Apple Music Can Now Translate Lyrics, Manage Your Playlists, and Start a Karaoke Session
While iOS 26’s Liquid Glass design rightfully got most of the attention at Apple’s WWDC 2025 keynote, there were a few other additions worth talking about. These include a number of new improvements to Apple Music, like lyrics translation, a new DJ-style feature called AutoMix, and animated artwork on the Lock screen. Here are all the new Apple Music features in iOS 26.
Translation of the lyrics of your favorite songs
Apple Music has had time-synced lyrics for a while now, which works great when you speak the language of the song. However, it’s not as useful when you’re listening to songs in different languages, which is where Lyrics Translation comes in. It adds translations underneath each line of lyrics, time-synced, which also makes it easier to understand the meaning of the song. This hasn’t been added to all songs yet, but I expect that to change in the coming months.
Learn to pronounce song lyrics correctly
Another iOS 26 lyrics update allows Apple Music to show you the correct pronunciation of foreign language lyrics. Not all songs have lyrics written in Latin, so if you can’t read the alphabet they’re written in, this new feature can help you learn to pronounce the words. It does this by showing you a transliteration from the original lyrics to Latin, making it easier to sing along.
AutoMix is an AI DJ for your playlists
AutoMix is a new addition to Apple Music’s playback controls. You’ll see it next to the Shuffle, Repeat, and Autoplay buttons. When enabled, AutoMix will analyze the audio characteristics of songs and use DJ tricks like time-stretching and beat-matching to ensure seamless playback. Some people might like this, but I tried it out while jogging today and I’m not a big fan. I create a lot of custom playlists in Apple Music, and some of them are painstakingly put together by matching the sounds at the end of one song to the beginning of the next. AutoMix undid all my hard work and made the transitions sound unnatural. This might work for some types of playlists and for people who don’t care about transitions, but it’s not a big deal for me.
Pin your favorite playlists
This is a nice feature that lets you quickly access your favorite Apple Music playlists. You can long-press any playlist in the Music app in iOS 26 and pin it to the top of the Library tab. If you’ve pinned your favorite contacts in Messages, pinning music will feel familiar.
The animated cover will appear on the lock screen
Animated cover art is one of Apple Music’s most visually appealing features, and now it’s coming to your lock screen, too. When you play a song with animated album art, you can tap the player on your lock screen to see it in a neat, full-screen view.
Karaoke feature for Apple TV users
Apple Music is also getting a new feature called Sing, which only works if you have an iPhone with iOS 26 and an Apple TV with tvOS 26. If you meet all of these requirements, you can use your iPhone as a microphone and amplify your voice with Apple Music to create a fun karaoke experience right at home.