Apple Music Just Got a Huge AI Upgrade in iOS 26.4
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Apple launched iOS 26.4 last week with a bunch of new features. While some are pretty straightforward, like improved security settings and some new and silly emojis, others are more advanced, like the ability to customize your subtitles and captions more easily.
But among all the new things you can try, Apple has also added a couple of new features that make Apple Music smarter and a lot more fun.
So if you’ve already downloaded the newest update, here are a couple of features you can check out in Apple Music.
Apple Music Can Now Create Playlists With a Single Prompt
This is by far one of the coolest uses Apple has made of AI. Now, Apple Music can literally create a whole playlist for you from just a single sentence.
This is pretty straightforward to use: Thanks to a new feature called Playlist Playground, you can open the app and go to your playlists. From there, you should see a button near the top of your screen to create a new playlist.
After you tap it, you’ll see a text field at the bottom asking what you want to hear. Now, you can simply type whatever you want, like “80s most popular rock songs,” or “romantic music for my partner.” You can be as specific as you want, and you can even ask Apple Music to remove songs from specific years or artists.
Apple Music will search out those songs and give you a pretty complete list that you can turn into a playlist with one tap. The results will be based on songs you’ve listened to before, and whatever Apple Music thinks you might like.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Playlist Playground is still in beta, so it might not work flawlessly all the time. It’s also limited to users with Apple Music accounts based in the United States. This means that, unlike the earlier Apple Intelligence rollout, playing with your iPhone’s regional and language settings won’t unlock this feature. However, because it works on the back-end of your Apple Music account rather than directly on your device, it’s not exclusive to modern iPhone models.
As you may know, you can only use Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 15 Pro and later models (including the iPhone 16e and 17e). However, this new Playlist Playground feature currently works on any device that can install iOS 26.4 or iPadOS 26.4. This proves that Apple can implement AI features on older devices, although it’s also fair to say there aren’t nearly as many privacy issues involved with building playlists from content that’s widely available on Apple Music compared with searching through your personal photos.
Other Cool Apple Music Features
Playlist Playground is cool, but it’s not the only new music feature in iOS 26.4. Apple Music also gains “Concerts Near You”, to find shows and concerts you might want to attend. You’ll be able to see information such as specific dates and other concert-related details from Apple’s new partners. Like Playlist Playground, this also appears to be limited to the United States for now.
Another minor change is the ability to add a song to multiple playlists simultaneously. It’s a minor change, but it will save a lot of time.
Last but not least is song recognition. Yes, this technically isn’t an Apple Music feature, but it’s still worth sharing. Song recognition now can work offline — at least partly. You’ll still need to be connected to actually identify the song, but you can now use this feature while you’re offline to record a part of a song you want to know the name of by tapping the Music Recognition icon in your Control Center.
The feature will store the song you just heard and let you know its name as soon as you’re connected to the internet again.
It’s Time to Update
All of these new features are just the tip of the iceberg; Apple added a bunch of other features that make iOS 26.4 a must-install update. Not only will you be running Apple’s latest update, but you’ll also find a bunch of things worth trying.
So whenever you have the chance, go to Settings > General > Software Update, and install the latest update available.
