Apple Music Sing will turn your iPhone into a portable karaoke machine

Apple has announced a new feature for Apple Music that might just help you become a karaoke superstar.

The tech giant’s best music streaming service will be getting an upgrade “later this month” with the launch of Apple Music Sing. This feature will be coming to devices like the iPhone 14 and iPad Air (2022) as an update to the preexisting Apple Music Lyrics tool for users worldwide and for free.

When it launches, not only will you be able to follow along with a supported song’s lyrics in real time, but with the launch of Sing (opens in new tab) you’ll be able to control the volume of the vocal track too. If you’re just starting to learn the words and tune of a piece you can have the vocals at full volume; then as you get more confident in your abilities you can turn the artist down until you’re completely overshadowing them and making the performance your own.

Best of all, even when the vocals are turned right down you’ll still have the band playing at full volume behind you, and the optional support of any backing singers too.

Apple Music Sing isn’t just for songs with solo vocalists. You and a partner will be able to take on a range of duets – or by reducing the volume of one vocalist you’ll be able to perform a virtual duet with your favorite singer.

However, while we’re waiting for more details from Apple, it sounds like there will be a few disappointing limitations to this fun-sounding feature, at least at launch.

For one thing, you won’t be able to mute the original vocal track completely. We don’t yet know how quiet you can make a singer, but we’re expecting – and hoping – that it’ll be as close to silent as makes no difference; we’re looking forward to trying Apple Music Sing to find out.

Another issue is that, as this is an expansion of Apple Music Lyrics, we expect that songs that currently don’t support the feature won’t support Apple Music Sing either – and we expect that even the songs that do won’t all appear on Apple Music Sing right away. 

Apple has said it will have enough tracks to populate “50 dedicated companion playlists” with a mix of duets, epic anthems, and tear-jerking ballads for the launch of Apple Music Sing; just don’t expect every track in your library to be supported from the outset.

Additionally, if you’re someone who uses Apple Music on a non-Apple device – like this writer, who uses it on their Google Pixel 6 – it looks like this feature won’t be headed your way. That’s based on the press release from Apple, which says the feature is coming to “compatible iPhone and iPad models as well as the new Apple TV 4K” – no other devices are listed.

Hopefully, these restrictions won’t be in place for too long, and more users will be able to belt out some of their favorite bangers.

Thinking of switching to Apple Music after this announcement? Check out our Apple Music vs Spotify guide to find out which service is better for you.