Android Widget Removal

[Staff]

We’re here to let you know that we are retiring the Spotify Widget for Android this week. 

We always take retiring features in Spotify very seriously. We’re pouring our energy into new ways of creating the best experience for our users.

You can still easily access the same playback features as well as information about what is playing through the Spotify playback notification and device lockscreen.

To access the playback controls on Android simply swipe down while you are using Spotify to access the controls.

If you’re interested in learning more about how the app evolves, check out our article about testing and why features change.

We’re also welcome to feedback from our users. The best way to give us feedback to is to write an Idea in our Idea Exchange. 

Thanks!

[Kelindreth]

Dear Spotify,

A lot of your subscribers use the widget. It's a preference, and completely optional. I think removing the widget from android is stupid and backwards and serves no purpose other than to discomfort the users that do make use of the widget. I don't see what you gain by doing this. Please give us the widget back ASAP. If you refuse, I might consider swapping to another music streaming service. Kind regards, an annoyed subscriber. 

[SupramanTT]

This is absolutely idiotic! Come on! Let us use your system the way we want to. I have had the widget on my home screen for years now. I cannot comprehend why you guys are being so freaking dumb. Undo this immediately.

[Davecanswim123]

I use the widget everytime I listen to music on spotify. Maybe its time to look into Youtube music..

[TwilightLinkabl]

Google has a premium plan for $9.99 and a family plan for $14.99. I used
to have them for a bit; it was quite fun to have that like my music sub.

[DN1]

While there are other methods or 'workarounds' listed, these don't always work. I'd venture to say that they don't work MOST of the time as the play/pause in the shade and lockscreen don't do anything even after multiple interactions. 

From a purely UX POV on device - how does two steps (unlock, play) get beat out by four steps (unlock, open app, select playlist, play)? 

[TTFfred]

Cool cool, when are you adding anything useful again though?

Equalizer, selective audio devices... Basic **bleep**? Or are you above basic **bleep**? Y'know, since you're removing more things than you're adding.

Or sorry, canvases are great. All the 5 artists that have them really stand out.

I also love how you don't even try to justify the removal of basic stuff like this or the old notification bell, it really makes me root for your company 🙂

I'm glad I get take part of a family pack, otherwise I'd leave your service to rot.

[Akjax]

This is the last straw for me, Spotify. 

The Spotify app is the ONLY app that has become less and less useful and user friendly over time. When booting the app I used to go straight to my playlists, now I have to navigate there. Did you know that 99% of the time I start the app it's because I want to listen to my playlists?

Remember when we could search in playlists on mobile by just swiping up? I loved that feature. It's gone.

Remember when we could easily toggle offline mode so we only saw downloaded songs when we were away from a connection? Gone. 

And now this. The widget was great! It worked flawlessly and I used it dozens of times every single day. 

Even if this is brought back now, I am just SICK of this. The point of paying for a music subcription service like this, imo, is the convenience, and Spotify seems dead set on making sure that their service is anything but. Even if they bring back the widget I'm convinced it's only a matter of time before another useful feature is axed for no reason under the guise of 

"To access the playback controls on Android simply swipe down while you are using Spotify to access the controls."
Except this is only there if Spotify is already running. Hitting play on the widget started up Spotify without having to do that seperately. And the swipe down controls dissapear ALL THE TIME! And anyways, it's one more step. You have to swipe down first. Generally tech is about REDUCING the number of steps to acomplish something, espicially something as commonly used as play/pause/skip functions. 

"We’re pouring our energy into new ways of creating the best experience for our users"

I have an idea to create the best experience for your users - STOP. REMOVING. FEATURES. Or else you'll find yourselfs with less users to improve the experience for. You're losing one as soon as I decide which alternative service to switch to, as there are MANY others that have widget functionality. 

[saacke-us]

So I bought a subscription, used this widget daily for all the reasons others have documented, you decide to retire the widget and now I have to go vote for widget functionality which, 1. Won't get any attention until there's a critical mass of others going as far as voting and 2. Will still be at the bottom of your development items to code?

Thank God Pandora, Apple, Amazon Music, Google Play and every other streaming service offers a widget.  Easy decision.

[Heshbon]

What the **bleep**

[Ren0b]

Why would you remove this feature? It was such a useful tool. Now it's even more inconvenient to use Spotify. I don't know why I am suprised as Spotify has made many changes over the years that seems no one asked for or done to "improve" user experience but mainly only for IOS. Great job

EDIT: Also not sure why you marked this whole post as "Solved" when you clearly "Solved" and issue that was not even an issue. It's like going into a board meeting where everyone just pats themselves on the back for a job they didn't do. Congratulations you remind me of every corporate shite hole i've worked for.

[BringWidgetBack]

First, let me say that you know you've made a bad decision when I actually feel compelled to set up a community profile just to vent on how frustrating this is.

The widget did not hurt anyone, it wasn't in the way or at all interfering with someone who didn't want to use it. It was purely there as a convenience for those people it worked for, and now your team has removed it...with absolutely no given reason, no new/replacement feature, no benifits or consequence, other than frustrating the part of your user base that actually used the widget.

What I find most troubling is that fact that, as far as I can tell, the removal of the widget did not shrink the size of the app on my devices, if anything it made it larger. How? How do you REMOVE a good feature, yet make your app take up MORE space? It's hard to tell on my device if it was the update or what, but now I'm seriously concerned, should I be worried about spyware or something on my phone now? 

I think my service just auto renewed last week unfortunately, but to be fair to you guys, this change has been live for less than 24 hours. Really hope you change it back, otherwise I'll just have to spend a day getting my playlists/library on Amazon music and that'll be that. 

[o-_fsf3mmz1z]

I'm sorry, what???
Just disabled auto-update. I cannot believe this.
EDIT: I can't even vote for the suggestion to bring it back! Spotify management sucks! How do you constantly screw these app renovations up? I just do not understand...

[jimmyblux]

Solution: Google play music

[phijkoop]

Thanks for letting us know that you are retiring the Spotify Widget for Android this week. Please make sure that it's back next week...

[redserpent7]

---

@Guido wrote:

Hi all,

We're hearing you regarding the removal of the Android Widget.

If you'd like the widget back, we recommend leaving a vote for this idea. Regardless of which status the Idea currently has.

Thanks!

---

This is not a solution... we have ideas in the exchange from 5 years ago and no one has**bleep** about them.... 

This is not acceptable, bring the widget back... if its its not back in the next update I'm switching to a different service. Do the right thing for once

[Ultramane]

Yooo the drop down controls don't even exist for me now. They're definitely trying to lose subscribers on purpose now, or at the very least annoy them out of using the app to continue collecting subscription fees but without having to pay out royalties with the decrease in use.

[CyrilMx]

---

@jimmyblux wrote:

Solution: Google play music

---

What's the difference between Google Play Music and YouTube Music ? It's confusing. 

[jeremyperdue24]

Way to lose a long time subscriber. What an idiotic idea. If I wanted to lose use of widgets and have an apple and apple music. I'm not shopping all of your competitors. Great job 🤡 

[Staff · Accepted solution]

Hey everyone,

Thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us so far. We always take retiring features in Spotify very seriously, and do want your continued feedback. The best way for us to measure your comments are via votes in our Idea Exchange. 

For this reason we're going to lock this thread. We encourage you to move to the Idea Exchange area where you can vote and comment on feature requests. The idea most relevant to this thread is below:

• Android Widget

Rest assured that your opinion matters to us and that it goes into making Spotify the best it can be.