All the upgrades to your iPhone’s music app with iOS 26

Apple released iOS26 in September, and it brought a handful of new features to your iPhone, like call screening, new ringtones And more. The update also brought new features to Apple Music ($11 per month) which reduce the gap with its closest competitor, Spotify.

Apple Music has become one of the biggest music streaming platforms since its release ten years ago. According to StatistApple Music had approximately 94 million paying subscribers as of June 2024. However, Spotify ($12 per month) remains well ahead of Apple Music in terms of number of paying subscribers with 276 million Apple therefore still has some catching up to do in the area of ​​music streaming.

I spent some time testing Apple Music’s new features to see if they could help Apple close this gap. Some features are nice but only available for a limited selection of songs, which might dampen your interest. But Apple is moving in the right direction with these features.

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Automatic mixing

AutoMix is ​​an enhanced crossfade feature that mixes one song into the next. The feature attempts to stretch time and match song beats so that the transition between the two songs is smoother.

After spending some time listening to Apple Music in iOS 26, I found that the feature’s success was quite dependent on the songs you were listening to and it didn’t always seem to work. When I noticed that AutoMix worked, I didn’t like it because the songs didn’t work together in most cases. For example, Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush leading to Happier from Marshmallow and Bastille It was a really strange transition.

The feature worked best in pop and rap songs, but even then the mix didn’t always sound right. The feature was stretching and distorting the beats to fit the upcoming song and it made me think something was wrong with the song.

AutoMix didn’t particularly work with a lot of the rock and alternative songs I was listening to. With these songs, it felt like a traditional crossfade function.

AutoMix was automatically enabled after downloading iOS 26, but if you’re not a fan of this feature, here’s how to disable it.

1. Faucet Apple Music.
2. Start playing music.
3. Tap the song at the bottom of your screen.
4. Tap the symbol that looks like three dots and dashes in the lower right corner of your screen.

5. Tap the AutoMix symbol (it looks like a Venn diagram) near the top right corner of your screen to activate the feature.

If you don’t like AutoMix and want to turn it off, follow the instructions above again and tap the same symbol to turn it off.

Translation and pronunciation of lyrics

With iOS 26, Apple’s Music app can help you translate songs and even pronounce words correctly in their native language. This is a handy feature if, for example, you’re a fan of K-pop – or Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters – but you don’t speak Korean and want to know what your favorite songs are about.

Here’s how to view translation and pronunciation guides for lyrics for certain songs.

1. Faucet Apple Music.
2. Start playing music.
3. Tap the song at the bottom of your screen.
4. Tap the speech bubble containing quotes in the lower left corner of your screen.
5. Tap the symbol with two bubbles inside.

This will bring up a menu with options Show pronunciation And Show translation. Tapping Show pronunciation will then place phonetic guides under the lyrics of a song, and pressing Show translation will translate the lyrics and place the translation under the corresponding lyrics.

However, these features are limited in the languages ​​they work with, so Apple Music may not always display the menu to enable these features.

Here is all languages the lyrics translation works with it.

• English to Chinese (simplified).
• English to Japanese.
• Korean to Chinese (Simplified).
• Korean to English.
• From Korean to Japanese.
• Spanish to English.

And here are the languages ​​in which pronunciation guides are available.

• From Japanese to romanized.
• Korean to romanized.
• Korean in Katakana.
• Cantonese in Jyutping.
• Chinese (simplified) to Pinyin.
• From Chinese (traditional) to pinyin.
• Hindi to romanized.
• Punjabi to romanized.

These features are also not available in all songs, even if the language is covered in the lists above. For example, Apple Music would not translate certain Babymetal songs. This was disappointing because I wanted to know why the group wanted so much chocolate.

Pin playlists, albums, and more

If you save lots of playlists, albums, artists, and more in Apple Music, it can be easy to lose track of your favorites. But in iOS 26, you can pin the music you like to the top of your library. Next, long press on the music you want to pin and tap Pin (Section) — so if you are in playlists the option will say Pin the playlist. This music will now appear at the top of this section.

Playlist folders

The Mac version of Apple Music lets you organize your playlists into folders, and iOS 26 brings this feature to your iPhone. In the Playlists section of your Apple Music Library, simply tap the plus (+) sign in in the upper right corner of your screen, then tap Create a new folder. Name your folder, then you can drag and drop playlists into it.

Animated lock screen artwork

When you listen to Apple Music, some album art will now animate on your lock screen. To view the animated artwork, you need to tap the album cover in the media player on your lock screen when a song is playing.

Note that not all albums have animated illustrations. When you tap on the album cover in these cases, the album cover expands and takes up most of your lock screen.

This is more of an aesthetic change than a practical one, but it’s always interesting to see certain pieces of art come to life when you’re enjoying an album.

New Home Screen Widgets

The iOS update also introduces a few new widgets for the Apple Music home screen. These widgets include medium and large widgets for pinned music, as well as a large Live Radio widget.

The only features that might attract me to Apple Music

If you’re not an Apple Music subscriber, there are only a few new features that might tempt you to switch to the streaming service: the lyrics translation and pronunciation features.

The new translation and pronunciation features are unique and I’m very interested in how Apple will leverage them. Japanese metal bands are so fun but I have no idea what bands like Esprit D’Air are singing about for the most part. Silver leaf and I would like to know.

I also can’t read Japanese, so looking at the lyrics of these bands isn’t helpful. Therefore, the pronunciation feature is an easy way to sing a song in Japanese without having to learn a new language.

However, Apple Music’s translation features are only available on certain songs at the moment and they are limited in the languages ​​they can be translated to. So the feature can be improved and I will be interested to know how much time Apple is investing in improving this feature.

As for other features, Spotify already offers features like AutoMix and pinned playlists. A Reddit user I discovered that Apple’s iOS 26 API would allow Spotify to display animated artwork on the lock screen. So I’d be shocked if Spotify doesn’t integrate this feature into its app soon.

You can create playlist folders in Spotify but you need to create them on the desktop app or web player for now. You can access it on the mobile app, but the fact that you can create playlist folders in the Apple Music mobile app is a step forward. However, it’s not a big enough attraction to push me to change.

If you’re still considering switching from Spotify to Apple Music, Apple Music’s slightly lower price ($11 per month compared to $12 per month) might be the biggest incentive.

To learn more about iOS 26, here my opinion on the operating systemhow to reduce the effects of Liquid Glass in the update and how to activate call And text screening on your iPhone. You can also view our iOS 26 Cheat Sheet.