Apple in iOS 14.5 beta has added a new option to change the default music player, a feature that will undoubtedly be attractive to non-Apple Music fans.
Changing music defaults hasn’t been completely complete yet, but if you’re a beta user who prefers third-party music services, you can set them as the default Siri setting after upgrading to iOS 14.5.
How to set your default music service using Siri
- Upgrade to iOS 14.5 or iPadOS 14.5 on iPad.
- Ask Siri to play an artist, song, or album with a request such as “Hey Siri, sing on Fleetwood Mac.”
- Siri will display a list of all the music apps you have installed and ask you “Which app do you want to use?”
- Choose your favorite music app from the list.
/article-new/2021/02/siri-music-app-default.jpg?resize=560%2C551&ssl=1)
- If prompted, confirm that Siri can access the data in your music application.
- From there, Siri will play music in your application of your choice. If you chose Spotify, for example, the music content will be played on Spotify.
Siri will tell you which music app was selected when the song is playing, and you can also see an icon in the music app in the Now Playing window.
/article-new/2021/02/spotify-music-player.jpg?resize=560%2C480&ssl=1)
It was possible to play music from other services by clarifying which service you want to use Siri, such as “Hey Siri, play music on Spotify”, but the change implemented in iOS 14.5 makes Siri your default music app of choice like “Hey Siri play music” will use your favorite application, rather than default to Apple Music.
Keep in mind that if you don’t see the option to select a default music service, you may need to restart your device. Some users also reported that they failed to perform the surface setting, so not all users may see it in this beta.
How to change your default music service
There are currently no musicSiri commands or music settings to manually change the default music application that you have set up through the Siri interface.
You can ask Siri to play music on another music service, and this will sometimes change the default value. So, if you set Spotify as the default, but want to go back to “Apple Music”, you can say “Hey Siri, play Fleetwood Mac on Apple Music vice” or vice versa, “Hey Siri, play Fleetwood Mac on Spotify”.
Sometimes this will change the default music setting, but it is not fully reliable. You can sometimes get the list to reappear by asking about different services in quick succession, or when you download a new music services app, but for now, if you want a seamless experience, be sure to set it to the music service you use the most. frequently.
We expect Apple to embed the feature in future beta versions, so there’s likely to eventually be a switch to set a music app as default on iOS, similar to how the settings for default email apps work. and browser.