The ♡ Heart button is being replaced with a (+) Plus button

[MattSuda]

In March 2023, the ♡ Heart button will start being replaced with a (+) Plus button for saving things to Your Library. Things that have been saved to Your Library will now show a green ✔ Check icon instead of a green Heart icon.

This new experience is now rolling out to the mobile and desktop apps first and will then come to the other apps (watch, TV, etc.) at a later time.

You can check out this Spotify news article for more information:

Save Your Favorite Songs, Podcasts, and More With Spotify’s Plus Button

In this post, we will show you how to use the new experience and answer your questions. You might have already seen this change being discussed in the Community recently.

New Experience:

                                   

Old Experience:

                      

How does the (+) Plus button work?

• The experience will remain similar for you. When you tap the (+) Plus button from the Now Playing View, songs will be saved to your Liked Songs. The only difference is that now you can quickly tap the (+) Plus button again to add the song to your other playlists too! When you tap the button again, you'll also see the other playlists that the song has already been added to with a green ✔ Check icon.

• The experience is the same for Podcast Episodes. You can tap the (+) Plus button to save podcast episodes to Your Episodes, and then tap the button again to add the podcast episode to your other playlists too.

• Once you tap on the (+) Plus button, the icon will change to a green ✔ Check to let you know that the track has been saved.
  
  
• The green ✔ Check icon also shows up next to the songs that are saved to Your Library on Album and Playlist pages. (but not when viewing your own playlists, only other playlists)
  
  When you see a green ✔ Check icon on a song, it means that it has been saved to Your Library. A song added to either (or both) Liked Songs or one of your own playlists counts as being saved to Your Library. Before with the heart button, the green heart icon meant that the song was saved only to your Liked Songs.
  
  If a song has a green ✔ Check icon because is has already been added to one of your playlists, you can still add it to your Liked Songs playlist. Tap on the green ✔ Check icon and select your Liked Songs playlist from the menu and it will be added.

• The (+) Plus button will also still let you save Playlists, Albums, and Audiobooks to Your Library.

• This change will not affect the things you have already saved to Your Library. The songs you've previously saved will remain in Liked Songs. The Playlists, Albums, Podcasts, and Audiobooks you've previously saved will remain in Your Library.

• The "Add to playlist" icon in the options menu will also become a (+) Plus, but the functionality remains the same.

FAQ:

This section will answer your frequently asked questions and will be updated with the latest answers.

Why are the 💚 green heart icons next to songs I've already liked missing? I used to be able to see the songs I've previously liked when viewing songs on Album and Playlist pages.

• The green 💚 Heart icon has been replaced with a green ✔ Check icon
  
  
• The green ✔ Check icon shows up next to the songs that are saved to Your Library on Album and Playlist pages. (but not when viewing your own playlists, only other playlists)
  
  
• When you see a green ✔ Check icon on a song, it means that it has been saved to Your Library. A song added to either (or both) Liked Songs or one of your own playlists counts as being saved to Your Library. Before with the heart button, the green heart icon meant that the song was saved only to your Liked Songs.
  
  
• If you don't yet see the green ✔ Check icon next to songs in track listings (Album and Playlist pages), you should see this once it rolls out to more users.

I want to add a song to a playlist from the Now Playing View, but I don't want to save it to my Liked Songs. Why do I have to save the song to Liked Songs first?

• The (+) Plus button will let you edit the destination of the song you liked. After you have tapped the button from the Now Playing View, you can tap it again to change or add it to more playlists.

• Alternatively, you can still add a song to playlists without saving it to Liked Songs. Go to the options menu by first tapping the "..." icon and then tap on "Add to Playlist" to select the playlist(s) you want to add the song to.

How do I remove a song from Liked Songs or my other playlists now?

How do I remove a podcast episode from Your Episodes or my other playlists now?

