I’ve had instances where I’ve given friends access to my Apple Music account to play songs, only to see inspired recommendations on my feed in the following days. It’s downright irritating, especially if they play tracks I don’t want to hear regularly.

Thankfully, there is an easy way to avoid this problem.

Temporarily Disable Apple Music Listening History Using a Focus Mode

Before you hand over your iPhone to someone to play songs, you may head to the Music app settings in the iOS Settings app and toggle off the Use Listening History option to prevent their listening preferences from influencing your recommendations. However, this isn’t an ideal approach, as the likelihood of forgetting to turn it back on after the fact is very high.

Thankfully, there’s a workaround to this. It involves setting up Focus mode with the Use Listening History filter, which you’re able to toggle on before handing over your phone and off when you have the device back.

How to Create and Use a Focus Mode for Private Music Sessions

Depending on your preference, you can create a custom Focus mode with the Use Listening History filter or set up an existing one. However, I suggest creating a dedicated Focus mode just for pausing Apple Music listening history, as it won’t interfere with your existing Focus modes.

Follow these steps to create a Focus mode:

Now, when someone asks for your phone, activate this Focus mode. Simply swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen to bring up the Control Center. Then, tap theFocuscontrol and select the Focus mode from the list to toggle it on. Repeat the same steps to toggle it off.

Alternatively, if you go somewhere where you have to share your Apple Music account with someone, you’re able to automate the Focus mode so that it automatically triggers when you reach that location.

To do this, go back to the Focus mode you just created. Scroll down to theSet A Schedulesection and tap onAdd Schedule. Next, chooseLocationas the trigger, and on the following screen, find and set the location where you want the Focus mode to get enabled automatically.

Applemakes Focus modes device-specific by default, so a mode’s configuration on one device won’t affect that on the other. However, if you fear your Apple Music recommendations will be ruined on your other devices, too, you cansyncFocus across all your devices.

While I believe Spotify takes the cake when it comes to personal recommendations, I’ve discovered some really nice songs to my taste on Apple Music since I switched a couple of years ago. Keeping the listening history on has surely helped the cause here.

As such, I believe you should, too, especially now that you can do it without fearing someone ruining your recommendations to ensure the algorithm serves you well and you get the most out of the service.