NowPlaying: Music Discovery

Fixed a bug that prevented achievements from making any progress, and some more spring cleaning

Added support for buying the Gigs + NowPlaying bundle and some more smaller refinements

You can now save songs and toggle favourites directly from the Shortcuts app, Siri, perfect for when NowPlaying is running in SongDisplay mode. Save to Library: Instantly add the currently playing song to your music library without touching your phone. Favourite Song: Mark the current song as a favourite (or unfavourite it) hands-free. Both shortcuts default to the song currently playing in SongDisplay, but you can also switch the source to search for any song by title and artist.

- Made the SongDisplay feature work better! - Improved how often and how well we update the Live Activity. - Fixed a few hiccups that were slowing things down on the Artist details page.

- Performance improvements - Search improvements - Songs found from the Control Center button now actually save to search instead of SongDisplay history

• Fixed a bug that prevented deeplinks for artists from working • Added an invite to join the Gigs beta

• We now indicate how many and when an artist has played a Super Bowl halftime show. • We massively improved the performance of Album Discovery and the overall app. • Added a new achievement for you to unlock (it’s cute). • Fixed a bug that prevented the “Every day. More Extraordinary.” from being unlocked. • Fixed a crash that would happen when switching songs sometimes. • Improved search suggestion performance

We fixed a display issue that caused some titles on the artist details page to be rendered incorrectly.

We’ve introduced support for Album Ratings! Now, you can assign ratings to any Album, and they’ll be displayed in your Profile. This feature allows you to revisit and reflect on the albums that left the most significant impression on you.

Bug fixes for album swiping

Small bug fixes and improvements (really, nothing big worth mentioning)

Made the app a bit lighter to install

• Fixed a bug that showed an empty TabBar accessory for some • Made some improvements on the live activity • Added a new achievement

We’re preparing for the end of the year. Choose your favorite albums and/or songs and share them with everyone! ● New • Improved search to pick your favorite songs and albums of 2025 • You can now drag and drop to change order of your favorite songs and albums • Bug fixes for Best of year functionality

We’re preparing for the end of the year. Choose your favorite albums and/or songs and share them with everyone!

● Improved • Song items had a bit of a chin in the cells • Made saving songs to favourites a bit faster and more consistent • Some code refactor that should not affect you directly, but helps for the future of NowPlaying

● NEW • You can now easily save any music to the MusicBox app. ● IMPROVEMENTS • Saving songs and albums to the library is now faster. • The notification for "Album of the Day" has been improved. • Several accessibility fixes have been implemented. • Widgets now have updated layouts.

● New • It’s now possible to turn on notifications to get reminders for Album of the Day • You can now customize which genres interest you for Album of the Day in your profile • Discover view now has a new genre-specific section that rotates between genres ● Updated • Improved swiping interaction in album discovery • The discover page now changes more frequently • Updated our Roadmap • Slightly tweaked our brand color • More UI polishing • We made some first steps in heavily increasing the launch speed of the app

● Updated • Changed the icon for the “Play Album of the day” control • Improved the speed and quality of our AI Summaries

- Bumped the font size for Hip-Hop and Rock fonts - Improved “New” label when there are new achievements available - Recently Searched now links correctly to a list of recently searched songs

Fixed a bunch of UI bugs

● NEW • You can now directly play the album of the day via Siri (also works on your HomePod) • Visual Intelligence support: NowPlaying now allows you to detect records and learn more about them directly from the camera button or through screenshots. • The barcode scanner has become a camera view that now enables you to take photos and detect records as well. This feature is essentially Visual Intelligence for devices without Apple Intelligence enabled, as well as within the app. • A new achievement has been added. ● IMPROVED • The play button and a cleaner UI for the “Show Daily Album” shortcut. • Improved phrasing for some shortcuts. • All default app icons can now be found on the settings page.

● Improvements - You can now choose to disable genre-specific fonts, allowing for a more personalized reading experience that matches your style. - We've enhanced the onboarding process to ensure a smoother start, guiding you through features and settings with greater clarity. - It’s now clearer that the badge is for new achievements and only shows when needed. - Enjoy improved typography with Lexend and OpenDyslexic fonts.

● What's New • We've updated our app icon to seamlessly integrate with iOS 26, offering a refreshed, cohesive look. • VoiceOver support now enables users to listen to individual stories for any song, artist, or album, enhancing accessibility. ● Fixes and Enhancements • Resolved an issue that kept search results from scrolling, making it easier to find what you need. • Improved the user interface for Albums for a more polished visual experience. • Albums and Artists now feature media on the front page. • Corrected a bug that opened the wrong application when selecting a different music player for albums and artists. • Improved performance of Album Discovery mode.

We are very excited to announce the release of NowPlaying 2026, our biggest update yet. This update launches on the same day and is fully optimized to provide you with the best possible experience on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS 26 ● New look & feel In this release, we’ve made significant updates to the app’s design and layout to feel right at home with Apple’s new Liquid Glass design system. From a sleek, glassy tab bar with a stunning new Now Playing view, to a redesigned menu bar on iPad and a completely reimagined search experience crafted for the new OS, we’ve put a lot of effort into delivering a beautiful, native experience. ● Discover music faster than ever We consolidated all discovery features into a new Discover tab, including Album of the Day and our signature Song Display. This tab serves as your central hub for exploring new music. The Discover page is redesigned to align with Apple’s Liquid Glass design system, delivering a better experience. We’ve also added fresh content, including music books and recently released albums. This update also connects you more deeply with your favorite artists. You can explore curated books, photos, generate Apple Music playlists, and revisit their concert tracks. We’re excited about our new Setlists feature. You can turn them into Apple Music playlists to relive concerts or use a smart setlist prediction playlist to get in the mood for upcoming concerts. ● What was I looking for? One of the most improved features in this update is the search experience. Not only does it now feel right at home in the new design system, but we’ve also added smart suggestions to help you find what you’re looking for, and even discover music you didn’t know you were looking for. ● Too long, didn't read? In this release, we’ve also tapped into the power of Foundation Models, Apple’s new on-device AI, to generate bite-sized summaries for most of the content we show in the app. These summaries give you a quick sense of an artist’s journey, an album’s story, or what happened at a concert, all in just a couple of sentences, while still giving you the option to dive deeper whenever you’d like. ● What about your records We know many of you share our passion for vinyl records and often use the app to uncover details and hidden gems in your collection. That’s why, with the 2026 redesign, we’ve dropped the needle on a whole new set of vinyl-focused features: - Physical releases: Album pages now show images from the physical release when available. - Barcode scanning: We’ve significantly improved the scanning experience, making it 25× more likely to find a match when you scan a record’s barcode. It’s never been easier to uncover hidden details about albums in your collection. - Discogs integration: You can now connect your Discogs account to add records to your collection and instantly see whether you already own an album — all directly from the app. Your music, your way ● NowPlaying is for EVERYONE Accessibility has also been a main focus of this update and has made it better than ever. We’ve added the option to use Lexend as the body font — a typeface designed to reduce visual stress and improve reading performance. As a content-driven app, we want to ensure everything is accessible and easy to read for everyone. We also conducted a comprehensive audit of our VoiceOver experience, making navigation smoother and ensuring that all elements are clearly and correctly labeled. And finally, thanks to Apple’s new on-device AI, VoiceOver users can now hear a single, concise story that summarizes all the details of an album. By being the primary accessibility focus when the screen is launched, this feature makes it possible to get the album's full picture without needing to navigate through multiple elements.