• Songs: This same function can now be done by tapping the green ✔ Check button on the Now Playing View or by going to the options menu and tapping on "Add to playlist". After tapping the button or the option in the options menu, uncheck the "Liked Songs" playlist and then tap on the green "Done" button at the bottom. You can also use this menu to remove the song from your other playlists.

• Podcast Episodes: This same function can now be done by tapping the green ✔ Check button on the Now Playing View, on Podcast pages, or by going to the options menu and tapping on "Add to playlist". After tapping the button or the option in the options menu, uncheck the "Your Episodes" playlist and then tap on the green "Done" button at the bottom. You can also use this menu to remove the podcast episode from your other playlists.

What happened to the "Like all songs" menu option on Album pages in the mobile app?

• This same function can now be done by tapping the "Add to playlist" menu option on an album page and then selecting the "Liked Songs" playlist.

What happened to the "Swipe left to Like" gesture to quickly like and unlike songs in the mobile app?

• When you use the "Swipe left to Like" gesture on songs in playlists or in album pages, the song will still be saved to Liked Songs. However, now when you swipe again, the "Add to playlist" menu will open up so you can now quickly add to or remove from Liked Songs and your other playlists all in one step.

Why can I no longer add a song to a playlist more than once using the "Add to playlist" menu in the mobile app? There used to be a popup telling me if a song was already added to a playlist and there was an option to ignore that and add it again.

• Right now the ability to add a song to a playlist more than once using the "Add to playlist" menu in the mobile app is currently not possible. As a workaround you can still add songs to a playlist more than once using the desktop app. In the desktop app, you can drag the song into the playlist, or use the "Add to playlist" option in the right click menu.

Feedback:

Where can I give my feedback about the new (+) Plus button?

• We welcome your feedback about this change. The best way to share your feedback is to comment here in this thread.

[Reiszecke]

What you all have to do now because Spotify obviously doesn't read this thread here anymore:

1. (Takes 10 seconds) Upvote this idea here, it has more than 900 likes already: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Bring-back-the-heart-button/idi-p/5709907
2. (Takes 60 seconds) Submit a rating on the App Store / Play Store saying you want the "liked" indicator back so the developers see it as well
3. Step 3: (Takes 60 seconds) Contact support and tell them you want a our "liked" indicator back
4. Step 4: (Takes 60 seconds) If you want to go all in, cancel your subscription so they take your support ticket seriously

I contacted Spotify support and they were nice but not useful. They asked for my email address (be sure to use the one you have in your cancelled account) and told me they may ask me for information to learn what we'd like changed. Of course they have never gotten back to me - simply because not enough people complained to them about this.

Contacting support, submitting a rating on the app and upvoting the linked idea - as I have stated above - is the only way to actually make someone at Spotify read your complaint. They do not care about us bitching about this in the user forums.

[zamiere]

And how can we check the real favorites inside a playlist? Give us stars instead, like in photo management softwares.

[ymmv99]

I've never seen a company that hates its users as much as Spotify. They don't listen to complaints, they just push on with making the app worse and worse. It's a horrible, horrible company.

[vaajy]

Anyone has this translation error? In FI translation it says a joke nowadays.

What to do, try to search a track you do not have on Liked tracks. Just type something random.

It says "Your liked tracks will appear here. Save tracks by pressing heart icon". 😄

There's no heart icon mentioned anywhere in the app...

[jeffwode]

So now to "unlike" a song I have to click 3 buttons instead of 1? Why? Who thought this was a good idea?

[Globalmitch]

I really, really wish I could see which songs in an album or playlist I've previously liked at a glance - like you used to be able to with the heart icon. Removing this functionality means I have to manually go to each track to see if I've liked it before. This laborious process is a textbook example of something that's user unfriendly. Please find a way to bring this functionality back!

[Laurslovely]

I am absolutely not happy with the plus sign. I can't see any of my favorited songs in each playlist. I want the heart back. It was easy to see my favorite songs. Why are you making things difficult Spotify? I pay for my service so I am not happy with this change. 

