Animated Album Covers on Lock Screen!

For the last couple of years, we’ve had animated album covers in Apple Music. These are those beautiful illustrations that kind of come to life to represent the album you’re listening to. But up until now, we couldn’t enjoy these anywhere apart from the Music app.

But now, we can take this artwork and make it full screen on the Lock Screen of our phone.

So, here I’m listening to a track from Maren Morris. And if I then go back to my Lock Screen by swiping down from the top or by locking my phone, I can see the traditional Now Playing view. That means I’ve got the Live Activity at the bottom where I can play, pause, and skip tracks. I’ve also got the tiny artwork preview on the left-hand corner.

Well, with iOS 26, when you tap on this artwork preview, rather than just getting a bigger square image of the artwork, we now get this beautiful full-screen animated album art that completely transforms your Lock Screen. It brings the music experience somewhere you can have on your desk beside your computer as you’re working, and you can enjoy the artwork all the time.

Now, if you’re looking at this and thinking, “That looks pretty cool, but it’s not working for me. Why is it not working, Jacob?” — this is probably why.

If we jump back into the phone and go into the Settings app this time, I’m going to scroll right down to the bottom and choose Apps. From here, we can select Music by jumping straight to M and then tapping on Music. And then at the bottom of this list — there are a lot of lists here, aren’t there? — we can make sure that Animated Album Artwork is turned on. If it isn’t on, it’s not going to work on the Lock Screen.

And of course, it’s good to remember that not every album has animated artwork. It’s only a few at the moment, but hopefully it will grow over time.

Is this feature going to change the world? No, absolutely not. But does it make your Lock Screen look really fun and really cool? Yeah, I think so.

I’ll see you next time.