You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

📰 Newsroom Update

Billie Eilish is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2024. Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

No more manual lyrics????

I bought 2 songs today on my Mac using Music version 1.3.4.56 running under Ventura 3.3.1 I wanted to manually add lyrics, and did the usual "right click" on the song, select "Get Info" and the Lyrics tab is GONE. Older songs (2 weeks ago) had the option, and it still remains where I manually added lyrics, but these 2 new songs that I bought today (7/5/23) have no lyrics tab.


Honestly Apple, WTF??? What half-assed, half-baked engineering team thought that this was a good idea?

Posted on Jul 5, 2023 10:20 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 15, 2024 9:48 AM

The missing "lyrics" tab in the "get info" indicates that the music file is a virtual presence on your device. The actual file is not present hence the prohibition on editing (adding custom lyrics). The workaround is to go to the list view and click on the little down arrow on the track. This forces a transfer of the file to your device. When complete re-open the "get info" window and the "lyrics" will be present and you may edit the contents.


To see the lyrics on your mobile device you must synchronize the device with the updated music library. This will transfer the edited music files and enable viewing lyrics on the mobile device.

7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 15, 2024 9:48 AM in response to dtumser

The missing "lyrics" tab in the "get info" indicates that the music file is a virtual presence on your device. The actual file is not present hence the prohibition on editing (adding custom lyrics). The workaround is to go to the list view and click on the little down arrow on the track. This forces a transfer of the file to your device. When complete re-open the "get info" window and the "lyrics" will be present and you may edit the contents.


To see the lyrics on your mobile device you must synchronize the device with the updated music library. This will transfer the edited music files and enable viewing lyrics on the mobile device.

Jul 5, 2023 12:44 PM in response to dtumser

Maybe not. I just checked over 100 "older" songs, some dating back to the early days of iTunes, and they all had the Lyrics tab. So I gues I'm back to turingtest2's recommendation to notify Apple and what they have to say about these 2 songs.


I'll post back here if they provide anything noteworthy.


BTW, thank you to those who replied.

Jul 5, 2023 10:53 AM in response to dtumser

Are you sure these are songs you purchased from the iTunes Store? Or are they songs you leased with an Apple Music subscription? According to this link:

View and enter lyrics in Music on Mac - Apple Support

the Lyrics tab should still be in the "Get Info" box. It is on mine.


If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, you can view lyrics for the currently playing song, where available.

For other songs, you can enter the lyrics in Music and view them at any time. You can’t add lyrics to some types of files, such as WAV and QuickTime.


Jul 5, 2023 12:11 PM in response to javaliga

I think I'm on to something. Just as a test, I bought another song moments ago, that was released last October, and it had the lyrics tab.


I'm now wondering if there are songs in Apple's library that were encoded quite a while ago. The two songs in question were older songs and may have been encoded before the lyrics tab was made available. What I can't find is when Apple provided the ability to add custom lyrics. Is it possible that songs encoded before that date won't have the lyrics tab?

No more manual lyrics????

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.