[need-heart-button]

Dumbest change in the app. I have been a user for years and have decided to cancell my subscription. Over time the user experience has just getting worse. Every update is actually a downgrade. The developers clearly do not know what they are doing. They lack ability.

At least there are services that will allow me to transfer my playlist to other platforms.

Chao spotify. 

[cheesywotsit]

I left spotify over this ages ago and thought i’d look in on this.  Doubt i’d ever go back to spotify even tho it’s quite music-centric, and natively scrobbles n stuff.

I have since gone through apple music (similar weird like system)

Currently on youtube music (more expensive but does also allow ditching of youtube videos).  That does have the most similar like button to how spotify used to work with a thumbs up/down on songs and a liked playlist.  Things I dislike are it’s closeness to youtube so liking an artist actually subscribes to them on youtube (meh) which pollutes your whole youtube experience and search gives you stuff back from youtube too in the search results.

Moving playlists between services you’re relying on clunky free stuff or paid stuff. It’s almost like they’re trying to tie you in, and yes I had LOADS of spotify stuff set up (meh)

So overall they all have their pros and cons, it seems to me the dev teams are not music fans or users of their services 😂

good luck all whereever you end up 👍

[jeffwode]

> So now to "unlike" a song I have to click 3 buttons instead of 1? Why? Who thought this was a good idea?

And not only that, you now can't search for a song and like it. You have to click the song first. Just fire whoever does your UX, it's embarrassing

[Edwin71]

Oh boy, just discovered another related flaw. Not sure if it is already described by someone else over here.

When you go to an artist page there is a section "Liked Songs" which says e.g. "You've liked 15 songs". When you click that, you get a page listing those songs, but they (Spotify) forgot to display the plus button to show which tracks are in any of your playlists. Ah well, that must be because every liked song is already in your "Liked Songs" playlist, so it doesn't make sense to show that indication. So they (Spotify) must have been thinking. This just illustrates again how broken, half-baked, badly designed this is. Not to blame the developers! All blame goes to the UX designer(s).

The correct implementation would be: show separate heart button and plus button (or something better, e.g. a "list" icon). When in any list

• show the heart next to a track when you've liked the track, except when you're in a Liked Songs playlist (your general one or the one with your liked songs from a specific artist)
• show the plus/list button next to a track when the track is in one of your own playlists (NOT considering the Liked Songs playlist!), except when the track is only in the currently displayed playlist

That is not hard to implement and not hard to understand for a user. So what's keeping you from doing the right thing, Spotify? It's been almost a year since this broken feature started to roll out, you can't be serious about stubbornly rolling this out further and not coming up with a fix.

And what I don't get: at the top of this thread they say "We welcome your feedback about this change. The best way to share your feedback is to comment here in this thread." But it is like talking to a wall.

[Samppa3]

@Edwin71

Like this when you said: "But it is like talking to a wall." I think even the wall would reply and talk back sooner than Spotify representative. Im not gonna hold my breath waiting for Spotify's reply on this matter or better sound quality, which has been talked here for almos ten years now: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Music-HiFi-Quality-Lossless-Streaming-16bi...

[jwalters18]

@mattsuda you wrote a well thought out and explained article - the problem is that it is explaining an update that decreased the use and functionality of the actual feature.

@Njruch hit the nail on the head - that is exactly the problem. I don't care if it is a heart or a plus or a shooting star, the liked song indicator needs to be different than the just added to a playlist icon. The suggestion to have an added to play list icon and a favorites "liked" icon next each other would solve the problem for almost everyone and bring back, what I would think, is the intended functionality. 

[drstevoooo]

This is **bleep** horrible change that ruins the way I find new music.  Any albums I want to checkout get added to a single playlist that I spend most of my day listening to.  When I hear something I like I hit the "like" button.  Later, at the end of the week or month or whatever I go through the list, and if an album hasn't recieved at least one or two likes then it's probably not for me and gets removed.  Things with one or more likes can then get moved into a more specific playlist.  With this change there's no way of seeing the things I've liked or not within my playlist!

