It has always been an unspoken rule that if you want to use Apple products, you have to use them with Apple’s services. But, as inconvenient as that used to be, things are definitely changing as users have gradually been given the option to change their default apps for services like mail and web browsing. With the iOS 14.5 beta, it looks like another service is getting added to your list: you can set third party music apps, like Spotify, as your default music app.
This new “feature” was discovered by users on the r/iOSBeta subreddit and it looks like an expansion on the feature that allows users to request Siri to play music from a specific app. Currently, if you wanted to ask Siri to play a track on Spotify, for example, you’d have to say “Hey Siri, play [track/artist] on Spotify”.
With the iOS 14.5 beta, when you ask Siri to play something for the first time, the digital assistant will actually prompt you with a list of installed music apps so that you can choose which one to set as default. Once you do, you don’t have to mention the specific app’s name anymore. On top of that, if you have Apple Music uninstalled, Siri will reportedly just play the track from the music app you normally use.
However, if you’re thinking that you can preemptively setup the default music app in Settings, it looks like that option is not currently available. No alternative way has been discovered to set this app by default besides through Siri. Unlike stuff like Mail where you can go to Settings > Gmail and switch the default mailing app, you can’t do that with music apps in the iOS 14.5 beta just yet.
What’s more, users have also reported that getting this feature to work through Siri is still a little buggy. Of course, that’s to be expected as this is a beta version of iOS after all.
Nevertheless, it’s pretty cool to see Apple open up more of their ecosystem to third party apps as I’m sure it’ll make it easier for people to convert to iOS from other operating systems. That said, whether this update will make it through to the final version of the software remains to be seen.
What’s your default music player? Let me know in the comments below.
