Canvas still appears in playlist preview despite disabling in settings

[realmikkifriend]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Galaxy A53 running Android v. 14, Spotify v. 9.0.22.543

I have disabled Canvas in my settings. When I open a playlist and then open its preview mode (in which the user can swipe through previews of songs), Canvas animations still appear.

[ribezaz]

Hey! @realmikkifriend 

It looks like there is some confusion between two different features on Spotify, so here’s some clarification:

1. Canvas – This is a visual feature that displays a 3 to 8-second looping video or a static image instead of the album cover in the Now Playing View. If you disable Canvas in the app settings, these looping visuals will no longer be visible in the Now Playing screen.

2. Explore this playlist – This is a separate feature that allows users to preview 30-second snippets of songs within a playlist. You can find it in the upper-left corner of playlists. The purpose of this feature is to help users discover new music in an interactive way.

If you have disabled Canvas and are still seeing looping visuals while exploring a playlist, this is expected behavior since the two features work independently.

If you’d like an option to remove these visuals from the "Explore this playlist" feature, you can suggest this idea in the Spotify Community. Be sure to provide clear details so the Spotify team can consider it.

Hope this helps! 😊

[realmikkifriend]

Hi @ribezaz, thanks for the information and I will make a feature request post like you said.

To end users like us, this behavior looks like a bug because we set 'Do not display Canvas' in the app, and are still shown animations in a certain mode. `prefers-reduced-motion` is an important web accessibility feature that I encourage all web developers to learn more about. Users disable these animations to decrease distractions and reduce triggers of neurological issues like migraines and seizures. To offer users the option to disable Canvas animations, and then show them anyway in a certain mode, is poor design and anti-accessibility.

As far as I can tell, the Explore This Playlist feature has zero user documentation available, while Canvas is somewhat documented. Users like me will be very confused about features that are not documented.

[ribezaz]

Thank you for sharing your perspective on this behavior and your accessibility concerns. You raise a very valid point about prefers-reduced-motion, which is an essential feature for many users. Ideally, the setting to disable Canvas would apply to all contexts, including Explore This Playlist mode, to ensure a more consistent and accessible experience.

I understand that the lack of clear documentation for this feature can be confusing, and your suggestion to make it more transparent to users makes perfect sense. Your feature request post will be valuable to the Spotify team as they consider improvements in this area.

If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to share! 😊

[jlodeirom]

I have a similar problem: Even though I have disabled Canvas, when playing songs on the Desktop version of Spotify, now on the bottom left corner where the image of the album normally is, started playing the music video (and using the audio from the music video) which is annoying. The "solution" I found was to click on expand and then "change to audio" on the expanded "canvas" section. But I cannot be doing this with every song on the playlists I had made before this feature was available. As when I added those songs, there was no choice to add "just audio" or "music video". Is there a way to make it so that all songs are audio only? I am not interested in music videos (Sorry!)

[ribezaz]

Hey @jlodeirom , how are you?

I couldn't find anything about an official way to "force all old songs to play audio only, even if there's a music video available," but I found an idea about it here in the Spotify Community! You can check it out here and support the idea. The Spotify team often reviews ideas put forward in the community, and the more support, the more it gets promoted!