Apple Music on iOS 18 freezes, crashes, or duplicates songs? You're not alone

Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 18, has been a mixed bag for users. While it has introduced exciting new features such as T9 dialing and RCS support, it has also brought with it a fair share of bugs and glitches. Apple Notes app slows down, freezes, and crashes for some, Siri’s not talking much after the update, Apple Mail won’t fetch new emails using IMAP, and now its emerging that Apple Music has been particularly troublesome for some music lovers.

Imagine this: You’ve just queued up your favorite playlist, the tunes are flowing, and suddenly — silence. You glance down at your iPhone, only to see Apple Music frozen. No amount of frantic tapping will save it; the app just crashes, leaving you in musical limbo. This is the all-too-common scene for some users since updating to iOS 18. Whether it’s on an iPhone, iPad, or even in Apple CarPlay, the app seems to have a mind of its own, pausing songs, freezing up, and sometimes refusing to play anything at all.

Some users are reporting that the app crashes after just a minute or two of playback, while others say it remains responsive but doesn’t let them skip songs or pause. It’s a pretty big deal when your paid music service decides to go rogue, especially when most of these users rely on it daily.

One interesting twist is that several users have noted their devices heating up while using Apple Music — like, noticeably warm to the touch. It’s as if iOS 18 turned their iPhones into mini space heaters. Coupled with the app’s relentless crashing, this has left many to wonder if the update came with some secret energy-sapping code. Standard fixes, like rebooting devices, reinstalling the app, or signing out and back in, have proven ineffective, adding to the frustration.

Digging deeper, a few clever users stumbled upon a peculiar workaround: disabling vocal shortcuts. Some found that turning off this obscure feature actually stopped the crashing in its tracks. But before you celebrate, this fix isn’t universal — others swear they’ve never even set up vocal shortcuts yet still suffer the same issues.

As if crashes weren’t enough, Apple Music is also dealing with a cloning problem. Several users are seeing their music libraries populated with duplicate songs, especially those synced from iTunes or uploaded from personal collections. It’s a bizarre glitch, and for those with large libraries, it’s a nightmare that’s bringing some dangerously close to Apple’s 100,000-song limit.

The duplication seems to occur when syncing local files to the cloud, often affecting tracks that aren’t available in Apple Music’s own library. Even longtime Apple fans are wondering why the same songs appear just fine on their Macs but show up doubled on their iPhones. The most frustrating part? There’s no quick fix in sight, meaning many are left to painstakingly delete duplicates manually.

Apple Music’s woes on iOS 18 are a stark reminder that no app, however essential, is immune to the teething problems that come with major software updates. Sure, this isn’t Apple’s first rodeo; glitches like these often pop up when new versions drop. But with every crash, freeze, and duplicate track, users are reminded that the tech we rely on doesn’t always hit the right note.

The good news? Apple’s usually pretty swift when it comes to patches, so we can expect a fix soon.