Photo Credit: Apple
Apple will allow third-party music apps to display animated album artwork on the lock screen in iOS 26—opening this feature to Spotify and others.
Previously the animated artwork was only available to Apple Music, offering users an easy way to control their music while enjoying an album. Now with iOS 26, Apple is introducing a new API that third-party app developers will be able to utilize to deliver the feature.
As 9to5Mac reports, the new API is called MPMedialtemAnimatedArtwork and it is available right now in the iOS 26 developer software development kit (SDK). Any app with a means of playing media and now provide an animated video clip for the system to display on the lock screen as well as placeholder artwork while said video loads.
The public release of iOS 26 will unlock this feature for third-party music apps like Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music. It’s unclear whether Spotify will take advantage of the new feature—the company has not prioritized new features for the Apple ecosystem. Case in point, the Spotify Apple TV app for tvOS has remained largely unchanged for several years. That particular app has fallen well behind the feature set and design updates available on other platforms like Android TV.
Some examples of the lack of feature parity between Spotify on Apple TV and elsewhere include the lack of lyrics support, outdated UI and navigation, missing features like queue management, music videos, and advanced playlist controls, and lack of audio quality. The strained relationship between Spotify and Apple over the 30% Apple Tax has led to some speculation that Spotify just doesn’t prioritize Apple platforms in the same way.
It will be interesting to see if Spotify will update its iOS app to take advantage of this new feature offered by Apple. The iOS 26 public beta is scheduled to be released in July 2025, giving Spotify a little more than a month to get animated album artwork running for the iOS version of Spotify.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.