmd as you launch Music so that it opens in safe mode. This may help to get your preference to stick. That said I don't see an option to display artwork in the Songs view, or playlists when viewed as songs.

tt2

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Answer 4

callaway

Level 2

474 points

Mar 25, 2021 12:50 PM in response to turingtest2

I think you're heading in the right direction, though. 😀

I didn't have the problem until I first checked the box to display artwork. After that, I haven't been able to uncheck that box to make the setting keep. Every time I re-launch the Music app, it displays the artwork again.

FWIW, my wife has never enabled artwork on her MacBook and it doesn't display. I don't want to test on the feature on it, though. 😂

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