Apple gifts Android users a couple of free upgrades – Apple TV and Apple Music get new features
This will make getting to your content so much easier
Quick Summary
Apple has updated the Apple TV and Apple Music apps for Android.
The new apps include more widget options for users, allowing faster access to content.
The Apple TV and Apple Music apps for Android have been updated and there are a couple of new features that come with the new versions.
Leading the excitement are new home screen widgets, including a "continue watching" carousel so you can quickly get back to what you were watching, with a couple of different sized widgets to choose from.
Elsewhere, there's a larger widget that includes artwork which looks great, ideal to just tap back into that show you were enjoying. The new additions come with Apple TV version 2.5 in the Play Store and were highlighted by 9to5Google.
In addition to Apple TV's update, there's an update to Apple Music, moving to version 6.5. This isn't numerically sequential, suggesting that Apple is aligning this with the version number on iOS, to make everything neat and tidy.
Again, widgets get all the attention, letting you quickly get to your pinned items, while you can also dive right into live radio, joining the existing list of widgets offered on the service.
Apple sharing the love to Android users
The updates will be welcomed by those users on Android, giving the ability to get to those services a little faster, with more direct access to the actual content that you want.
Widgets have long been a feature of Android devices, with the first Android phones offering great customisation of the home screen environment. That includes plenty of widget options.
For many years, that stood in stark contrast to iPhone, where the home page was dominated by app icons. Apple introduced folders in 2010, but it was a further 10 years before the iPhone embraced widgets, with greater customisation offered in iOS 14.
For Android users, adding a widget is easy, accessible through the home screen controls – often accessed by long pressing on the wallpaper. That offers a range of customisations, including the ability to browse and drop widgets onto the page.
Widgets are typically listed by the app or service, so they're easy to find.
Apple TV was added to Android with a native app in 2025, having first launched in 2019. Meanwhile, Apple Music made a much quicker move, with Apple releasing the Android app a couple of months after the service launched on iOS.
