Widget animations don't work properly.

[Cris29]

Plan

Premium

Country

Italy

Devices

Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

Operating System

Android 12 (One UI 4.0), Android 12 (pixel style custom rom)

My Question or Issue

Spotify Widgets on Android have severe inconsistencies in their animations.

As you know, Android 12 added support for widget opening and closing animations, which are controlled by the launcher.

Spotify is the only app that doesn't play well with them. In particular, if the Spotify app launches to the main screen (so first time opening the app or if the app was already opened but in that particular screen) everything works as expected, but when the widget tries to launch to the music player screen problems start appearing.

In case you are opening the widget directly to the music player screen, two things might happen:

• It launches the main app screen (the suggested playlist list), usually with the animation (sometimes without)
• It launches the music player screen without any animation, it just appears on screen.

A similar problem happens on the app icon too, which will open the main screen even if the last used screen was the music player. In this way the animation is always shown, but it requires one more tap to get back to the music player.

In case you are closing the app, which has been launched from a widget, the inconsistencies keep going. If you close it from the main app screen everything works fine, but if you close it from the music player a standard animation will be played (the one where it closes in the middle of the screen, showing that the launcher doesn't know that this particular screen is connected to the Spotify widget).

Note that this behavior happens using the official Spotify widget (the new one and the old one when it was available) and also when using third party widgets like KWGT, which can be redirected to be seen as Spotify Widgets from launchers.

So far this is the only app that has this problem between the 200 I have installed on both my phones.

I have tried various basic troubleshooting methods, here they are:

• Tried on multiple devices, on different Android skins and different launchers
• Put Spotify in "No restriction" mode in Battery management. I also locked it in "Always Open" in One UI 4, which keeps it always awake. 
• Tried "Enhanced Processing" mode, and it still happens. It's not a problem of Power Saving.
• Tried many times clearing the cache (of the app, the launcher and of the whole phone), tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app, still does the same.

Due to attachment size limits, I link here a video of the problem, in case I didn't explain myself properly:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8v9t3SiuBvQPitup9

I hope this can help you quickly identify the issue and fix it, it would be a huge improvement in terms of User Experience, which in my opinion needs a lot of improvements in the Android app

[Alex]

Hey @Cris29,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

We appreciate the time and effort you've invested into reporting this behavior of the widget animation on Android 12. 

First, the animation issue - this is something that is most likely controlled on OS level and it can vary between brands and releases. We tried this on a few different devices, and although the animation was not consistent all the time, we didn't encounter any performance issues. We'll make sure that your feedback and the video recording that you've attached reaches the right teams at Spotify who're working on improving this.

Second, the app not opening with the Now Playing View - this is expected behavior, as the NPV works more like a pop-up window within the app. This means that if you're in the NPV and minimize the app it will always open up in the last major section of the app where playback started from - the Home Screen, the Playlist/ Album, Library section, with the NPV minimized to the bottom of the app. If you want, you're welcome to submit and Idea to change this in our Ideas Board. The more user votes it gets, the more likely it is to get implemented. Here you can read more on how ideas work.

We also suggest checking this help article for useful tips on how to submit an idea.

Hope you find this info helpful. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[Alex_Silviu]

I had issues too with the Spotify widget not working properly due to system launcher.

I found only one solution for that, uninstall updates of the launcher or download another one and set it as default... If you choose to uninstall updates of the default launcher and you got everything organized in a certain way on home screen, I recommend taking a screen shot of that so you can put everything back in place after that... I wish I thought of that before doing it too 😅