[Desktop][Other] Let us choose to pin (or don't) the song details on fullscreen mode

[MrScottyTay]

It's came to my attention that over the weekend a new change got added to the fullscreen mode on the desktop app that now makes that album art, song name and artist name fade away (plus finally adding a volume control on full screen - which is great by the way).

This change pretty much breaks the usability of full screen for me now as Full Screen mode was a way for everyone in the office able to see what song is currently playing, but now we just get a darkened artist image at best, at worst it's just a grey gradient background for those songs by artists without images.

This makes the whole experience pretty awful in my opinion. At the very least there should be a way to pin that information at all times for those of us that like to be able to see that information at a glance.

[CMEPTb]

Yes, now it is much better than it was. But!
Are you feeling short of a screen space or what? Why are those album arts so small? 😄

Like out of fullscreen you can get em way bigger, but in fullscreen, where there are no other UI elements, you couldn't make it at least the same size?

Examples:

Here is the side by side comparision of album art size (left one is not fullscreen and right one is):

How are you not getting the fact that album cover is the most relevant art to the track?

P.S. What is the point of track info staying where it is when control buttons and progress bar have disappeared?

UPDATE: It seems like album arts are actually can be bigger, but only if there is no background uploaded by the artist

[thehintonian]

Note: You can modify the album art size slightly with screen DPI settings and Spotify built in zoom (Ctrl & + or -)
but this also seems to be a bit buggy....

[xdrewfacex]

Some of y'all need to take a couple deep breaths before commenting. There's no need to take a condescending tone towards the developers, especially over something as non-critical as the size of the album art on the full-screen playback...

With that said, it seems to me that pretty much everyone is in agreement that they would like the album art to be larger whether there is an artist background image or not. I assume the reason it is smaller when there is a background image is so you can see more of the background image which I think is reasonable but arguably not what users prefer based on this thread. My vote would be for using the larger album art size all the time.

Regarding the background images, I personally like them but they could be even better if it cycled through multiple images. The Zune software used to do this, switching images every 30 seconds or so. They also threw in some artist statistics from their usage database and other information which was neat but difficult to parse with how they presented it (here's a video I found of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6c7NTXbHXo). Maybe some inspiration could be taken from that.

For artists without a background image I like the blurred & zoomed album art approach seen in the 2012 screenshot JoacosTacos shared.

[CMEPTb]

Please, mind your own tone as you wish and categorize features as critical or not, but don't lecture others on their feedback.

I find album art as an essential feature, and also it is way more important than some random pictures which are same across the whole discography of an artist. I am pretty sure you also know some artists whose music has an emotional ups and down throughout their discographies. And usually their album arts correspond with emotion they are delivering, but now we have those tiny arts and pictures (or even multiple of them as you propose (guilty, not a fan of powerpoint or that kind of stuff)) which sometimes can be as emotionally relevant to the tone of the album as a random guess.

My point is: "Album art, specifically designed for exact album" > "Random picture of an artist"

I don't mind it existing, what bothers me is the focus on random picture not on album art.

Most exiting workaround would be some old fashioned switch in the options, so everyone could continue with what they like.

[hypernova234]

Finally! They've done something about fullscreen! I still have my complaints though:

So now they've done so that some parts don't fade out, like the album cover, song name, and the "Playing from playlist:" text. But everything beneath the artist name still does fade out, and I would like to complain about this a little. 

So they've made so that I can see what is playing (through song name, artist name and album cover) and from where It's playing, good. But I still can't see how far I've gotten in the track, how high my volume is, and if I have shuffle or repeat on. 

A screenshot of what I would want it to look like all the time.

A screenshot of what it looks like after the fade-out.

So please make it so that nothing at all fades out, or so that you have an option on what fades out. I'm sure some people love it as it is currently but I really dont, and I would want more information rather than just empty space. So at least I would love if we could actually choose what we really want.

[Mario]

Updated on 2021-11-15

Hey folks,

One more thanks for supporting this Idea.

We're happy to confirm this functionality has now returned!

If you'd like to know more about how your feedback reaches Spotify via the Idea Exchange, take a look here.

To report any issues with Spotify, head over here and select the right category.

Cheers!

[HDD-1960]

That's much better, thank you devs... would still be cool to be able to make the album art bigger (via an option).. also, could you please auto-hide the mouse cursor (and show if any mouse movement detected). 

[thehenrygadams]

Glad to see that this is back. However, it'd be even better if there was an option to have nothing fade out at all. Keeping the pause button, volume slider, and song "progress bar" all on screen would be really helpful. Thank you!

[OverWims]

Rly would be better if the track timeline stayed active. 

[Thera_]

I totally support the goal of this thread. If you really want to have stuff fade out, just give us an option to turn it off.