Bring back "Pin playlists to homescreen"

[maffia-ric]

According to a discussion on https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Move-playlists-to-Homescreen/td-p/5453989 it is "currently not available".

Albums are possible to be pinned to the homescreen, but the support to do the same with playlists is removed recently

Through this way I would like to request to add this functionality back to the android app

[maffia-ric]

***update: I did get a playlist shortcut back on my Android homescreen finally. Try going into the app drawer, long press on the Spotify icon, the Playlist i wanted popped up in the context menu, another long press sent it to the homescreen.

***update 2: Wasn't sure at first how to control what playlists show up in the long press pop-up but so far it has worked by navigating to the Playlist and hitting the phone's homescreen button and going back through the long-press process above. Each time the most recently displayed playlist in the app was visible in the pop-up.

I'm a little late to this party. My last two phones had the shortcuts automatically transferred over by the phone backup service; so I had no idea this had been removed until my most recent phone transfer didn't bring them with it! Super bummed. I used those homescreen shortcuts literally every day.

Like @phrozenstare mentioned, my work vehicle is a Ford Transit van fleet vehicle. No android auto even though it's a 2019 so the shortcut was a huge lifesaver while driving. Not every new vehicle has fancy tech.

[tvkanters]

@Delinkquint Yeah, the new feature wasn't originally intended as a replacement of the old one so it doesn't have special treatment for certain pages to fetch artwork. Seeing the popularity of this topic though, I think it makes sense to add it. No promises, but I'll see about finding some engineering time to add it.

[mccrispy]

@tvkanters Not only does the new feature not have artwork, but it doesn't work properly for Albums. For an album you just get "album" as the title. I mainly used the pin to start feature to pin albums that I wanted to listen to later, so the new feature is practically useless. Besides, why would I want a feature that meant I had to leave the app to do something? What sort of bonkers UX is that?

[Xsailor_saturnx]

@tvkanters our main gripe is that they took away feature that worked with no issues. If they thought giving us this would be an appeasement it's not. It's more like taking a **bleep** on us and calling it rain. I've read through a lot of these comments since I've posted and most of us are "premium users" and no longer feel that treatment. Honestly if I could uninstall the last updates to go back to the version that gave me the pinning feature I would. But at this point since our voices mean nothing I'm considering like many others taking my business elsewhere or just using the free service. Why pay for a premium service that only devalues its customer base?

[Penquin1972]

@tvkanters So could you please tell us why an essential core function was removed, and why it is now being replaced with one which does something similar, but much less easily and effectively? This makes no sense at all. Having the artwork on the shortcut is essential, so I do hope you can restore it. We are supposed to be using a graphic user interface where we can see what we want in a fraction of a second without effort. Using Launcher 10 to emulate the Windows Phone interface I still have hundreds of square album cover images on my home screen (spread across several pages by genre), and I would like to continue using my phone like this. Otherwise I might as well switch to Tidal, which while having an even worse interface than Spotify, does have somewhat better sound quality. 

[darkpage]

@tvkanters thanks for the feedback. Yes, anything is welcome that adds back some support for the OS home screen to improve the Spotify experience.

I agree with others, though: when first I read your reply, I thought this new feature was a replacement for the old, that it could handle all types of listings vs. "only" albums prior.

But now you say this feature was considered separately from the old, deprecated feature. This takes me back to the problem that some manager, some feature lead, thought removing this was good for Spotify, and I'm baffled. I hope there is internal discussion about how user-hostile changes are silently deployed.

Again, sincere thanks for responding and please consider modifying this new feature to have artwork and titles in the icon. 

[tvkanters]

As I'm not here in any official capacity (just here reading your feedback on my own time because I genuinely want to improve these aspects of the app) I can't share any internal details about what happened with the original functionality.
That said, I do appreciate where the frustration is coming from and that the new feature is missing some important aspects of the old functionality. I'll do what I can to close that gap.

[existdissolve]

@tvkanters - 

While I appreciate your input in a "non-official capacity", I have to wonder where the devs/support from Spotify are that _ARE_ operating in an "official" capacity? So far, just crickets.

The new feature you mentioned regarding the "last visited" is fine for playlists, but is laughably broken for albums...so not an actual or even reasonable workaround to the main complaint of this "idea" thread.

Hey Spotify...how about an "official" word on this? 

[Xsailor_saturnx]

Since this support thread isn't being supported, I found an email that's allegedly for corporate, and I emailed them today on behalf of everyone's stories I've seen here: those using it during medical treatments, the parents, drivers, and fitness instructors. I got a response within a few hours from a support email address. It was essentially a generic. we apologize for your frustration and can't confirm or deny the return of this feature, but we will bring it up in the nexr meeting. Maybe flooding their inbox will garner better results. Office at spotify dot com

[Jamesfd1963]

How about you ask customers if there utilizing a function before some bone head decides it's not useful and removes it without warning.  The add playlist to homescreen was key to my virtual jukebox and im extremely irked that I had to search to find out what happened when reconfiguring my setup.   There are plenty of other music services offering better quality music and for cheaper cost but up until this bone head move I have stayed with spot but it seems your help is hinderance.   Im consdering cancelling but hey at least im giving you prior notice.

[yoforit]

We need this back