music just starts playing automatically on my iPhone

This certainly seems to be an intentional act by Apple to force us to listen to Apple Music rather than their competitors. No auto play icon on my iphone14promax. This is beyond irritating, frustrating and insulting for Apple to do this. I am getting sick of their efforts to control and monopolize.

I have this exact same problem. No infinity icon, no ability to disable AutoPlay, and Apple Music continues to self-activate and play at random times for no reason.

Deleting Apple Music solved the problem for me.

I found it. You pick a song, click on the mini bar that shows the song that is playing, click the icon on the bottom right that has 3 vertical dots with lines to the right. That will bring up a list of what songs are going to play. To the right of “Playing next”, you will see 3 icons: shuffle (crossing arrows), repeat (arrows circling), and the infinity sign.

I too have this problem and have spent hours now trying to fix it. It’s becoming extremely irritating. I just took a nap using an app that plays stories to help you fall asleep. I finally fell asleep and eventually the story ended and that app stopped playing anything. Once that happened, Apple Music started blaring and woke me up. I know it’s kind of funny but I am so mad right now. It’s pathetic Apple can’t fix this.

I don’t know if this is going to work but here we go:

go to settings > general > AirPlay & Handoff

Right on top there is “Automatic AirPlay”

disable it and test it out…

None of the advice here worked for me, except for deleting the Music app. It's sad, because I wanted to continue using the Music app but this auto-play "feature" every time I plug in headphones was infuriating. Why on earth would I ever want to automatically play a song that wasn't playing before I plugged in the headphones?!

This is clearly stated. There is no ‘infinity’ icon. What to do?? It’s incredibly frustrating.

I followed these steps, but no luck. Still no 'infinity' icon. Only shows 'shuffle' and 'repeat'. Thanks though..

I don’t see an infinity sign. Just random and repeat

You would think Apple would come on here and at least tell us that there’s no way to fix this!!! You think they would at least tell us something? Instead of just leaving us completely in the dark! My next phone is an android!!! I’ve been with Apple iPhone since day one in 2007.

Despite these very detailed instructions (thanks for that), they didn’t work on my phone. There aren’t any icons next to “playing next”. I had to delete the Apple Music app entirely. I have never used it and I don’t want to. Hopefully Apple won’t decide to do me a “favor” and reinstall it.

If there is a setting to stop autoplay it would be on the stereo. In most cases the stereo will automatically start playing when the source of the music is set to Bluetooth. It needs to do this since the stereo does not have a Play/Pause button for Bluetooth music. If it didn't start playing when connected, there would be no way for you to start playing it from the stereo. Here is a possible option that will create a shortcut that stops the music from playing when connected to Bluetooth. The downfall to this approach is that to get music playing again through your car, you will need to start playing it on your phone.

• Open Shortcuts app
• Tap Automation at the bottom of the screen
• Tap "Create Personal Automation"
• Tap "Bluetooth"
• Tap "Choose" under Device and select your car
• Tap "Done"
• Tap "Next"
• Tap "Add Action"
• Tap "Media"
• Scroll down to the Playback section and tap "Play/Pause"
• Tap "Play/Pause" on the top of this screen and choose "Pause"
• Tap "Next"
• Tap "Done"

If you decide you don't want this automation after creating it, you can simply delete it from the Shortcuts app.

iOS 17 added an extra step to prevent shortcuts from running automatically, so you may need to turn off the "Ask Before Running" option on the shortcut as explained in the user guide:

Some personal automations can run without asking you for confirmation when they’re triggered.

1. In the Shortcuts app  on your iOS or iPadOS device, tap Automation .
2. Tap the automation you want to run automatically.
3. Turn off Ask Before Running, then tap Don’t Ask to confirm your choice.
4. Tap Done.
5. The automation will not notify you when it’s triggered.

This is the exact answer. Double checked it.

Settings -> General -> Automatic AirPlay - > Off