Among all the symbols that can appear next to songs in Apple Music, there is one that can confuse users, because there is no clear explanation of its meaning. It’s a small gray dot that appears to the left of tracks in Apple Music without any labels or menu indicators. The dot does not designate favorite tracks in the displayed album, as it cannot be assigned by the user. Instead, songs seem to appear automatically with the gray dot next to them. Apple has support documents explaining the different symbols that can appear in Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but the gray dot is not explained. Some users speculated online that the gray dot was an indicator of a specific song’s popularity, a way for Apple to show users which songs might be trending and indirectly help them discover those tracks.
Apple Music users have been discussing the gray dot on public forums, including Reddit and Apple’s own support community, for several years, speculating about what it might mean. In 2020, an Apple Community Expert responded to an Apple Music user’s question regarding gray stars appearing next to songs. “If you see a star next to a song in Apple Music, it means that it is one of the most popular songs on the album,” explained the specialist. However, Apple seems to have replaced the stars with dots. As of this writing, marking a track as a favorite in Apple Music places a gray star to the left of the song, which covers the gray dot, if there was one.
The best explanations available
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In 2023, Reddit users began to notice the gray dot appearing next to songs. A user responded to one of these threads by noting that dots indicate the best songs on an album. The person explained that Apple previously used a star, but switched to a gray dot because the star was associated with user-selected favorite songs. At the time of these comments, the gray dot had appeared in a beta version of the software. The same user explained that he had not read an official announcement from Apple on this subject, but the behavior of the dot in Apple Music seemed to indicate that Apple was marking the most streamed titles on the platform. “Usually after a few days the first few songs will all have points. And then after a few weeks those points will disappear and there will only be one or two points for specific songs,” said Reddit user BoysenberryTrue1360. “That’s not always the case. But I’ve seen it happen enough to assume it with confidence.”
It was just speculation, but a Redditor in another thread shared screenshots that seemed to support the theory a year later. User xezrunner provided images showing the Xcode View hierarchy information for the gray dot, called “TrackFavoriteView” in the code. The user also found code references that identify the indicator as being related to track popularity, although it is unclear how popular tracks are chosen. Apple Music may use internal ranking signals to determine which songs are popular at any given time.
And favorite songs?
Chris Smith, Deadline
Since BTS’s Arirang World Tour is a major music event in 2026, we looked at the “Arirang” album in Apple Music to see how many tracks have gray dots. Out of 16 tracks, not all of which are songs, five have the indicator next to them as of this writing: “Body to Body”, “Hooligan”, “2.0”, “Swim” and “Like Animals”. Of these, “Swim” is the title track of the album. The gray dot indicators that Apple uses for this album suggest that several songs from the album are popular with BTS fans on Apple Music. On the Apple Music web version of the “Arirang” album, only “Swim” has a gray dot indicator next to it.
Apple’s Popularity Meter may have no impact on the algorithms intended to improve the Apple Music experience based on your preferences. But you can mark songs as favorites by tapping the three-dot menu on the right side of a track and tapping the gray star symbol, which will improve your Apple Music recommendations. The star will appear to the left of the song, whether or not it has a gray indicator. For the BTS example above, favoriteing “Hooligan” (which has a gray dot) and “Normal” (which doesn’t) will give both tracks a left star (see screenshots above). The gray dot will continue to appear for titles that have not been designated as favorites.
