Desktop: New "Now Playing View" sidebar

[MattSuda]

Spotify is introducing a new "Now Playing View" sidebar in the desktop app and Web Player to go along with the recently released "Your Library" sidebar.

Together, the individually customizable design of these new views provides a richer experience, more context, and quicker access to personal favorites.

The Now Playing View in the right sidebar shows the album art and info of the current song or podcast you are playing and also shows more information about the artist.

When you expand the album art in the bottom left corner of the app, it will no longer hover over the Your Library sidebar. Instead, the new right sidebar will open up. You can resize the Now Playing View sidebar to your preferred size.

You can open and close the Now Playing View sidebar by clicking the button in the bottom right of the desktop app.

The Now Playing View sidebar will open up on the right side of the app by default when you start playback, but you can disable this behavior under Settings ➜ Display ➜ Show the now-playing panel on click of play.

The Friend Activity feed is still accessible via the "friends" button next to your profile picture in the top right corner of the main content area. There is also an option in Settings. You can swap between showing either the Now Playing View or the Friend Activity feed in the right sidebar.

The new Now Playing View sidebar is now rolling out to all desktop users worldwide, so you should be seeing it soon.

You can read more info about the new desktop experience in the Spotify Newsroom post:

➜ Spotify’s Desktop Experience Gets a Brand-New Look With Redesigned ‘Your Library’ and ‘Now Playing’ ...

You can read more info and give feedback about the new Your Library sidebar here:

➜ Desktop: New Your Library sidebar

FAQ:

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

The Now Playing View sidebar keeps opening at the start of playback, how do I turn this behavior off?

• The Now Playing View sidebar will open up on the right side of the app by default when you start playback, but you can disable this behavior under Settings ➜ Display ➜ Show the now-playing panel on click of play.

How do I get the album art to expand in the bottom left corner like before? When I try to expand the album art, it opens the Now Playing View sidebar to the right.

• Unfortunately, that is no longer possible. When you expand the album art in the bottom left corner of the app, it will no longer hover over the Your Library sidebar. Instead, the new right sidebar will open up. You can resize the Now Playing View sidebar to your preferred size.

Can I hide certain sections in the Now Playing View sidebar?

• Right now it's not possible to hide sections, so you will see all of the sections. However, you can drag and resize the sidebar to your prefered size.

Feedback:

Where can I give my feedback about the new Now Playing View sidebar in the desktop app?

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

Updates:

This section is to inform you of updates to the new Now Playing View sidebar such as changes and new features.

July 2023:

• Click to enlarge album art on album pages
  
  When you are viewing an album page, you can now click on the album art at the top next to the title to view it bigger in the middle of your screen.

[Glass_hugh]

Is there an option to completely unbind this behaviour from "Expand" button?

By the way the tooltip on the button still says "expand" but its opening some other stuff on the opposite side of the window, who even does that?

And there's a special button for "now playing view":

 

Why would you also bind that action to another button with a misleading tooltip and get rid of the function that button used to have?

[Glass_hugh]

The Now Playing View itself is kinda doubtful.

Does it really have to take all the space that Friend Activity has?

If I had Friend Activity previously opened and this sh-t pops up the whole sidebar is closed when I intend to close only Now Playing View, its counter-intuitive

[vadimh]

They appeared to revert it for about a month, however now it's back to the same unfriendly and counter-intuitive behavior. Please fix this, spotify, as this affects one of the most important aspects of spotify: the listening experience.

Just give us a setting or bring it back

[spacific]

My only current solace is that they appear to be A/B testing. I don't have any of the new views shown above. Perhaps it'll get sorted down the line. It would be nice if Spotify acknowledged its community. But, we all know that's too much to ask these days. 

[ItsMaster]

The new now playing UI doesn't really add much usefulness to app but clogs the sidebar. Should've an option for opting the legacy way.

[OrenEnglander]

I updated to the latest version of spotify and the cover was small and i couldn't find a way to change but before it worked just fine

[#8]

with the recent update for the Spotify client there was a new feature added called "Now Playing View", this feature replaced the old way of just showing a bigger picture for the song that was playing, which I liked very much and did everything that was needed without taking up much screen space (1/6th of the space I was giving Spotify on my screen), but with this new feature takes up more than double the screen space and fills it with useless information making this feature very ugly to look at and does very little to add to my experience and in-fact actually makes it much worse.

ADD a setting to disable it/revert the change

[aaronnoraa]

Everything Spotify has been doing to their UI absolutely SUCKS - on both desktop and mobile.

[Joan]

Hi there @OrenEnglander,

Thanks for reaching out. The new Now Playing view on Desktop allows you to expand the album art on the right hand side with additional information about the artist and the queue visible underneath. You may not have this yet, but the feature is still rolling out, so you should have it very soon. You can read more about this here.

Hope this clears things up.

[yuyoyu]

Incompetent UI designers is the reason

[m3rky]

I don't have the Now Playing View, and I don't have it in my settings when i click on it in spotify, however when i switch to a different account it shows up, I never turned it off so how do i make it come back? 

[m3rky]

I also cant find anything else in my setting to turn it back on or off 

[m3rky]

Its the same for me, one day it was just gone, but recently i made an account on my school email and it was miraculously there, and its weird, because i would switch between accounts and it was there in one account but not the other. I tried it on web player and the app, for some reason only my school accounts had the Now Playing tab. 

[vexoskeleton]

I hate**bleep** i just want to expand the album art like i use to what is the point in getting RID of functionality

[Sethbee]

This is honestly awful. One of the main positives of Spotify has been the ability to view the album art when you're playing music. I find album art a pivotal part of my listening experience. What's on front of CD and vinyl albums? Album art enhances the aesthetics for music and it makes listening interesting. To totally remove any ability to resize the album cover is unquestionably overkill. Who wants that cluttered "Now playing view" covering up friend activity? After the first UI update I was annoyed they made the album art smaller. I can't believe they have removed it completely. Bad move Spotify. 

[Yordan]

Hey @m3rky!

The Now Playing View is currently in the process of being rolled out gradually, so you might get it on your main account as well in the upcoming days. Fingers crossed!

Have a good one!

[Grazzt]

Yeah, I'm sick and tired of those stupid devs changing key features like that all the time 😠

What **bleep** thought it would be a good idea to make the album cover art so small, and not resizable like it used to be ?

[dylnDOT]

The new now playing view completely ruins having Spotify on a 2nd vertical monitor as well. Basically can't read the track listing because of it.  Having it open by itself when you change playlist/album makes NO sense as well.

Man I really love not being able to see the actual important information!!

[perpends]

Any chance it's possible to revert back to previous behaviour? Opening the Now Playing column on vertical monitors results in an incredibly claustrophobic song view with a ton of wasted space in the Now Playing column.

[dragons22]

I agree, this is a bad change. I know they're constantly testing new things, but if they could brief us or ya know, let us opt out of automatic 'experimental' updates like this one that would be great. These last few interface updates have just made things more clustered and/or inconvenient in some way. If there was some way to let an individual chose which ever version current or past layout/layout features they want I'd have to go back quite a bit to find the one I actually liked and could use the best.