Apple’s SharePlay is expanding, and will be coming to all sorts of new devices — including speakers. Specifically, the Apple HomePod, HomePod mini, Apple TV and regular-old-Bluetooth speakers will be getting SharePlay support through Apple Music.
This news was announced at WWDC 2024, and means that you’ll be able to give friends and family control over the music coming through all of those devices. However you’re going to have to wait until sometime in the fall before the relevant updates to tvOS and iOS start rolling out.
Much like how SharePlay works with Apple CarPlay, you are effectively giving full control over music playback to someone else — regardless of whether they have an Apple Music subscription or not. You need a valid subscription, and your friends will need an iPhone with Apple Music installed, naturally. But the only thing other folks will need to do is scan a SharePlay QR code with their iPhone.
Some of you may remember that Apple bought SharePlay to HomePod speakers and Apple TV in the iOS 17.4 beta. However this feature was pulled before the final release of iOS 17.4. It was never made entirely clear why the feature was pulled, but now it seems like that expanded SharePlay is back with a vengeance.
On top of this Apple has announced that Apple Music will be able to tap into the iPhone’s Taptic Engine, which will “play taps, textures and refined vibrations to the audio of the music”. It’s primarily an accessibility feature to help people with hearing difficulties sense the sound in a different way.
Music Haptics, as this feature is called, is scheduled to arrive as part of iOS 18. According to Apple this feature works with millions of songs from the Apple Music catalog. An API will also be available so developers can add the feature to their own apps, so expect that to expand further.
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