5 upgrades iOS 26 will bring to supercharge your music and driving

iOS 26 promises a lot of new and updated features for iPhone fansSome of the most interesting changes come to music and CarPlayHere are five of the best changes coming to these areas

If you watched Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2025) keynote video earlier this week, you might have noticed all the new features coming to Apple’s music and CarPlay offerings.

Whether you love using your Apple tech with your favorite tunes or while driving, there were some notable updates to pay attention to. Here, we’ve outlined five of the best features coming to these areas in iOS 26.

Mix tunes like a pro

(Image credit: Apple)

Any good DJ knows how to mix one song into another, ensuring the beats line up and one track fades into another so seamlessly that it’s almost unnoticeable. In iOS 26, Apple Music can now do that for you.

That’s thanks to a new feature called AutoMix, and it uses some clever under-the-hood analysis to pick the “perfect moment” for your songs to transition, smoothly blending the music as one track ends and the next begins. AutoMix replaces CrossFade (which did a similar thing, albeit in a much less advanced way), and can be enabled when you open Apple Music in iOS 26.

Apple Music Replay

(Image credit: Apple Music)

Like Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay lets you check out your listening habits and see exactly how many hours you’ve spend listening to that one guilty pleasure. Before iOS 26, though, it could only be accessed as a popup web view, which didn’t provide the best experience.

Now it’s a native part of the Apple Music app, meaning it’s a lot easier to find and view than before. You’ll also find an Apple Music Replay playlist at the bottom of the app’s Home tab, and this updates throughout the year to give you the very latest stats and figures.

Custom ringtones

(Image credit: Future)

Apple has a dedicated ringtone section in iTunes – just tap the More tab in the iTunes Store app on iOS, then select Tones. But if you’d rather create your own custom ringtones, the process has always been a bit more involved, requiring you to create a ringtone of your own, export it from the GarageBand app to your phone, then choose it manually in the Settings app.

In iOS 26, that process has been simplified. If you open a ringtone in an app like Files, you just need to tap the Share button and pick the Use as Ringtone option. That can cut out a few steps, although you still need to create the ringtone in the first place.

Widgets and Live Activities in CarPlay

(Image credit: Apple)

CarPlay is all about putting useful controls at your fingertips, all with the goal of not distracting you from the road. That fine balancing act has had a new update in iOS 26 with the addition of widgets and Live Activities.

Widgets like the weather forecast and your calendar appointments are now available in your car, and they use a compact layout that Apple says offers “quick and glanceable” information. And you’ll find Live Activities in CarPlay too, showing ongoing data like flight status, helping to keep you in the know.

CarPlay zoom settings

It’s always important that CarPlay’s information is appropriately sized for your car dashboard, and that’s been made a little easier in iOS 26 with the addition of Smart Display Zoom. This automatically resizes CarPlay’s interface to fit your vehicle’s display area (where possible).

In an example given by Apple, Smart Display Zoom shrinks the on-screen icons slightly, which allows an extra row of buttons to be shown. With less swiping, you should be able to get to the info you need a little quicker.

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