This is mad - stop removing functionality!  The desktop Spotify app is bad enough to begin with and this just makes it worse.

[i8ursandwich]

The problem I have with this change is that I can't tell which songs I have liked in my playlist until I hover over it (I use the desktop version). So when I want to add songs to my queue, it's harder for me to find the songs that I really like, which had previously been nicely marked with a heart without having to hover over that one song specifically.   

[ironqueen]

Hello! 

My spotify recently got this update and now every single song (in my own playlists) have the green +. In this state I can't see what songs I have liked, unless I go to the dedicated liked-song-playlist. This is very annoying as my playlists are well over 2.000 songs each and I'd like to be able to see which songs I enjoy most, like previously with the heart symbol. Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

[daturaloca]

They changed it again! And now it is even worse . Spotify is not listening their users 👎

[lflessard]

Talk about a bad move!  Who came up with this dumb idea!?!  The heart was the second most used feature on my side (after 'search' and now you hide it behind a '+' sign ?!?! 2 clics rather than one?  Talk about improvement! Please fire the genie that came up with this idea, grab the money you'll save and give it back to the artists.  Best move you could do.

[jmcomposer]

I don't feel great about writing about a competitor on a Spotify community message board, but there have been some developements from the competitor that are worth noting.  

To review: Spotify promised, ever since the removlal of the Heart, that they'd bring back the ability to see liked songs in album view.  Reading recent messages here, it looks like this is still not implemented properly, or at least, the implementation is adding confusion.  

At that time, Apple Music did NOT offer the ability to see liked songs in album or artist view, but I switched to Apple Music just as a form of protest.  And I kept hoping that Spotify would return this feature, so that I could come back to Spotify. 

But...guess what?  Apple Music has since added the feature everyone's asking for here!  Now, you can "Favorite" a track, and it will add a little star to that track, and no matter what view you're in (album / artist / recently added / etc.), you'll ALWAYS see that star.  Such a simple and useful feature.  

And now I've been diligently adding to Apple Music all the songs that I had liked on Spotify.  Add to this: the ability to see lyrics that scroll with the playback, the ability to click on any part of the lyric and have playback jump to that part, the karaoke mode, and well, I don't think I'll be needing to return to Spotify.    

Just thought this update might be useful info to those unhappy with the loss of this Spotify feature, or unhappy with the clear lack of response from Spotify to all the users here.  

[EDIT 2/7/24] Fellow member @Edwin71 has correctly pointed out that Spotify does have the lyrics feature, and I see on other sites that it has karaoke mode as well. Apologies for this error on my part.  

[Puglifiled]

I only listen on the mobile app and do all my playlist management on the desktop app. It's so much easier to drag-drop from the center main panel to a playlist in the left navigation panel (or, copy with Ctrl+C and paste with Ctrl+V). So, I will probably NEVER use this as a way to add songs to playlists.

I used the heart symbol to tag songs for a VARIETY of reasons while building playlists. I never actually listen to my Liked Songs playlist and often clear it out completely when I'm done with a batch of tagged songs. Now I've got Liked Songs set to "downloaded" so the download symbol becomes my new (and extremely clunky) way to tag songs. **sigh**

HOWEVER, I'm excited about this Green Checkmark thingy. If only it went one step further and matched on the ISRC.

I would love to see an additional checkmark for the Same Song on OTHER (different) Albums (which would enhance the current green checkmark when it's the same song on the SAME album). Then when new albums appear with old songs, we can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing we've already got that "old" song in our library.

And yes, I'm aware that occasionally the same recording can errantly have more than one ISRC within multiple album appearances. But still, matching on ISRC would be a big help for us OCD curators.

VOTE for "Additional Green Checkmark for Same Song on OTHER Albums"