How Apple Music, TV, and iCloud are used on non-Apple devices

You may have noticed a few bricks that are removed from Apple’s so-called walled garden, meaning that the apps and services Apple uses are no longer available only on Apple hardware, such as the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

It may not come as a big surprise right now: as Apple seeks to make the most of these services, it knows that users will want to listen to their Apple Music playlists on Chromebooks, watch their Apple TV shows + without buying any current Apple TV, etc.

While Apple devices still offer the best experience for Apple services, and you can’t access all of Apple’s services on non-Apple hardware, here’s what you can do to get those apps in devices not manufactured by Apple. It’s especially useful if you’re sharing Apple subscriptions with family members who don’t use Apple devices exclusively.

Apple Music

Apple’s Spotify competitor had the honor of being the first Apple app to appear on Android, if not a complementary Beats app and an Android to iOS switch. If you are an Apple Music subscriber and have an Android device, you can install Apple Music for Android to get all this streaming goodness.

However, it’s important to note that you must be an Apple Music subscriber: the app will show the tracks you purchased from the iTunes Store and the tracks you imported into the Music app on macOS (or iTunes on Windows) , but you cannot run the application if you do not pay the € 10 per month subscription.

For now, the extensive iTunes media player has been transformed into a music application dedicated to macOS, but is still available on Windows. That may change soon, but iTunes for Windows (or anything that ends up replacing it) is still the best way to get Apple Music on Windows. You can access all your imported and purchased songs with or without a subscription to Apple Music and add streaming to the top if you need to.

Apple Music on the web is also available now: it’s a very useful option if you’re trying to get your playlists from a Chromebook or a computer where you can’t access your music library from a ‘desk. You don’t have advanced features like offline syncing, but it’s another way to access Apple Music from any computer, Mac, or anything else.

Speaking of Chromebooks, the Android app will work on these laptops if you need offline syncing and several other features. The app won’t run on Android TV (or Google TV), but you can use the Android app for Chromecast on any device with Android TV on board. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s no native Apple Music app for tablets or Amazon Fire TV devices, though you can use Apple Music using Alexa.

Apple TV