Apple Music is kicking apps out of the dock on iOS 15 in weird bug

An apparent bug in iOS 15 is causing Apple Music to force itself back into your home screen dock, even if you’ve previously deleted the app from your device. Apple Music will be automatically reinstalled from the App Store if you remove it from your iPhone.

The bug was discovered by Kevin Archer, an iOS developer. Archer shared a video that showed how the Apple Music app was downloaded from the App Store and then the app returning to the default place on the home screen. This is the far bottom-right position, which is where the Music app is located in the stock home screen configuration on a new iPhone.

While the video shows the Apple Music app replacing Spotify in the dock, TechCrunch notes that the issue affects any app located in that spot of the dock and is not exclusive to just Spotify.

We found the Apple Music app replaced all sorts of apps that were in users’ docks, including first-party apps like the built-in Camera app, as well as other third-party apps, like Twitter. Another developer, replying in the Twitter thread, noted Apple Music bumped out Apple’s Safari app from their iPhone dock, as well.

TechCrunch also notes that some users have noticed that Apple Music will also take over as the music app Siri uses for voice commands. This isn’t necessarily true, however, as Apple doesn’t offer the ability to set a default music app for Siri commands. Instead, the company says that Siri uses intelligence features to choose a music service and that choice can change overtime.

9to5Mac’s Take

Apple added the ability to delete stock iPhone apps with an iOS update several years ago, allowing them to be re-downloaded from the App Store.

iOS 15 code analyzed by 9to5Mac indicates that there’s an internal iOS file with the default position of each app on the home screen, which is used to organize the apps after you restore your phone. Apple has not tested what happens if you remove a stock app and reinstall it from the dock.

While it’s easy to assume that this is some sort of “anticompetitive” practice (and some of the usual characters on Twitter have already done so), that doesn’t appear to be the case. As the code mentioned shows, this is just a bug that Apple is likely to fix in a future update.