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My Macbook Pro is Randomly playing music

A

Astonish_IT

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 1, 2017
155
147
Hello everyone,

I have a problem since like 2-3 weeks and I searched the internet to resolve it and this time without luck. I have a 2017 Macbook Pro ( 15 inch if it matters ) with touchbar and I am using Mac OS Catalina 10.15.1. Since like 2-3 weeks, i dont understand how, but my Macbook started to play random musics or sometimes even random adds. I see nothing on the screen, i tried to close even all the open apps, because at first i thought that it may be some add in a google chrome tab that i didn't realise but no, even when i close the apps it keeps playing and it is driving me crazy.

Could you help me about it? Where to look at..etc. Because i know that on Windows, i can go to sound options and it shows me the apps playing sounds, on Mac i saw some terminal commands on google but i realy didn't understand the answers given by terminal.

It may possibly be a malware as well, but i don't know any fast/free app (like avast on windows) that can let me find out.

And no, i don't have airpods..etc (i saw some people asked in a similar thread) i only have Macbook Pro and iPad Pro and when this is happening i am not touching my iPad Pro so i dont think that i activate something like airplay..etc

Thank you very much
 
Try rebooting the machine (this will ensure that all applications are terminated). After it comes up again, can you hear the sounds even before opening any apps? If so, I would strongly suspect malware of some kind.

I've seen many recommendations on these forums for Malwarebytes (https://www.malwarebytes.com/) to scan for malware, and reports of it helping. I've only used it once (it didn't find anything but I was pretty sure the machine was already clean). You can download it and scan your machine for free -- you don't need to pay for the extra features like continuous scanning.
 
Do you have any Bluetooth audio device connected to it?

Try [for some time] fully disabling bluetooth on System Preferences.
Wait to check if the problem happens.

It may be some intermitent bluetooth audio device connecting to MacOS, and it has the behavior of start Music automatically and start playing some random music [EVERY TIME] the bluetooth audio device has a reconnection.

I'll wait for your reply
 
My whole family is having this issue. Only one of us uses pandora, seems to be iPhone and Macs that can trigger spontaneous playing. I have noticed that it is much more likely if the triggering device has been using Airplay to a HomePod or AppleTV.

Very annoying. Very radom
 
I'm having the same problem. I have the Macbook Pro M1, and when I restart the machine, music sometimes randomly plays. It's like elevator music, and I cannot find where it's coming from, nor can I shut it off.

However, something interesting happened today. I was on a Zoom meeting, when the elevator music was playing, I couldn't find where it was coming from and it was so loud that I wasn't able to hear the people in the meeting. So I decided to restart the machine, seeing that's how it stopped the music before. While restarting, programs that were opened started closing, including the random music, but since I was in a Zoom meeting, the Zoom app stopped the restarting process to make sure I wanted to exit the meeting. It spared me from having to restart the entire machine and logging back on to the Zoom meeting.

I don't know where this music is coming from, but doing a Google search on the topic, this is not just an outlier.
 
Download MalwareBytes and run it:
www.malwarebytes.com

Official Site | Malwarebytes: Antivirus, Anti-Malware & Privacy

Malwarebytes offers real-time antivirus, advanced anti-malware and privacy protection for all your devices. Launched in 2004 as a free virus scan, we still offer a free basic version 20 years later. Learn more.
www.malwarebytes.com

IMPORTANT:
Select the "home" option.
It's a FREE download

IMPORTANT:
You DO NOT NEED TO BUY A SUBSCRIPTION to run MalwareBytes.
It will run FOREVER IN FREE MODE.
When you open it, IGNORE the button to "Upgrade Now" or "Activate License".
Just click "Scan".
Again, you DO NOT have to buy the pay-for version!
 
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