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.

[agems]

This new update is awful. This clearly wasn't designed for smaller screens. Also, why was there the need to remove the expanding album art in the left corner?? I've loved being able to see the larger art for years. It was the perfect size in a location that didn't intrude on other parts of the UI. Now if I actually want to be able to see the cover art, I have to bring up this cluttered sidebar? And I can't view friend activity at the same time? This is ridiculous. Please just bring back the larger art in the bottom left corner, there's no logical reason to have removed this functionality.

[mikevv1965]

get rid of the needless clutter! i.e. Merch and Tour info

[dan_gosling]

What an intrusive update.

Takes over a large portion of the window, closes the whole right hand menu and over rules the Friends Activity when closed. No option to turn of the function. 

Absolute terrible update. Please remove this feature.

[winq]

Did anybody the older Version of the Desktop App ? 

what a UI decision... 

why isn't there an option to just allow the UI as was.

[cd37]

I know some people already have this update, but i like the album covers having the round edges and for the album and album cover to be in the top left, rather than the middle, and all the other changes. I have yet to get this update, but I hope Spotify makes it permanent.

[spageddy]

Hard agree with the reverting of this update

It is unnecessary clutter, and it also interferes with friend activity and is basically unusable in windowed mode because of how much space it takes

It is unntaturally placed compared to how the older versions just expanded the album cover and had a larger text in the "library" sidebar, and was way better looking, and also more intuitive if were thinking design principles

TL;DR - revert this update, it sucks 

[MattSuda]

@jiayu_ 

The Now Playing View sidebar is still being rolled out to all desktop users.

You should be seeing it soon.

[lokonji]

some of us actually like the friend activity sidebar, why are you trying to hide it?

I know, every time you roll out an update, you get a bunch of people complaining and saying "revert", and I know that this doesn't necessarily represent popular opinion since people are more likely to be vocal in their objection than their satisfaction. However, the behaviour of the latest UI goes against the basic principles of good UI design. Once a user has set a preference, e.g. in this case choosing the friend feed over the "now playing", it should be seen as set. By closing the "now playing", the user should be considered to have set their preference. The UI should not be continually reopening it. That is not a subjective opinion, but an objective criticism of the UI behaviour.

I'm not against the option of having this different sidebar with info about the track, but it should be just that - an option.

It keeps re-opening every time I start a new track, despite the fact that I've already toggled back to the friend feed. It should not open automatically, and should respect my preference instead.

After a bit more experimentation, I realise, it doesn't occur if I haven't changed which playlist I'm looking at in-between. But if I go and browse any other playlist, then start a new track, it reappears. So, perhaps this is a bug caused by a feature that hasn't been correctly programmed before being rolled out? In any case, quite annoying!

I also find it kinda unintuitive that the close button completely hides the sidebar, i.e. the friend feed remains closed. I know, logically, the close button applies to the whole sidebar, which can have one of two states: now playing, or friend feed. But in this case, the "now playing view" has opened automatically in place of what was there before. Clicking "close" feels like it should revert to the previous state. I shouldn't have to then find the button to re-open the friend feed. I would emphasise, again, that this would not be a problem, apart from the fact that this should not be happening automatically in the first place when I've already closed it. The behaviour is reminiscent of GDPR banners and popup ads that one keeps having to close.

Perhaps I would be more compelled by the "now playing" if I found it useful, of course this aspect is personal opinion, but tbh I don't see much use in seeing a larger album cover, a photo of the artist, and the first two lines of the bio. It seems like a waste of space.. I'm used to simply clicking on the artist's name if I want to find out about the artist.

Generally, I am one of those that only comes here to complain - if a UI update rolls out that I like, I'm hardly likely to come here to praise it. So generally, I have been quite content with the changes - one or two annoyances but nothing too bad. This is the first one in a looong time that has compelled me to come to the forum to ask how on earth this has made it to the stage of being rolled out.

[newdietzrising]

Literally no one asked for this, no one likes it, and no one wants it. Jesus christ, spotify. You know we're paying you money, right?

