One of the reasons to be excited about a WWDC is previewing what’s coming to Apple Music. With iOS 16, unfortunately, Apple didn’t announce a ton of new features to its music streaming service – different from all the other years. That said, there are still a few functions and tweaks that users will love when using Apple Music with iOS 16, especially now that its first public beta is out.
Apple Music on iOS 16 lets users sort playlists. Traditionally, all playlists in the Music app have been sorted by the order in which the songs were added to the playlist: the first songs added at the top and the songs added most recently at the bottom.
With this new feature with Apple Music on iOS 16, you can sort your playlist by Title, Artist, Album, and more. In addition, when you open a singer/band profile, there’s a new Favorite toggle that you can “keep track of the artists you care about most with new music notifications and improved recommendations.”
Apple Music on iOS 16 also introduces:
- Volume HUD has a tweak on the Apple Music app. It looks similar to the bar that shows the length of the song;
- When searching for albums, playlists, singles, etc, you’ll notice that the covers are more rounded;
- The Apple Music widget in the iOS 16 Lock Screen is now different. It also shows the devices you’re listening to (a HomePod, AirPods, Beats earbuds, and even wired headphones);
- When using SharePlay via Messages, it now synchronized activities like movies, music, workouts, games, and more with friends while chatting in Messages;
- You can drag and drop songs to add next in the queue (thanks, Hidde);
- You can move music from a HomePod to another without it AirPlaying to the other HomePod (thanks, George).
Apple Music users will benefit greatly from a new feature called Personalized Spatial Audio. Available for AirPods 3, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max users on iOS 16, this feature uses the TrueDepth sensor of your iPhone to make a 3D map of your face and ears while using an AirPods device.
Personalized Spatial Audio greatly improves the sound quality of Dolby Atmos with Spatial Audio, and it’s totally worth a try once it’s available to all users later this fall.
Last but not least, during iOS 16 beta 3, Apple added a new music and podcast preview to the Lock Screen. Although it also works with third-party apps, it’s nice to see what it’s like on Apple’s own Music app.
These are the features 9to5Mac was able to find on Apple Music with iOS 16 for now. Did you discover anything differently? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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