You can finally record videos while playing music on your iPhone

iPhone users who have updated to iOS 18 now have the option to record videos while playing audio, as MacRumors noted. If you have music playing through your iPhone speaker, this is a quick and dirty way to add a soundtrack to your video instead of bringing the clip into the editor, but the audio quality suffers.

Previously, in older versions of iOS, opening the iPhone camera app and switching to video mode would cause the audio to quickly fade away, even if it was playing through wireless headphones. iOS 18 introduces a new camera setting that changes this behavior.

To access it, open your iPhone settings, go to Camera section, touch Record soundand turn on Allow audio playback toggle. When activated, audio will continue to play while recording video in the camera app, and if audio is playing through the speaker, it will be picked up by the iPhone’s microphone and recorded in mono along with the video. If audio is playing through headphones, it will not be recorded.

This functionality was available in older versions of iOS via the QuickTake feature in the camera app, which allowed you to record videos in photo mode by holding down the shutter button, but the resolution of the recorded video was limited to 1440p, rather than the 4K available in video mode.

Using a video editing app is still the best way to add music or narration to a clip, but this update will make recording videos with dance moves or lip-synced to a specific song a lot easier.