14 DAY TRIAL // iOS 14 has introduced several big changes, including widgets on the home screen, but behind the visual overhaul, one feature that everybody seems to love is supposed for setting third-party apps as default options on their iPhones.
In other words, you no longer have to stick with Apple’s apps as the default browser and email client, but choose from a wide variety of third parties, such as Microsoft Edge and Outlook.
And beginning with iOS 14.5 beta released last week, you can now change the default music player, with Spotify now able to play music via Siri without specifically mentioning its name.
Spotify and YouTube Music supported
As users on reddit found out, it’s enough to just tell Siri to play music, and the digital assistant will look at the permissions set on your device to figure out which app it should use. So for example, if you granted access for YouTube Music, Siri uses this app to play the requested music, and the same thing for Spotify.
This is quite a big change, especially as you can now play a specific playlist on Spotify without even touching your phone.
However, it’s believed the new feature is kind of buggy at this point, and this is certainly no surprise. iOS 14.5 is still in the beta stage, so it’ll take a while until it reaches the stable channel to become available for all iPhones out there. Until this happens, expect the new feature to be more polished and refine, and issues like Siri failing to play music or detect a music player installed on the iPhone should no longer be detected.
At this point, there’s no ETA as to when iOS 14.5 beta should be released to all iPhones, but several other betas are still expected to go live in the meantime.