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The New Desktop App

dan

UPDATE - May 5th, 2023

Hey folks,

 

We appreciate the feedback you've provided us with regarding the new desktop UI; it's being taken into account!

We're chiming in to redirect you to the current main thread regarding the latest updates to the desktop app and we'll be closing new comments here as it is an outdated thread 🙂 


Thanks!

 

UPDATE - April 16th, 2021

Hey folks,

 

We've tried to cover most of the frequently asked questions concerning the new update in this Spotify Answer - Make sure to check it out!

 

We'll continue to go through all your posts in this blog, so if you have any other questions besides the ones in the FAQ, feel free to add them in a comment below.

 

Thanks,

The Community Moderator Team

 

UPDATE - April 8th, 2021

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday we published a blog post on our engineering blog which goes into more details on the new UI, the reasons behind it and the process of building it.  If you'd like to read a few more details like that you can check it out here.

I'd also like to mention a few things coming in upcoming versions of Desktop

  • We're working on bringing back a list-like Discography view, something many of you have mentioned missing in the new UI.  We expect this to land in an upcoming release, so do watch this space and make sure you remain fully updated.
  • "Discovered On" playlists for artists will be back in an upcoming release.
  • We're working on bringing to Desktop the ability (like in our mobile apps) to see all the saved songs by a particular artist from within the artist page itself.  Again this will be arriving in an upcoming Desktop release.

Thanks,
Dan

 

ORIGINAL POST -----

 

Hi everyone

Dan here from the Desktop team again. I wanted to make another post to once again thank you all for your continued feedback, and also give a little more detail about what we’re doing from here on in.

 

In short, the new user interface is the future of the Spotify Desktop client, and over the coming weeks we’ll roll out the new UI to all Desktop users. Many of you will have noticed already, but we’ve based the new experience on the more modern and scalable Web Player codebase, and in doing so made both versions more aligned and easier to use than ever before.

Why are we making this change?

We believe in the future of the Desktop platform and want to make sure it can still serve the needs of our users now and into the future. 

The existing Desktop UI codebase became increasingly hard to maintain as time went on, and you may have noticed a growing gap between the Desktop and Mobile apps in some cases. For those of you interested in the technical details, a blog post on the engineering blog is coming soon. The short story, however, is that our desire to continue pushing Desktop forward and bringing new features to it became incompatible with the reality of maintaining the legacy experience.

 

Meanwhile, we had a Web Player serving similar user needs, but built in a much more modern and scalable way — with a more cohesive Spotify “look & feel”. We therefore resolved to use the Web Player UI code as the basis for both Web and Desktop in the future, and have been spending quite some bringing the Desktop-class features that you’ve come to expect to this shared platform. You’ve had a sneak peek of this as we’ve been testing and building things out, so once again I’d like to thank you for both being a part of it and giving great feedback on this thread that has definitely helped us improve.

Benefits of this approach

Firstly, I’d like to say that this really is a new beginning for the Desktop app. Long-term Desktop users will start to notice more rapid iteration on the app than they’ve seen in the past.

 

I’d like to call out some of the things in the new Desktop, and also give you a little taste of what’s to come.

 

Design - We’ve focused on consistency, are using more color to enhance the experience where appropriate, and are making better use of cover art and album images in the app. We're also better aligned to other platforms, put an increased focus on accessibility, interactions and animations, and have tightened up our design language, so it’s more in line with what users have come to expect from Spotify.

 

Functionality - We’ve brought the functionality that users expect from Desktop, like sorting/filtering, drag & drop, and advanced settings and options, whilst improving areas like playlist creation and curation, profile pages, and more. In many cases these improvements have landed in the Web Player, so the work here has benefited our combined users on both platforms.

Tip! You’ll also find new keyboard shortcuts for many tasks (press ctrl+? to see them) which makes certain actions much faster and easier for any user.

We are also aware that there are a few aspects raised in the community that haven't been fully addressed as part of this update, but items like the Search Bar and discography on artist pages have ultimately been brought closer in line with other Spotify applications. That said, we will continue to iterate on the experience across both platforms moving forward.

 

The future of Desktop

As mentioned above, this change to the Desktop UI gives us the ability to move faster in bringing you new improvements, features and functionality — so you can expect to see continued improvements to the client in the weeks and months to come.

 

Once again, I’d like to thank you all for helping us shape the Desktop App over the past year on behalf of everyone here at Spotify, and please do continue to post your feedback and use our Ideas section here in the Community to tell us what you’d like to see and why.


Thanks again,

Dan

2,290 Comments
BobbyNL

Thanks for the update on the desktop app @dan,

 

I think a lot of us folks that you guys made part of this testing became a bit tired of not being heard on (as you mention here) "a few aspects raised in the community that haven't been fully addressed". 

 

I think your team has done a good job on designing and aligning the desktop app next to the other apps. But when you say, "It's more in line with what users have come to expect from Spotify." You're overlooking the 1000+ frustrated responses of users that didn't want the desktop app to be the same as the mobile app. 

Especially since it's such a different experience. 
Honest question: when you say: these things "have ultimately been brought closer in line with other Spotify applications".  What does that mean? That it's easier to maintain? What about the user needs on desktop and mobile, aren't these way different? And don't even get me started on users that use the webplayer verses the desktop app. I would love to hear more about how the team put all these things next to each other and came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to give them all the same functionality. 

I'm still a fan of Spotify, but seeing so many comments of users going out of their way to help each other reinstall older versions (pre-testing fase) or even switching to other tools because of this must say something about the choices.

I totally understand that y'all don't have time to respond to every comment that has been made. But to see you cherrypicking the easy to answer "bug" questions and leave the frustrated users unanswered in a lot of ways was very disappointing. 

I'm guessing you won't respond to this comment. But I hope you realize that there is a big group here that doesn't feel like they're part of the users you mention. That group being most of the once's who've engaged in giving feedback on this, and mostly being paid users, frustrated that they're not being heard. 

All the best,

 

NickParrotte

Hi Dan

 

I've been closely monitoring the update since it was first rolled out around 4 months, having posted on page 7, of what is now page 132, of comments about the update. At first I was extremely displeased with what I was forced to be a part of, but now I know it's clear that you just haven't listened to the overwhelmingly large majority of feedback you were given. Whilst the desktop app has come along way from the frankly unusable client we were forced to use, there has still not been enough changes, bug fixes and improvements to make this version suitable for public use. It makes me honestly sad that there have been over a thousand replies, most of which are impartially constructive and helpful, that haven't been addressed at all until now, months later, and even then it doesn't explain enough of the decisions made.

 

I gave this beta a chance for months and I sincerely regret doing so.

 

This is goodbye, from both me and the many others who have already left.

 

 

 

terioncalling

Well...I guess at least now everyone else who wasn't forced into this beta with the rest of us can now offer their complaints about the changes.

Flanstario1

hey dan,

 

the page made for you have remaining on the section library.

MattSuda

@Flanstario1 

 

Right now the Made For You page can be found be going to the search, scrolling down, and clicking on the Made For You tile.