Facing stiff competition from Apple Music, Spotify last year brought a much awaited redesigned UI to its iOS and Android app home screens. Building on that new design language, Spotify announced new features including a section highlighting, personalized recommendations, “Recently Played,” and new and unfinished podcasts.
With the new update, Spotify has once again put music front and center of the user listening experience.
Spotify detailed the latest redesign to its iOS and Android home screens in a blog post today.
Through this latest update, we’ll be rolling out several advancements on the mobile Home hub designed to make finding the audio you love easier and more intuitive. These will roll out to users globally on iOS and Android this month.
Here are the three new changes heading for the Spotify home screen:
- Travel back in time: Rediscover lost gems in your listening history with a new “Recently played” destination, where users can jump back in time and browse up to three months’ worth of listening history. Premium and Free users globally will be able to browse recently played individual tracks and episodes in addition to the playlists, albums, and shows they were played from.
- Jump into new and unfinished podcasts: Global Premium users can view new and relevant podcast episodes right within the Home hub. New episodes will be marked with a blue dot, and episodes you’ve already started will display a progress bar indicating how far into the episode you are.
- Discover more music: Premium users globally won’t miss a single track from artists they love. Now, you will see a new surface highlighted on top of the Home hub dedicated to discovery-oriented recommendations that are personalized, timely, and reactive to your taste.
Spotify didn’t share exactly when the new home screen design would be arriving to users. This is a server-side change and users around the world should see the changes within the next few weeks. You may stay up to date with the latest version of the app by clicking on the link. (iOS/Android app)
Spotify updates Mac and Web Apps
Spotify has also revamped its Mac, desktop and web apps. In a blog post outlining the new features, Spotify says it’s rolling out a “new improved look and feel for the app for desktop and web – aligning the experience and making both easier to use than ever before.”
Since the desktop experience served as the original window to the world for Spotify, this was not a task we took lightly. It took months of tests and research, talking to users, and gathering feedback. Now, we’re pleased to deliver a new, clean design, more controls, and a great new foundation for our listeners to use Spotify across our desktop app and web player for the years to come.
With a brand-new Home, Spotify’s making it easier to access the content that matters the most in Your Library and simplifying the playlist creation with integrated search. Another function introduced to its desktop version is the ability to drag and drop tracks straight into your playlist.
- Search: This tab can now be found on the left side of the navigation page.
- Listener’s profile: Now includes top artists and tracks.
- … menu: Listeners can now start a radio session for any song or artist radio by simply clicking the menu
- Playlists: It’s easier to tailor your playlists, with the ability to write descriptions, upload images, drag and drop tracks, use a new embedded search bar, edit Queue and view Recently played, and apply new sorting options via a new dropdown menu in the top-right corner.
- Save bandwidth with Offline: Premium subscribers can download their favorite music and podcasts to play them back, even while offline.
The redesigned experience of the Spotify desktop and web apps makes the features much easier to use, the company explains. Users can visit Spotify’s browser page or download the Mac app here. Unfortunately, the app is still not optimized for Apple Silicon Macs but we have used the app with no problem at all.
