Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Spotify polishes its Apple interface with refreshed icons

Nick Woodard
By

Spotify listeners on iOS are in for some good news. Your mobile music experience just got a refresh.

An updated interface for streaming giant Spotify was recently announced, with a press release from the company noting that iOS listeners will benefit from a “more streamlined, easy-to-use interface,” available to both free and premium subscribers.

Recommended Videos

Introducing the fresh new mobile app for iOS ???? pic.twitter.com/r8kpLUIv0c

— Spotify (@Spotify) February 27, 2020

Essentially, the refresh has updated a number of commonly used icons, including a simpler “shuffle play” button, action rows, and track rows with cover art. Spotify didn’t explicitly say when these updates would make their way to Android platforms, but did tweet out that the fresh would be “coming soon.”

Coming soon to Android! ????

— Spotify (@Spotify) February 27, 2020

While it’s kind of a bummer that those entrenched in the Android ecosystem will have to wait for the update, iOS fans can start streaming within the new interface right away. Here’s a look at each new feature coming to your iPhone or iPad.

Go green with shuffle play

Spotify shuffle play icon

When opening a playlist, the green button in the center of the screen reading “shuffle play” is gone, replaced by a green play icon slid to the right side of the screen, complete with a miniature shuffle icon latched onto the button itself. Spotify says it reduces streaming to the “click of one familiar button,” allowing you to get lost in your selections that much more quickly.

Action, front and center

Spotify action row

All possible actions for a playlist on Spotify, including “like” and “download” for premium subscriptions, are now bundled into a row at the center of the screen. The icon for “download” is new, too, matching the design Spotify uses for podcasts.

Spotify calls this experience a “one-stop shop” for everything listeners will need to do, and it’s intended to be much more adaptive and match the size of each device.

Track rows get artsy

The final refresh to Spotify’s interface is an addition to track rows, with a track’s cover art being displayed in every view except for the “Album” view. According to the release, Spotify’s thought process behind this was to make it easier for listeners to navigate the app and discover familiar songs. As a bonus, songs that listeners have already “liked” will be highlighted with a heart icon next to the track name.

The refresh follows last week’s reports that Spotify had started rolling out a song lyrics feature that was synced along with the music being played. The feature, however, was limited to songs that had available lyrics and didn’t appear to be immediately available to all listeners.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Nick Woodard
Nick Woodard
Former Digital Trends Contributor
  As an A/V Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Nick Woodard covers topics that include 4K HDR TVs, headphones…
Apple AirPlay 2: the wireless audio and video streaming tech fully explained
Apple AirPlay 2 control center.

When it comes to listening to music wirelessly, most people think of Bluetooth. It's built into just about every smartphone on the planet, and a huge number of tablets, desktops, and laptops have it too. But if you own Apple hardware, you need to know about a Bluetooth alternative that works over Wi-Fi, called Apple AirPlay 2.

AirPlay 2 is much more than just a simple pairing option: It lets you send both audio and video to a growing variety of devices, such as TVs, speakers, Apple TV boxes, Macs, and home theater receivers, all sans wires. If you own more than one AirPlay 2-compatible audio device, you can stream your music to just one of them, some of them, or all of them without losing synchronization. If that sounds cool, stay with us. We're going to point out all of the exciting features of AirPlay 2 and show you how to use it.
What is AirPlay anyway?

Read more
LG brings Apple TV, Apple Music, and AirPlay to webOS Hub-based TVs
Apple TV app for webOS Hub.

In October 2022, LG debuted webOS Hub, an enhanced version of the smart TV software it uses for its own TVs that can be licensed by other manufacturers. At the time, webOS Hub was not a full replica of the webOS that runs on LG TVs, given that it was missing some features like Apple's AirPlay and HomeKit support.

Today, LG says that webOS Hub is now compatible with all of those missing Apple ingredients. Apple TV app, Apple Music, AirPlay, and HomeKit are available to compatible webOS Hub TVs in more than 100 countries and regions.

Read more
Apple Music Sing brings karaoke singalongs to iPhones, Apple TV
Apple Music Sing.

Apple wants you to sing like everyone's listening with its new Apple Music Sing feature, a karaoke mode that works with the music streaming service's popular lyrics experience.

Available later this month on iPhone (11 and later), iPads (third-gen and later), and the 2022 model of Apple TV 4K (not earlier models, for some reason) to really max out the karaoke experience in living rooms, Apple Music Sing will be incorporated right into the Apple Music app, giving you the option to use a slider to control the volume of the vocals in Apple Music's song library so you can sing along. With the slider, you can tweak the volume to either blend your voice with the singer's or drop them out completely to go solo. Background vocals are also viewable independently from the main vocals for budding backup singers to follow more easily, and a Duet view separates multiple singers' lyrics on opposite sides of the screen.

Read more