Spotify just launched an updated iPhone application that lets you use Apple voice assistant Siri to play music on your iPhone and iPad. Apple only made the feature possible in iOS 13. This puts Spotify on more equal footing with Apple Music.
Apple showed the feature in its beta app in late September, however, it rolled it out to all users. Another update automatically puts Spotify into Data Saver mode when you activate Low Data Mode on your device.
It’s easy to set up this feature on your iPhone. Just follow these steps:
- Make sure you have the latest version of Spotify installed.
- Ask Siri to play music on Spotify, with a command like “Siri, play Wizkid on Spotify”.
- Siri will ask you if it can access your Spotify data.
- Say Yes.
- Your music will start to play.
To play a specific artist or playlist, just ask Siri to launch it and make sure you tell Siri to play it using “Spotify”. If you don’t say Spotify and simply ask it to play music, it’ll still default to trying to launch the song or playlist in Apple Music.
On iOS and iPadOS, you can ask Siri to play music through Spotify. According to Spotify, Siri can also control the app in CarPlay. Furthermore, you can use AirPlay to play music on your HomePod with voice commands as well.
Spotify initially filed various complaints about Apple to the European Union. Among these complaints was a lack of Siri integration. EU then launched an antitrust investigation of Apple earlier this year following criticisms that Apple gives its own apps an unfair advantage.
Ultimately, the change is good for consumers, who can now use Siri to play music from more services. Apple will also soon let Siri send messages through third-party apps by default.
Aside from the new Siri support, Spotify also released an Apple TV app for the first time. It closely resembles Spotify on other TV platforms like Roku. You can download the new app from the tvOS App Store. Or you can set it to automatically download if you sync downloads across iPhone and Apple TV.
Lastly, Spotify also seems to be redesigning its iPad app to take better advantage of all the screen real estate on Apple’s tablets. But the iPad still lacks things like Spotify’s animated album art since those videos are designed for a phone form factor.