Some time ago, some genius™ at Apple decided that when one selects "Go to current song" (cmd-L) in any view, the display for the album would now also switch to the Albums view, rather than just going to the current track. I only use the Songs view (so I can see, and if necessary, edit, all track data) but Music is a consumer app so we are not allowed to do things our own way.
So I wonder if anyone knows of a reliable way to control Music.app so that "Go to current song" does just that, i.e. it moves the focus to the currently playing track.
I say "reliable" because my attempted solutions – using the Move or Click Mouse action to change back to Songs view after "Go to current song" – have not been reliable (I have had some peculiar results – Music is, I suspect, a bit of a weird app).
Is there a way to perform the task using Applescript? I have had a look at the Applescript dictionary for Music but I have not yet found a way.
MacOS V. 13.6.4 (not at all ace) Ventura
Keyboard Maestro V. 11.0.2
I use the excellent app Swinsian for my music library, but for a "quick and dirty" album player, Music.app is still just about the best of a less than exciting selection on the Mac.
Update 2024-04-17: I have added a post below with details of the macro that I now use to solve this issue.
Taking a quick look at it, I can't see an elegant—or really, any—solution that does what you want. The AppleScript dictionary has a reveal command, but that just does what Command-L does.
About all I could come up with is this:
Create a Smart Playlist that's simply everything in your library, and set it to view as songs. This mimics the Songs section of the library.
Write a macro that's triggered by Command-L when Music is frontmost. Step one sends Command-L to music, then step two selects Songs > Show in Playlist > Your Everything Playlist.
This should work, but it would cause a rapid display and then removal of the album view page. Hopefully someone else can find a better solution, but I didn't see any way to specifically select the active track in the Songs view in the library.
An update for anyone's possible future reference...
Thanks again to @griffman but the big drawback with that solution, for my needs, turned out to be that I still wanted to get back to the actual Tracks view at some point, in order to quickly remove the tracks that had been played (my audio library being handled separately by Swinsian, and Music being the "quick and dirty" player).
I have now come up with the method shown in the screenshot. This is proving to be reliable in returning the view to the "Tracks" view area.
The key to the macro is that the "Songs" image with the red background is big enough, and of high enough contrast, to be an easy target for the move and click action.
Note however that KM apparently only sees the big red background of "Songs" and not the text! If the macro is triggered when the initial view is anything other than "Songs", another view option could end up with a red background, and the macro will not work. This is no problem for my needs, since I only use the "Songs" view, but a more flexible version of this macro would need to work around that issue, in order to work from any starting view.
The tab keystroke action is to move the focus to Music.app's sidebar, so that "Songs" gains the red background.
And currently, this macro is working solidly. I say "currently" because I did try this approach before raising the question here but the "click" had no effect. Maybe that was due to gremlins; maybe it was due to user error... All seems well right now...
I only use the Songs view (so I can see, and if necessary, edit, all track data) but Music is a consumer app so we are not allowed to do things our own way.
