iOS 26.4 Introduces Redesigned Albums Page In Music
Apple Music has several changes coming in iOS 26.4, starting with a new fullscreen design for albums and playlists. When viewing an album or playlist in the updated Music app, you’ll notice that the track list adopts a background colour that complements the artwork. It’s not always an exact match, but rather a colour that pairs well with and evokes the artwork for that album or playlist.
The original incarnations of Apple Music back in 2015 featured a similar colour-matched interface elements, itself a tribute to a design trend started on the desktop with iTunes 10. The 2015 Apple Music app would pick two or three colours from the album artwork, deriving a complementary palette of colours to use for the app’s background and foreground elements separately. So, you could have yellow text on a red background for instance.
It was a demonstration of technical ability, but in practice, it didn’t feel very cohesive. The tinted text was too overbearing, the bottom tab bar would not adapt to the dynamic theme at all, and the album art was just kind of stuck in a square in the corner. If you find screenshots of it, it looks instantly dated.
The iOS 26.4 attempt is a much nicer interpretation of this idea. First and foremost, it doesn’t try too hard; the foreground text colour is only ever white or black. The background is colour-matched, which injects a splash of personality and helps make the full-bleed album art blend more seamlessly with the rest of the UI. The Liquid Glass toolbars and tab bars also neatly blend in with their colourful surroundings. The design is impactful, yet refined.
It marks the latest enhancement in a long line of wins for Apple Music. The service’s roadmap has been very strong in recent years, with the company delivering compelling new updates on a regular basis. It just gets better and better.