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Do This to Make Siri Use Deezer Instead of Apple Music for All Your Music Requests « iOS & iPhone :: Gadget Hacks



With its emphasis on well-rounded audible entertainment, Deezer gives all music and podcast fans the best of both worlds. As great as the app is, it’s inconvenient to constantly tell Siri to play your music and podcasts through Deezer so that it doesn’t default to Apple Music instead. Luckily, that’s changing so that you can set Deezer as your iPhone’s default music player for Siri.

The feature is new to iOS 14.5, the next big iPhone update from Apple. Once you update, you’ll find that Deezer isn’t the only app that you can choose as your auditory default — 14.5 lets you pick from Spotify, Pandora, YouTube Music, and more. Deezer isn’t alone in the podcast genre, either, as Apple lets you select podcasts and audiobook apps as well. Talk about a well-rounded feature.

That said, it should be noted that iOS 14.5 is currently in beta. So the feature is a work in progress and not very reliable. We could only get it working on the public beta and not the developer version, oddly enough. And it may only work part of the time and reset itself frequently.

Note that this new feature only changes the default player used with Siri, so if you play a song in the Files app or on another cloud service app, its bare-bones player will pop up. Also, links on the web are always for a specific service, so you can’t tap on an Apple Music song link and expect it to open up Deezer.

Option 1: Ask Siri Without Specifying Deezer

The first option is asking Siri to play a song, artist, or album without specifying that you want it through Deezer. The first time you do this after updating to iOS 14.5, you should encounter a full list of apps that you could play the song through. Tap “Deezer,” and iOS will not only begin playing your selection, but it will also set Deezer as the default app.

If you haven’t turned on the “Use with Ask Siri” toggle in Deezer’s “Siri & Search” settings yet, you’ll encounter a pop-up that says, “I’ll need to access your Spotify data to do this. Is that OK?” Tap “Yes” to continue.

Note: this list appears when telling Siri to play something for the first time after updating to iOS 14.5, but you may see it occasionally appear otherwise.

Option 2: Ask Siri to Play from Deezer

I know, I know — I said you wouldn’t have to ask Siri to play from Deezer. However, all it takes is one last request like this in iOS 14.5 to put the issue to bed. You see, the first time you ask Siri to play music from Deezer after installing 14.5, the digital assistant will set Deezer as your default. So, the next time you make a general request to play music, it’ll simply go through Deezer.

Once more, if you haven’t turned on Deezer’s “Use with Ask Siri” setting in “Siri & Search,” you’ll need to tap “Yes” on the prompt that reads “I’ll need to access your YouTube Music data to do this. Is that OK?”

Free Deezer Is Limited

You might know this if you’re a long-term Deezer user, but free users are limited. You won’t be able to request specific songs or albums through Deezer from Siri unless you pay for a premium subscription. Siri will even say as much, which is pretty interesting.

This Feature Is Still in Beta Testing

Again, we want to reiterate that this feature — however useful — is still in beta testing. That means you’re bound to encounter quite a few bugs as you use it.

We’ve seen the app list appear at random, even after setting a default music player. We’ve also seen iOS just revert to using Apple Music as the default. There’s also no option in Deezer’s or Music’s pages in the Settings app to change the default music player like when changing your default email client or web browser.

In short, it’s not perfect, and don’t expect it to be for a while. We expect Apple to further improve it with future updates to iOS 14.5m, which should be released in the spring.




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Cover photo, screenshot, and GIFs by Jake Peterson/Gadget Hacks



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