It’s been a dog of a decade so far with pandemic, war, and social and economic crisis all lining up to ruin our collective days. But, thankfully, if you’re in need of an instant hit of calming chillwave, zen-like ambience or psychometrically tuned trance, it seems that Apple have now got an app for that.
In fact they’ve got four of them, each opening up new sonic portals, each delivered to your iOS device of choice via four new additions to the iOS Control Centre.
Normally the place where you might turn on your WiFi or adjust your brightness (just swipe down from your battery icon top right), Control Centre has been getting more than a few extra powers in recent updates, not least the ability to turn Apple’s Airpods into hearing aids, broadcasting your phone’s mic at high quality to your Apple in-ears – a feature recently improved and fine tuned for Airpod Pro 2.
But the aural additions go deeper than that.
Fresh for the latest iOS update – 18.4, coming in April but available in Beta form for those brave enough to try it – comes new additions to the range of Control Centre options.
The four new buttons appear in a new Ambient Music section buried within the ever-swelling number of possible Control Centre additions, with each having a specific ‘specialist subject’ delivering either Sleep, Chill, Productivity or Wellbeing-focused Apple-curated music and ambiences at the touch of a button.
As the below video shows:
And the best news? It appears that at least for now (pre-official roll-out to the masses) that the content delivered via the new Ambient Music controls can be enjoyed without an Apple Music subscription.
Of course, having actual control of the music it plays and saving favourites into playlists WILL require you to subscribe (and have all the control you like via the Music app) but if all you need is a quick hit and are happy to let Apple’s algorithms pick the perfect soundtrack for your moment, then this looks like and easy and welcome free fix.
You can give it a try for yourself by going to Settings / General / Software Update on your iOS device. Then go to Beta Updates and turn on either Developer Beta (which contains the very latest iOS test version) or Public Beta (which will feature a slightly older and hopefully more stable pre-release version).
Press Back and choose what you’d like to install. The new buttons will appear once iOS 18.4 Beta is installed.
Be warned. Installing Beta versions is done entirely at the users own risk and may cause certain other features not to function. That said, millions do… So have fun. And chill out.
