Testing Apple Music’s AutoMix Feature

I’ve been using the public beta of both iOS and iPadOS 26 on my devices for a little over a week now. One of the features within Apple Music is a new AutoMix option which aims to blend your music perfectly. Here’s how Apple describes it:

Apple Music delivers an elevated listening experience with AutoMix, which mixes one song into the next, just like a DJ. Using AI to analyze audio features, it crafts unique transitions between songs with time stretching and beat matching to deliver continuous playback and an even more seamless listening experience.

AutoMix tends to only work with rhythmic music, such as hip-hop, R&B, or electronic music. In these cases, it’ll try to pick the right spots to fade out one track as it fades in another. It’ll attempt to beat match, even if that means speeding up or slowing down a track during the fade. Further, it seems to do a better job at this the more popular the track is. I’ve run into issues where the fade was only in the final moments or not at all when listening to lesser-known underground hip-hop tracks. When it does know it, it may begin to fade with 30 seconds left in the first track, aiming to get that second track in right as the first verse hits or in a spot familiar to most.

With genres like alternative, indie, rock, or jazz, it leans more into a simple radio-style fade, acting more like a radio DJ than a club DJ. Unless it can figure something else out, I’m actually fine with this.

There have been times when I’m driving around that I’ve been really impressed with what AutoMix comes up with, especially considering this is still beta software. It’s nice that this doesn’t require an Apple Intelligence-capable device for it to work as well. While I’d like for it to be able to figure out all tracks, I’m happy with what it does do at the moment.