IOS 18.4 Lets You Add Apple Music Playlists to Your Lock Screen
As a big fan of background music, I was intrigued by the changes to the Control Center in iOS 18.4 . It adds a new tab called Ambient Music to the Control Center’s list of custom controls. You can use this to add one of four pre-selected Apple Music playlists (or your own) to Control Center, the lock screen, or the action button (assuming your iPhone has one). Until now, you could play music through the Now Playing widget in Control Center, but there were no dedicated controls for launching playlists.
This feature is different from Background Sounds , which lets you play nature sounds on your iPhone to help you focus better. While background sounds are useful for everyone, they were first designed as an accessibility feature and can therefore be found in your iPhone’s Accessibility settings. Meanwhile, the new iOS 18.4 Ambient Music feature is linked to Apple Music. With this feature, you can choose from four playlists selected for you by Apple, or any of your own Apple Music playlists.
How to Add Apple Music Playlists to Control Center
To listen to these ambient music playlists, you’ll have to update to iOS 18.4 . At the time of writing, it’s in developer beta, which is the buggiest and most unstable version of Apple OS available. Be sure to back up your data before attempting the update, and make sure you’re not trying to do it on your main iPhone. Crucial apps and services may stop working in beta software at any time, so it’s important to be aware of the risks.
After installing iOS 18.4, you can open Control Center , touch and hold on an empty part of the screen, and then tap the Add Control button at the bottom of the screen. Scroll down until you see the Ambient Music tab and select one of the controls. Apple allows you to choose from four moods: sleep, relaxation, productivity, and well-being. In Control Center, long-press on any of these playlists to open more options. You can also click From Library to add your own playlists to any of these controls.
You can also add these controls to your iPhone’s lock screen . To do this, lock your iPhone and then use Touch ID or Face ID to unlock the device. Touch and hold the lock screen, select Customize , and touch the lock screen on the left. You can now remove either of the two controls in the bottom left and bottom right corners and replace them with your playlists.