[Desktop] The Home & Search buttons should be at the left-hand side of the screen

[H2theJ]

I opened the desktop version of Spotify today as usual, to see that there has been an unusual change to its layout.

The Home & Search icons have been moved to the top to give it a search engine-like feel when it used to be on the left-hand side of the screen, where it looked cleaner. Now, it looks cluttered and very bulky on my screen. Whereas before:

It had a cleaner and more sophisticated feel. 

So please Spotify, bring back the old desktop layout or give users the option to do so!

[BladedQueen]

For sheer usability, the home button is easier to click when it's on the upper left edge of the screen. It's reachable with a quick flick of the mouse. Positioning it in the center, to the left of the search bar, requires additional precision and slightly delays clicking for no apparent benefit. All this change does is annoy users and mess with muscle memory.

Stop this constant tweaking of the UI, give us an opt-out, or provide an assortment of layout choices. You're continually eroding the user experience, and I've unsubbed over it in the past. The last thing anyone wants is to load Spotify one morning and be presented with a **bleep** sandwich courtesy of a UX team that treats its paying customers as guinea pigs.

[bzero]

I really wonder what the Spotify UX team is doing. Having the search bar at the top center is so disturbing.

[fsdsdfsdfsdfsd]

I loved the UI before this update. It was my favorite version of Spotify ever. I still have it on one of my machines and I just adore it. The new version feels cluttery and gross. I still like how the sidebar library works, but I the toolbar at the top of the screen is ugly to me. Now it looks like a crummy web browser rather than a native app.

I don't like how it says "What do you want to play?" at the top. It's distracting and reflects a limited idea of how people use Spotify. Search on Spotify is so much more than playing audio.

For example, when I want some new music, I "shop" for a few different albums at a time, usually searching by artist, then I add them to my library, and then some time later I play them from there. I do not search for things and play them from the search results. Searching and playing are separate activities. So for me the search feature for me is more accurately "Search" or "What do you want to search for and possibly add to your library?" 

But sometimes I use Spotify to learn about an album, or find out who performed a certain song, with no intention of playing music. In that case it would be more accurate to simply call it "Search" like before. 

I also use the "On Tour" feature and use search to find an artist and see where they are touring. It's nice! But again, it's weird having to type into a box called "What do you want to play?" when the information I'm looking for is "What artist are you looking for and where are they touring?"

The same goes for artist bios. It's a valuable feature to me and I often search for an artist just to learn about them, not because I want to play their music.

Anyway, yeah, if we could have Home and Search back the way it was, that would be great. Or at least get rid of the "What do you want to play?" prompt (and please do not replace it with "Search" -- the magnifying glass is sufficient).

Edit: I realized what else bugs me about "What do you want to play?". It feels like I'm being hammered with a marketing slogan. It's like, "Spotify. What do you want to play today?" Bleh

[nashvileric]

It's lost next to the search bar. Nice try, didn't really work. Let's put it back in the nav, as the first item.

[jeremyjobling]

Seriously! Can we please end this web-lab and bring the old UI back? If I have to keep accidentally hitting the 3 dot menu in the top left corner and missing the back "<" one more time I'm going to scream! So annoying. One rule about corner UI buttons...they're very valuable because you can "throw your mouse pointer" in the corner and the whole move requires less effort and precsion. So typically, really important actions go there (in the corner). The three dots menu (which is an overflow menu) is NOT the best action to put there. By definition overflow menus contain the lower frequency actions, so the when I miss tha back button, I get them. Not helpful. Who is designing this UI now? Rookie mistakes! Change the UI back.