[kobart1101]

Please don't force this on users. This tab seems to open up every time I take a look at my Spotify no matter how I close this. I haven't restarted the app, nor restarted the device it's running on. I have no interest in this tab, so please don't force this on users that don't care for it as it makes the interface look cluttered. I can understand if this behavior is a bug. 

[kaboom08]

There's a new button added to Spotify "Now Playing View" this makes my Spotify playlists really, really slow to load songs... please take this feature off... if it continues to slow my playlists i will delete my Spotify account... I didn't ask for this feature snd see no point to it at all... 

[Turle_wave]

I hate it so much!!! Just give us ability to open album cover in full like before

[Turle_wave]

The new Now Playing View sidebar is not a quality feature and actually quite ruins the experience. 

Look at the screenshot below, we are in the situation where an album cover can certainly appear 3 times on the screen, or even 4 times if we count saved albums on the left bar.

Design-wise, the "Now Playing View" does not feel native: when you click on the album cover expand button, you expect the album to get larger in-place, but instead it expands on the other side of the screen

Not to mention that the controls are now doubled between two UI zones:

I genuinely feel that this update was brought upon us by an Intern employee without testing and feedback. People on Reddit suggest that right sidebar "Now Playing View" thing could be redone to include song recommendation instead of this.

Recommendations like: which playlists contain this song, similar songs, any song facts. I.e. make it song specific sidebar providing actual usefulness. 

[McBubble]

Ah, this is a really cool feature. Finally the "now playing" image is bigger. I suggested that years ago. 😀

[AndrewBlizard]

The concept here is really cool. I like that more information is being surfaced in fewer clicks; however, the desktop app is already starved for screen real estate; recent updates have the left nav bar expanding to unnecessary widths after every app launch, padding and margins around text has continued to increase, and now the large album art preview is gone. In my mind these are all regressions. I don't want an entire right panel that destroys space to see the album/playlist list view just to see a larger preview of the album art. Please reconsider restoring the larger album art preview and allowing it to live in harmony with the now playing panel.

[maxartist23]

Ughhh, why - just why - another ugly and backwards design change, for no reason at all?
I want the album art large in the bottom left like it's been forever. I hate all these pointless, ridiculous changes. When I am used to something for many years, why should I have to endure a nonsensical change forced upon me that I did not ask for, and one that I hate.
Now when I click on the arrow to enlarge it, it brings up the "Now Playing View". This means I now have the album art FOUR TIMES in various sizes!!!! This is simply disgusting and confusing design.
The Now Playing View button changes the view - so why have the arrow do the same thing?

Who comes up with these ideas and thinks it's a good idea to force them upon us?

[maxartist23]

Here's an idea for Spotify: how about focussing your efforts on giving us actual useful changes and improvements, instead of trivial annoying ones.

For example:
1. A proper sync of tracks played between devices (iphone to desktop) for Recently Played.
2. A fully comprehensive History feature on the desktop app - not just the last 100 songs. The iphone goes back 3 months, so why does the desktop only display 100 songs?

[maxartist23]

I hate this.

[Servagio]

CAN I DISABLE THIS USELESS AND ANNOYING AF NEW FEATURE

Also, why not just improve or rather: not mess up paying customers' experience by actually allowing us to add family members to he family account (and ongoing issue, as of yet still unresolved, despite numerous 'we appreciate you reaching out' **bleep** perfunctory answers, and give us decent info on why certain songs and or albums suddenly became unplayable, the never ending random and sudden glitchiness, "not finding songs" typed into search window while there are several versions of it in my library, why certain songs you look for never appear, only to discover them later by accident, ....., (stupid feature only used because of the still absent decent scrollbar - what in the **bleep** is up with not having a scrollbar???????????) , why desktop version needs 15MB for downloads that are non existing and a cache that miraculously grows back after deleting?

spotify should just focus on decent basics instead of useless features to make it seem like they care or wanna improve.

it's like buying a loaf of bread and coming home with a reall fancy bag o' flower n yeast

[MattSuda]

@lokonji

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.