iOS 26 will let third-party apps like Spotify access new Apple Music features

iOS 26 to allow animated music lock screen on third party apps. Generic image displaying several iPhones. (Image source: Apple)

Animated lock screen artworks are coming to iOS 26-eligible products, which will work whenever a song is playing via Apple Music. However, Apple is making this available to other third party applications, too. Apps like Spotify, YouTube Music and more will be able to use this new iOS 26 feature.

Ali Amir, Published 06/16/2025 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 ...

The addition of an animated artwork view on the lock screen whenever playing a song via Apple Music is one of the handful of changes iOS 26 brings with it and we now know that third-party music streaming apps will get the feature, too, not just Apple Music.

This is still under development by Apple, as is available as a beta release. While there is no certainty yet that Spotify, YouTube Music, Prime Music, Deezer, Tidal, and other popular iOS music streaming apps will adopt this feature, chances look solid enough that they will.

MPMediaItemAnimatedArtwork is the new API in charge of displaying these animated images. An artwork video asset and a preview image matching the first frame are two key components needed for this to work. As the video file is fetched, the preview image will be utilized as a placeholder.

iOS 26 comes with a host of new features and visual experience changes, like the new Liquid Glass UI with a new Dynamic Clock, three-dimensional and parallax-like effects, built-in generative AI and more.