Could Apple Music be resurrecting Cover Flow, after over a decade?

If there’s one thing Apple Music has proved to us by now, it’s that it doesn’t need to continuously pump out new features to improve the user experience — but the large periods of silence make the anticipation even more exciting when the platform does roll out new tools and design upgrades.

Prior to the age of streaming, Apple users got a kick out of their music via iTunes and the revolutionary iPod, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary. I had the 5th gen iPod Nano, and it was one of the catalysts that fuelled my love for music.

But above all, it was the simplicity of the user experience and fun design elements that people remember the most — and one user might’ve uncovered the future of Apple Music’s design approach.

The Cover Flow comeback?

Cover Flow really gave Apple’s early playback interface its wings, displaying all of your saved music into a fun carousel for you to spin through — like a selection of LPs. It was so loved by music fanatics, Apple carried it from iPod and iTunes into iOS before sunsetting it in the mid-lates 2010s.

We’ve been mourning it ever since, but a Redditor’s post has recently sparked a widespread cry-out for its return, sharing a video showing a Cover Flow-like design tool with the caption ‘excited for new features’ (see below). The user says it’s ‘referenced from code’, but they don’t say if they’re running a new iOS developer beta.

The post shared to Reddit shows the user navigating the ‘Albums’ carousel on an artist page in the Apple Music app, which launches a Cover Flow-esque interface when they tap on an album. It’s unclear whether the user simply taps or long-presses on an album cover, but I predict it’s the latter.

Admittedly, what we see in the Reddit post isn’t a carbon copy of Cover Flow. It doesn’t have the continuing stack of albums existing beyond the central cover, and makes up a small fraction of the interface. There’s also no guarantee you’ll be able to switch your phone to landscape orientation to see a 3D rendering of your album’s artwork in a rolodex-style selection (this was our Audio Ed Becky’s favorite pre-iOS7 UI design feature). But despite this, the potential revival of this design approach has revealed one thing; users are yearning for nostalgia.

Though it’s not set in stone, the idea of Cover Flow making a comeback is something users are finding quite exciting, and you can see it in the replies on Reddit. ‘The listeners yearn for Cover Flow’, one account posted, while another user went the extra mile and created a design concept of what Cover Flow could look like in today’s Apple Music app.

It’s even got to the stage where some users have sought after ways to resurrect the swivelling feel of Cover Flow, mainly through third-party apps. MD Vinyl is a popular music player and widget app, which syncs to audio streaming platforms to display your music in album stack for vinyl form. Soor is another alternative whose name I’ve seen crop up, but comes with a one-time $6.99 / £6.99 purchase.

No matter how hard they try, these third-party alternatives could never replace what Cover Flow was. Nonetheless, they’re still used, and they not only reveal a craving for nostalgia and simplicity, but these types of design features on streaming platforms serve as a reminder that music is so much more than flat files at your fingertips.

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