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.

[Jezza717]

I would like to see friend activity at the same time as the now playing view. It is a shame that this UI update stopped allowing for this. If the Now viewing tab was on the left hand side, or the right hand side was half friend/half now playing, that would be great.

[vaajy]

New update received.

Now perfectly tuned Profile and Friend Activity pop up line goes a bit back under top row.

New releases still old, very badly under close button bar etc.

I think, perhaps, it should be disabled. No text when cursor are on it. It's all clear what the function is.

Sadly there's too much bugs in new UI both on laptop and phone.

[oikawa]

I hate the change of the queue being listed now on the right instead of the center. Please, change it back. I want to see the queue and what my friends are listening at the same time. 😑

[cosmicbunny]

at this point I think the design team is just messing with us on purpose, because it's not humanly possible to be that stupid.

[AnakinKindaSus]

Why is Spotify doing another and another downgrade of Windows app since few years. now you can see ONLY queue OR ONLY album cover OR ONLY friends its very very annoying and pretty unusable 😞

[gedorh]

Thank you for bringing this up! I saw it two days ago and could not believe it either. Do you know if there is a way to use the previous Windows App ? The current version does not look usable at all...

[jeffjones22]

Speaks volumes that the original post only has 19 likes and there are 12 pages of replies to it, most of which hate what the post is telling us.

[Sammichy]

Just got this change today and it's so annoying. The Now Playing sidebar serves no purpose, takes up a ton of screen space and is genuinely very poorly designed. All it does is show you two massive images, one of which (the album art), is already on screen and one line of an artist biography because the two images take up so much space. I guess you can scroll down to see the 'next in queue' section but the second the next song starts playing you get two massive images and no queue again because the sidebar doesn't stay scrolled. 
This would be fine if I could consistently hide the bar, but now they've made it so that clicking on the small album art at the bottom left of the screen opens the Now Playing tab instead of showing the song in the playlist it's in. 
You can still find where the song is in a playlist by clicking the playlist at the top of the Now Playing sidebar but that means they've effectively turned a one-click thing into a two-click-plus-wait-for-the-useless-sidebar-to-appear thing. 
That plus the changes to liked songs have made it harder to organise playlists, as you can no longer tell at a glance if you've liked a song or not, and you can't easily, quickly find their place in a playlist anymore. 
From what I understand some of these changes are to make the PC version more like the mobile version. Which is a little unhinged when you consider how different a mobile app is from a computer app in terms of screen size, controls etc. 
Genuinely starting to think the people designing the PC version don't actually use the PC version.

[nunyaprime]

Got this change forced on me and it's annoying as heck. About to drop spotify because they keep making things less useful and more annoying. How about allowing user choice in how the UI works or just LISTENING TO THE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF FEEDBACK THAT THIS IS AN UNWANTED FEATURE.

[Kodyn]

This new UI is awful in every way.  Please allow us to revert, this is truly heinous.

[Adrian_felipe]

Previously, when I clicked on the album cover of the song currently playing, it took me to the playlist from which the song came.

Now, it opens the "Now playing view"; this is detrimental, redundant, and unfriendly:
• Detrimental because now there's no way to directly access the currently playing playlist from the main user interface
• Redundant because there is already a button to open the "Now playing view", and
• Unfriendly because the former behavior has always been the default for the PC application.

Change it back.

[emilia4994]

Dear Spotify, 

It's been ~1 year or so since you released features and, kindly, do you even listen to what your users really want anymore ? Most comments here and elsewhere online agree that this feature is absolutely useless, annoying, and unnecessary. Again, in case you need any refreshers, here are the main issues 

– What we gain from a giant panel of album info and artist merch (which is totally unnecessary btw) does not make up for the fact we lose information on friend listening activity (which is a lot more important to a lot of users).

– Further, manual deactivation of the "now playing" pannel does not automatically restore the friend-activity pannel it replaced. You also have to manually restore this pannel, which is even more annoying. 

– The feature is incredibly buggy. Honestly, again, do you even read feedback on users' experiences? So many people stating that the feature re-activates on its own upon playing certain playlists of podcasts, even if it remains toggled off on the settings. I don't see any support or explanation for this on this entire thread. Personally, this started happening to me recently. The "now playing pannel" feature is turned off in the settings. However, now every time I click on the album art of the current song on the left bottom corner, instead of taking me to the respective album or the playlist (which is honestly one of the best features of the desktop App), it automatically opens the "now playing" panel. Every. Time. Again, the feature as a whole is disabled. No matter how many times i enable or disable the feature or re-start the app, this bug keeps coming. 

TL;DR: Listen to your users. Remove this ghastly feature. Or, at the very least, fix the bugs that plague them. 

[wideopeniris]

once again Spotify are changing the UI to push what they want in our faces. This change is just to ensure the content they want to push is always in your view, instead of showing what users want or choose to see. Instead of forcing these things on us why not give user the choice to adopt them. Then you will get direct feedback on your changes. But I know you don't really care - you are much more interested in pushing features you want to sell than looking after your customer base. Please don't forget who pays your bills!

[Tryp]

It takes a fair amount of hate for me to give negative feedback on a design update, but here we are. I just had to update Windows and I came back to this monstrosity. Why do I have to choose between queue, now playing, and friend activity? I get this is a business, you are here to make money. There are things that have to be promoted in order for that to happen. However, I don't need 90% of my page to be your recommendations. If you want me to look at less of them, this is the way to go. Smart Shuffle was excellent. Stick with that and PUT THE QUEUE BACK IN THE CENTER, please. Or allow the panel to be wider with column options, at least duration. Personally I'd like to see the middle panel split vertically, with options to put what panels I want where, but I'm not holding my breath. Right now I'd be happy if you just take mine, and the massive number of other complaints about this layout into consideration.

[vadfasfd]

I am unable to find the playlist I'm listening to now when I click on the song. it might take me to the album, or it opens up this stupid now playing view. please be an actual music player and go to the playlist I'm listening to when I click the song. otherwise there is no actual way to find out which playlist I'm listening. a crazy downgrade

[tunaman_jim]

Has anyone figured out how to *permanently disable* Now Playing yet?

I've disabled it at "Settings ➜ Display ➜ Show the now-playing panel on click of play" but it still opens a couple times a day.

I'm normally NOT one of those "if you don't fix this I'm moving to Apple Music!!!!" people, but this is *incredibly* frustrating.

[spicyfknrob]

Yep. Seems like they're actively trying to ruin the user experience at this point. Adding more clicks to get to the current playlist (after clicking the album art) is a regression in my opinion. Like many others, I'm growing more and more frustrated by these changes. I see this topic alone getting a lot of updates yet nothing from Spotify. I'll take my money to a different streaming service if this trend continues.

[MadCat5021]

Since last week i can't open the "now playing" bar AND playlist at the same time anymore?

[Ytse]

With this update jump to playing track in playlist does not work anymore. You could this by clicking on album art.

[Their_UI_sux_blows]

Yeah, really hate the Now playing view. It keeps turning on even when disabled. I don't want to watch videos when listening to a podcast and I don't want a feature that I've disabled keep turning on.