Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Pixel 8a & Android Auto (Toyota)

Operating System

Android 14

Recently, Spotify's Android Auto controls broke for podcasts, but only for "Your Episodes" playlist. 15s skip forward and backward were replaced with skip ahead and back in the podcast queue, and speedup was replaced with 15s back.

Here is what the UI looks like when playing a podcast episode directly (not via "Your Episodes"):

normal podcast play screen, with speedup, 15s forward and backward buttons

This is important because the two buttons surrounding play/pause are tied to the driver's steering wheel forward/backward tactile buttons. A driver can skip around in an episode without looking down, and without fumbling through multiple layers of touchscreen controls.

Here is what the same interface looks like when playing podcasts via "Your Episodes":

bad controls that default to skipping to next or previous podcast via Android Auto when using "Your Episodes"

Note that this isn't just an "inconsisten UI" bug — it is a major safety issue. Since the default buttons closest to the middle "Play/Pause" button are the ones tied to the steering wheel forward/back controls, these are the only ones available to the driver who wants to keep their eyes on the road. Even worse, navigating to the "forward 15s" control in this "Your Episodes" configuration requires navigating to the three-dot menu and another layer of button overlays on the touchscreen. Moving 15s forward/backward is such a common use-case in listening to podcasts that this is why Spotify has always kept the 15s buttons as default foward/backward interface (in Android Auto, for headphones, on UI, etc), but this was recently changed for some reason - likely a missed regression. And presents a dangerous divergence from user expectation that is likely a ticking time bomb; this will cause road accidents at some point in the future if it has not already.

Please don't mark this as a feature request. It is a bug. Severity high for safety reasons. Spotify does not want to be partly repsonsible for encouraging drivers to stare at their touchscreen instead of using tactile controls for most-used feature paths.