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How to Use Time-Synced Lyrics With Apple Music in macOS Catalina

lyrics to dancing queen by abba with gold album cover

If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can read lyrics in the Apple Music app on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV.

A subscription is $9.99 per month or $14.99 per month for a family subscription for up to six people (which requires iCloud Family Sharing). College students can subscribe for only $4.99 per month.

To read lyrics in the Apple Music app on your Mac:

  1. You must be running macOS Catalina. Some users have experienced problems with versions under 10.15.4, so make sure you are updated.
  2. Open the Apple Music app and play a song.
  3. In the upper-right corner, click the Lyrics icon (it looks like a quotation mark).
  4. If lyrics are available, each verse appears in time with the music so you can follow along as you listen. If lyrics aren’t available, you’ll get a message to this effect.
Apple Music player showing the 01 list

The lyric reading feature works great on Apple Music subscriptions, not so much on songs you’ve purchased or ripped from a CD.

To jump to a certain verse, scroll and click any line.

To see the lyrics and album cover in full screen, go to the menu bar and choose “Window > Full Screen Player.” Or go to View and choose “Enter Full Screen.” Press Esc to leave full-screen mode.

Apple music app showing window menu dropdown

You can also enter lyrics for songs in which they’re unavailable. With the Music app open, control-click a song, then choose “Get Info.”

Click Lyrics, then select “Custom Lyrics” at the bottom of the window.

Get info screen from apple music app showing no lyrics for dancing queen by ABBA

Enter the words to the song, then click OK.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Contributing Author
Dennis has over 40 years of journalism experience and has written hundreds of articles. For the past 20-plus years, he's been an online journalist, covering mainly Apple Inc. He's written for MacCentral, MacWorld, MacMinute, Macsimum News, Apple Daily Report, and is now contributing editor at Apple World Today.
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