Apple appears to enable new music apps by default in iOS 14.5 beta

Apple is giving users another great reason to take a test drive of its latest public beta.

Hawk-eyed Editors using iOS 14.5 public beta noticed that when you ask Siri to play music, the assistant prompts the user to select the music app they want to use to play the song or artist. Normally Siri defaults to the Apple Music app when an app is not specified. But as Gizmodo confirmed, asking Siri, for example, to “play Phoebe Bridgers” in iOS 14.5 will bring up a menu with options for Apple Music, Spotify, Podcasts, and for some reason Books.

Reddit user matejamm1, who shared a screenshot of the feature and installed other music apps, also saw those apps on this screen.

If Spotify is selected in this menu, Siri seems to default to this app the next time it’s asked to play music, but the feature is pretty buggy. When I was testing the option to set my default music app as Spotify in iOS 14.5, sometimes Siri was default on Spotify, sometimes opened Apple Music, and sometimes brought up the same menu to select the app I was from. wanted to read the song or the music. . However, coworkers who aren’t running the public beta didn’t have that option when they asked Siri to play music, so that’s something.

It’s just one more reason to explore Apple’s latest public beta, especially for those of us who aren’t particularly interested in Apple’s own services. Recently, society has slowly stopped forcing us to use them. Last year iOS 14 introduced the ability to change your favorite email and browser apps to non-Apple services such as Chrome and Gmail. The ability to change other default options would be welcome.

Another notable feature of the iOS 14.5 public beta is the ability to use an Apple Watch for unlock your iPhone while wearing a mask. Sure, that can save you just a few seconds of manually entering your password, but listen, it makes the process of unlocking your phone while wearing a mask a little less boring. I tested it for the last few days and found it to work well.

In 2021, we are already saving time and broadcasting better. A small victory, but I’ll take it.