Apple announced several new features coming to iOS 17 during yesterday’s WWDC keynote. Although Apple Music was only mentioned briefly, today we have a better understanding of all the new features coming to the Music app thanks to the iOS 17 developer beta.
Faded
The first major update is the ability to fade in between songs, which Apple says will let you seamlessly transition between songs so your music never stops. Apple Music iOS users have been waiting for this feature for a while now, which makes it one of the major additions to the Music app in iOS 17.
Anyone in the current developer beta should be warned that enabling cross fade under the Music tab of the Settings app will crash the entire app. Users report that this happens every time they try to click on the Music tab in the Settings app.
User interface changes
Similar to iOS 16 last year, iOS 17 makes some minor tweaks to the user interface of Apple Music. The most notable update is found in the music player, which now features full-screen animated artwork for albums that support animated artwork.
With this change, these albums blend seamlessly into the bottom part of the music player where the controls are located. This compares to the current iOS 16 style, where the album art is in a traditional square box with a matching color gradient surrounding it.
Finally, the minimized version of the music player now has a hover-style over the Apple Music interface. This provides a deep effect for the mini player as you browse through the Music app, and it still contains the play/pause and skip buttons.
Collaborative playlists
Apple mentioned briefly in its press release that Apple Music is gaining collaborative playlists in iOS 17, but so far there aren’t many details about the feature. In a screenshot, we can see four friends working on a “Game Night” playlist, which shows a song and a profile picture of the person who added it, similar to what the current Friends Mix looks like for “Apple Music”.
There’s also a button at the top of the playlist that appears to be an option to add and remove people from the playlist, and the playlist text mentions a way to “interact” with your favorite songs. Apple said that collaborative playlists will be available in an update later this year, so this feature likely won’t launch on the same day as iOS 17.
CarPlay update
There is a small update to “Apple Music” in CarPlay with iOS 17. Using SharePlay in the car will allow all passengers Contribute to what is currently playingand let friends and family add music to next or play/pause and skip the current song.
Other small updates
Previously on Apple Music, lyrics that didn’t sync had very small font that some users found difficult to read, especially compared to songs that had lyrics that played along with the music. In iOS 17, these songs with lyrics that haven’t been synced have a larger, clearer font.
There also appears to be a new star button on the music player in some of the images shared by Apple, though we haven’t seen it ourselves in the current iOS 17 beta. This button looks similar to the star button found on artist pages on the current iteration of Apple Music, which lets you favorite artist to stay up-to-date on their releases.
This new star button on the music player might just be a quick way to favorite the artist that’s currently playing, or it could be a completely new feature.
If you are looking forward to learning about all the upcoming iOS 17 features and updates, be sure to check out the post we made yesterday. We also recap everything Apple announced during its WWDC 2023 keynote.
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