‘Spotify as default Siri music service can be set from iOS 14.5’

From iOS 14.5, Apple’s voice assistant Siri can handle other music services, such as Spotify. However, it is not possible to specify your personal preferences in the settings menu. Instead, you have to ‘train’ Siri.

Update March 5, 2021 9:11 AM:

The story is a bit more nuanced than initially thought. It is true that Siri will support music services other than Apple Music from iOS 14.5, but it is not possible to set them as default.

Instead, Siri determines which music service is used based on your preferences. Apple has confirmed this to the website TechCrunch.

A practical example clarifies the situation. From iOS 14.5 there is no option to tick Spotify as the default music service, for example. Instead, you have to specifically ask Siri to play music through this service.

If you do this often enough, Apple’s music service will learn that Spotify is the way you listen to music. Then the originally Swedish service is checked as the default. In the same way, Siri tries to find out which apps you use to listen to podcasts and / or audiobooks, for example.

Initial message from February 8, 2:59 PM:

Siri is going to support Spotify as standard

The new Siri feature was discovered in the first beta of iOS 14.5. Once you’ve installed the update, you can ask Siri to play a song. The first time you do this, Siri will ask you which music service you are using.

For the first time, you not only have the choice of Apple Music, but also Spotify, YouTube Music and other music apps. As soon as you indicate your favorite music app here, Siri will remember it and always use it to answer musical questions in the future.

If Spotify is your only music app and you have removed the Music app, Siri will automatically open Spotify after a musical question.

For the time being, the feature is not working perfectly, which is not surprising since it is still in the beta phase. There is also no option in the Settings app to turn this on manually. So we are still a little closer to the arm, but this long-awaited function finally seems to be coming.

Also read: iOS 14.5: the most important new functions at a glance

Apple is opening up iOS more and more

Last year, Apple took a similar step by giving users the opportunity to choose their default browser. It is therefore obvious that sooner or later we would also get this option for the music services.

It is not yet clear when iOS 14.5 will be released. The first test version was recently released, so it will take at least a few more weeks until this happens. Of course you read up iPhone first if the update is available.