Apple Music 4.5 for Android getting new iOS 17-style widgets, more

Abner Li | Sep 29 2023 - 10:24 am PT

A big update to Apple Music that’s currently in beta adds new Android homescreen widgets from iOS 17, as well as other features from the latest iPhone and iPad release.

The “Now Playing” widget, previously known as the “Apple Music Player,” is mostly unchanged. However, “Recently Played” switches from a grid of cover art to a list that includes the name and artist.

Meanwhile, there are two new widgets today from iOS 17:

Recommendations: Play Top Picks, New Releases, and other suggestions from Apple Music.
Top Charts: Play Top Charts based on a location or city of your choice.

These two homescreen objects can either use Apple Music’s red accent or what’s essentially Dynamic Color. In the widget customizer, Apple refers to this using “your device’s wallpaper will be used to set the color theme for Apple Music widgets.” Support for this is a long time coming, and somewhat matches how long it took the app to support the Android 13 media player.

Dynamic Color applies to everything and does not work on a per-widget basis. The setting also appears for Now Playing and Recently Played, but those widgets currently use blurred album artwork as their backgrounds.

All four widgets are live today, but keep in mind that this is a beta and there are some bugs.

Meanwhile, Apple Music 4.5 for Android, according to strings, is going to support three features form iOS 17 and future releases:

SharePlay in the Car: Everyone can play and control music, even from the back seat.
Suggested Songs in Playlists: Quickly add from a selection of songs designed to fit your playlist.
More to Favorite: Favorite songs, albums, and playlists, and they’ll appear in your library.