Learn how to activate and use the new Music Haptics feature, which enables individuals who are deaf or have partial hearing loss to perceive music through iPhone vibrations.
For most people, music is enjoyed through the ears, but that’s unfortunately not an option for the deaf.
To ensure these individuals are not left behind, Apple’s Music Haptics feature makes use of the iPhone’s Taptic Engine (a small vibration motor) to vibrate the device to the audio of the song.
When a deaf person plays a song and holds their iPhone in their hand, they feel ‘taps, textures, and refined vibrations’ that let them experience music.
Supported devices and apps
Music Haptics is supported on iPhone 12 and later running iOS 18 or iOS 26. Note that the iPhone SE is not supported.
Apple’s own Music app, Apple Music Classical, and Shazam support Music Haptics. An API is available to enable third-party developers to implement this functionality, but popular apps like Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music haven’t added it yet.
Note: Music Haptics is not available on Apple Watch. And other devices like iPad and MacBook don’t have a vibration motor to begin with.
Activate and use Music Haptics
1) Open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Accessibility.
2) Select Music Haptics and turn on the switch next to Music Haptics.
3) Now, tap Play Sample and customize the haptics type and intensity.
4) Play a song in the Apple Music app, Apple Music Classical, or Shazam.
5) Hold the iPhone in your hands, and you’ll feel subtle taps and vibrations that give you a sense of the song that’s playing.
When you’re using Music Haptics
Here are a few important points to keep in mind when you’re experiencing songs with Music Haptics turned on:
- While millions of songs support Music Haptics, not every track you come across on Apple Music does.
- Tap the Music Haptics button on the Now Playing screen to turn it off temporarily. Tap Paused to resume getting haptic feedback.
- You can turn the volume to zero, and Music Haptics will still work. This allows you to feel music without letting others around you know what you’re listening to.
- The haptics will continue even if you go out of the Music app without pausing the song. You can tap the Music Haptics button to pause and resume it from Dynamic Island, Lock Screen, and Control Center.
Add Music Haptics to Control Center
You can customize iOS Control Center and add a small or big Music Haptics button there. This allows you to easily and quickly turn this feature on and off.
Will Music Haptics affect battery life
When Apple first allowed turning on vibrations for the on-screen keyboard, they made it clear that this negatively affects the battery backup. Music Haptics makes continued use of your iPhone’s vibration motor, and it’s obvious that your phone’s battery will deplete faster when this is turned on.
Setting the volume to zero and locking the screen when using Music Haptics can help save some battery.
Pairing with an on-screen visualizer would be great!
The Music app on Mac has a built-in visualizer that lets you visualize the beats of the songs. Unfortunately, this isn’t present in the iOS version. If it were, Music Haptics with on-screen music visualization would have been a great combo for deaf people to experience music.
In my opinion, Apple can easily replace the album/song cover art with visualization when Music Haptics is enabled. I hope a future update adds this.
Furthermore, I tried every free music visualizer third-party app I could find on the iOS App Store. None of them worked properly with Apple Music and haptics. If you come across such an application, please share its name in the comment section below.
Turn off Music Haptics
If you no longer need this feature, go to iOS Settings > Accessibility > Music Haptics and turn it off.
On a related note: 21 useful iPhone tips for parents and older people