Many software features on your phone promise to make you more productive, iOS 18 with more than its share. But the iOS 18.4 update goes even further, adding a new capacity that aims to bring a productivity soundtrack to your iPhone.
More specifically, iOS 18.4 presents an ambient music function at the control center which allows you to play tunes in the background. In addition to a productivity option, ambient musical genres include “chill” for more relaxing tunes and “well-being”, which seems designed to be the soundtrack of all mindfulness or meditation sessions in which you are committed.
My ears stung when I heard about the arrival of ambient music in iOS 18.4. This is because I am always looking for ways to stay concentrated when I try to finish a task, and music often plays a big role in this area.
The importance of substantive music
I like to play music while I work, and since I have been working at a distance, I don’t have to worry about giving the best headphones to prevent my taste for music from distracting others. So when it is time to comfort yourself and work on a project, I usually end up launching the musical application on my Mac or my iPhone, pressing the Shuffle button and going to business while the randomized playlist goes from a song to the next.
However, there is a problem with this approach. Because a lot of my work involves writing, I find that some time that music can be a distraction, especially when we talk about songs with words. It is not really useful when I try to describe some of the finest points, say, Apple Intelligence, and all of a sudden “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” begins to play, distracting part of my brain which tries to explain how to get the most out of writing tools to focus on everything that is iron butter.
Admittedly, I could create a list of reading of instrumental songs, saving myself the inadvertent transformation of the words of “She’s a Rainbow” when I write on the color options iPhone 16. But as I like a variety of audio playing in the background, it should be a very long reading list. And why take the trouble to create a reading list when Apple can do it for me?
It is the promise of ambient music – it can play in the background, do it just enough to stimulate the brain with particular beats and rhythms optimized for specific tasks such as productivity or relaxation, without making you think of words or artists or which has opened for firearms on the tour of appetite for destruction. It is a solution discovered for a long time by people like my wife who plays ambient music via YouTube when she needs to focus on a task, but now that’s right on my iPhone, giving me a practical way to try ambient music for me.
Beginning with ambient music in iOS 18.4
To access ambient music in iOS 18.4, you will want to start in the control center of your iPhone. Slide diagonally from the upper right corner of the home screen to display the control center.
You will need to personalize the control center in iOS 18 to add ambient musical controls. Press and hold anywhere on the screen to modify the control center, then press Add a control at the bottom of the page.
On the next screen, scroll to the ambient music section, then select the particular genre that you want to add to the control center – sleeping, cooling, productivity or well -being. You can add one or more controls if you have the space.
Once you have an ambient musical control in the control center, all you have to do is press this control each time you want to play music in the background. You can then take a break or stop music using regular reading commands of your iPhone.
If you really like ambient music, you can use the possibility of customizing lock screen controls in iOS 18 to add an ambient musical control at the bottom of your locking screen. In this way, you can simply control music reading from there.
My experience with ambient music in iOS 18.4
With the public beta version iOS 18.4 installed on my phone, I tried most of the different kinds of ambient music, with a particular accent on the tunes of productivity. (I haven’t played anything from sleep, because I don’t need help to fall asleep these days – and certainly not during working hours.)
The genres seem quite distinct from my ears. Productivity offers a very synthesized sound, with stable rhythm rhythms which are clearly intended to prevent you from beat the work in front of you while Chill has a much more soft tone. The well-being sound rests strongly on the piano, to the point where it looked like the kind of ambient music that plays a funeral lounge in the waiting room. I don’t know if it would contribute to my feeling of well-being.
As for the tunes of productivity, I certainly never felt the desire to take a look at my iPhone reading controls to see if there was an artist or a title on the song. (If I had done it, everything I would have seen would be a generic title like “Momentum Beats”.) In this sense, the ambient music function of iOS 18 serves its objective – fulfill the air with enough sound to keep my brain stimulated but not at the point of distraction.
If I have a complaint regarding ambient music, it is because you must define different controls for the different genres – there is no way to be a way to switch productivity to, let’s say, without configuring separate controls in the control center. If you are really in ambient music, it’s a lot of space to devote to functionality.
IOS 18 Ambient music perspectives
Ambient music is available on any phone that can run iOS 18.4. It is not specific to the Apple Intelligence as so many new features are today, so anyone with an older iPhone can enjoy as easily as an owner of the iPhone 16.
Not everyone is going to kiss functionality, not even music lovers. If you do not find that substantive music is particularly useful for your state of mind, ambient music will not have much to offer you. But if you are like me and you need to play while you work, it is certainly an iOS 18 functionality that you have to try.
