Automatic transitions, lyric translation... Notable new features of Apple Music in iOS 26

Since Apple launched its streaming music service, Apple Music, in 2015, it has rapidly grown to become one of the top three players in terms of market share in the global music streaming market. Although Apple Music's market share in the Chinese market is far lower than that of QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, it has still won the hearts of many music lovers with its ad - free experience, excellent UI interaction design, affordable paid subscription plans, and deep integration with the Apple ecosystem.

At the WWDC25 Global Developers Conference in June this year, in addition to releasing the new iOS 26 system, Apple also gave Apple Music a comprehensive upgrade in the new system, bringing many new features. With the official release of iOS 26, these upgrades to Apple Music have finally officially met the public. Next, let's take a look at what these new features are.

Automatic Transition

In iOS 26, Apple Music has added a new song transition method called "Automatic Transition". Based on the music app's analysis of the musical tonality and tempo, this transition method allows songs in a playlist to transition to the next song at the optimal time. The "Automatic Transition" feature introduced by Apple actually borrows from the mixing techniques commonly used by DJs during live performances. DJs usually smoothly transition from one song to the next based on the rhythm, tonality of the music, and the on - site atmosphere to keep the energy of the dance floor or the audience consistent. Therefore, it can be said that "Automatic Transition" is like a dedicated DJ arranged by Apple for your Apple Music.

If you can't imagine the actual effect of this feature just from the description, here's a perhaps not - so - professional analogy. When you're listening to Adele's "Make You Feel My Love", as the song nears the end with the line "To make you feel my love", you can also hear the opening line "Love! Love! Love!" of Twins' "Probationary Cupid".

If you just want to temporarily turn the "Automatic Transition" feature on or off, you can find the corresponding button in any playlist. Click it to turn the "Automatic Transition" feature on or off.

Of course, if you don't fully like this "Automatic Transition" song transition method, you can go to "Settings" > "Music" and find the "Song Transition" option in the music section. Here, you can switch the song transition method to the traditional "Cross - fade" or simply turn off the "Song Transition" feature.

Lyric Translation and Pronunciation

If you like listening to non - Chinese music such as Western music, K - pop, and Japanese songs, the new version of Apple Music has brought an "epic" new feature. When listening to non - native language songs, you can click the button at the bottom - left of the lyric interface to open the lyric translation or pronunciation. Then, the translated or phonetic text will be displayed synchronously below the original lyrics, making it convenient for us to sing along or understand the meaning of the lyrics. If you're listening to a Chinese song and have the "Show Pronunciation" option enabled, pinyin will be displayed below the lyrics.

There's a small detail about this new feature of Apple Music. When you long - press the lyrics to share them, the translation and pronunciation will be hidden, and only the original lyrics will be displayed.

Dynamic Lock Screen Cover

If you're a user of overseas music streaming services like Apple Music or Spotify, you must have seen the dynamic album covers when enjoying the works of artists such as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. These artistic and creative dynamic covers are undoubtedly a great fit for the lock screen interface. Therefore, Apple has introduced the dynamic cover feature for the lock screen in iOS 26, which can directly project the dynamic cover of the currently playing music onto the lock screen for dynamic display.

Using this feature is very simple. Just open Apple Music, find a song with a dynamic cover, start playing it, and then lock your phone screen. The dynamic cover will start playing in a loop on the lock screen. If you click on the dynamic cover, the lock screen will switch back to the original wallpaper. Click on the thumbnail of the album cover in the music playback widget again, and you can set the dynamic cover as the lock screen wallpaper again.

Music Memories

Apple Music launches a Music Memories campaign every year. It analyzes your music listening activities throughout the year, summarizes the songs, singers, and number of plays that you've listened to the most, and then generates a Music Memories playlist for that year. However, each year's Music Memories campaign is independent of the Apple Music app and is presented in a web - based format for a comprehensive display. Finally, the Music Memories playlist is added to your Apple Music playlist.

In Apple Music for iOS 26, Apple has finally integrated the "Music Memories" feature into the Apple Music app. You can find the function to create Music Memories on - the - spot in the "Home" > "Music Memories: Your Top Tracks" section. After clicking to enter "Music Memories", you can select any month of any year, and Apple Music will directly display the summary and analysis information such as listening time, favorite artists, favorite songs, favorite genres, favorite albums, and milestones during that period.

Playlist Folders

The Mac version of Apple Music has long supported the function of creating folders, and these folders can be synced to Apple Music on iOS, iPadOS, or tvOS via iCloud. However, direct folder creation is not supported on other platforms. In iOS 26, Apple has finally brought this feature to the iOS version of Apple Music.

After opening Apple Music, go to the "Library" tab, then click to open the playlist. Click the plus button in the top - right corner of the interface, and you'll see the "New Folder" function. In the folder, you can also perform operations such as filtering, sorting, switching views, renaming, and moving.

Top - Rated Music

As a heavy user of Apple Music, the "Top - Rated Music" feature among the newly launched features this year is the most satisfying one for me. Most of the time, I only want to listen to the songs I'm familiar with, but it's a bit cumbersome to manually search for specific playlists, albums, or songs every time.

The new "Top - Rated Music" feature in Apple Music allows me to directly pin my frequently listened playlists, albums, songs, singers, etc. to the "Library" tab. As soon as I open Apple Music, I can access them with one click and enjoy wonderful music right away. If you don't need to jump to the details page, a quicker way is to long - press the pinned music icon and then select "Play" or "Shuffle".

The method of pinning playlists, albums, songs, singers, music videos, etc. is simple, intuitive, and unified in operation. You just need to long - press any object (playlist, album, song, singer, music video, etc.) in the library, and then select "Pin XXX" from the pop - up menu.

The "Top - Rated Music" feature also has a very practical characteristic: automatic download. All pinned music, including playlists, albums, videos, etc., will be automatically downloaded locally. This can save cellular data for streaming playback and also allows you not to worry about forgetting to download music in advance when taking a flight. If you don't need the automatic download of pinned music, you can find the "Download Pinned Items" option in "Settings" > "Music" and click to turn it off.

New Widgets

Apple Music has added new home screen widgets such as "Pinned Items" and "Radio Live" in iOS 26, making it convenient for users to directly access their most frequently listened songs or various radio stations on the home screen with one click, without even having to open the Apple Music app. It's the most efficient way to listen to music.

In addition, Apple Music has also added a "Search" lock screen widget. After clicking it, you can directly open Apple Music and enter the search interface.

If you haven't used Apple Music yet, we recommend you give this pure and excellent streaming music player a try. In addition to the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music currently supports platforms such as Android, Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, and LG WebOS. The subscription price for Apple Music in China is 11 yuan per month. Students only need to pay 6 yuan per month, and the family plan costs 17 yuan per month, with no additional fees.

If you're also a heavy user of Apple Music, you might as well share your daily usage tips in the comments section or share your thoughts on these new features introduced by Apple Music in iOS 26.

Original link: https://sspai.com/post/101408?utm_source=wechat&utm_medium=social 

This article is from the WeChat public account "Minority" (ID: sspaime), author: Vanilla. Republished by 36Kr with permission.