This sneaky new music feature in iOS 18.4 is actually a hidden gem

In iOS 18.4, Apple added a new ambient music feature to Control Center. It does exactly what it sounds like, and provides a variety of options to play some ambient background music with the tap of a button. It’s a great start, and I’d love to see Apple expand this feature in the future.

iOS 18.4 is currently in beta, but Apple just released the RC earlier this week – so it’ll likely release to the public in the very near future.

How it works

Apple provides four different options for Ambient Music in Control Center: Chill, Productivity, Sleep, and Wellbeing.

Each toggle plays a unique playlist for that theme, though you can also customize which playlist you get when you press the toggle. Apple provides four options for each theme, but you can also add your own.

Once you’re playing some nice ambient music from one of these toggles, theres a hidden ‘Ambient Music’ app that you can access from your Dynamic Island or Control Center. With this app, you can see whats playing at a glance, skip the song, and AirPlay to a speaker or other device.

Improvements I’d like to see

While this is a great start, and I love using it as is – the Ambient Music feature could undoubtedly get better.

For one, it’s only available on iPhone and iPad. Apple’s new Ambient Music feature isn’t available on the Mac quite yet. macOS does offer an accessibility feature called “Background Sounds”, though it isn’t nearly as robust as Ambient Music in iOS and iPadOS 18.4.

On top of that, I think it’d be great if this were available as a standalone app. There’s already a hidden app that runs when you’re using Ambient Music from Control Center, and it’d be immensely helpful if there were a dedicated app that you could access from your Home Screen.

This would also allow for a more seamless experience than fiddling with a number of Control Center toggles, and it’d be easier to switch between all of the provided playlists. If Apple Music Classical can be a dedicated app, I don’t think it’d be too much of a stretch for this to also be a standalone app.

Overall, this feature was still a pleasant surprise in iOS 18.4. I’m very happy with it, and really I’d just like to see it expand to the Mac where I’d use it a lot more. A dedicated app would just be a cherry on top.

You can subscribe to Apple Music if you haven’t already for $10.99/month, and access Apple’s continuously growing music experience.