[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!

[1211521705]

YES! Please move the back and forward page buttons back to where they were... They're so far away now when I'm browsing. 

[t0m_paul]

+1 on the back/forward button complaint, they are too far from the main window. Really slows down navigation.

[Robbify28]

Also, everytime I try to move the spotify-window I click on on of the icons or search instead. You have to place the mouse precisely between them to be able to move the window at all.

[Theresa07]

agreed, especially because now the back and forward buttons are much harder to reach which i use so much more often than the home button wth

[jeremyjobling]

Talking the Windows 11 desktop apop. Why on earth did you move the Back Button? Been designing UI for a very long time and this makes one of the cardinal sins of the trade. You took a control that thousands of us have habituated to by coitinued use, making hundreds, if not thousands, of mouse movements. It's called "muscle memory" and Sporify broke it. You moved the pervibial gas/break pedal of navigating the UI. You just said "nope", and decided to put it somewhere else now to promote what? Search? Seriously?

It's so weird to have a Home button to the right of the Back button. With Home being the top of the Information Architecture, it should be in the position the farthest left. It's also more ergonomic/economical to "throw" your mouse up there to simply "Home Out" to the top of the UI. Back is only a single "step" back, though there is an impressive back stack enabled. 

From a grouping and proximity standpoint,  the change has also broken my mental model of where information resides in the UI. The left panel which has always been the global nav and where "all the stuff" is on Spotify (including Search and Home) are now positioned over the middle of the screen, and subsequently the main content panel that's center. The main panel is your focus state. It is one of the main screens that dominate context of the user's activity. So why are we gumming it up with non-contextual navigation and search? They're global controls, which mean they have no context, so move them back to the far left where they belong. And what is a contextual action that should be up there on top of the panel? I insist it should be a Back (and Forward) button.

I used to tout Spotify had some of the best interface desing out there--an actual gold standard to hold others to. But now I'm not so sure. Rooky move. Rooky mistake. Do better, please. 

[Joseph_iPhone]

I'm generally in favor of sticking with UI layout and behavior. Spotify changes things all too often and it disrupts what I've come to expect in the UI. I can get used to the change, but then things change again a few months later.

[aici]

I totally agree with this. It feels like a cheap copy of Google Chrome. On top of that, I really dislike that the main screen changes to browse mode when you simply click on the search bar. It feels laggy and dull makes me so distracted by the transition of the screen. And you have no back button near you if you want to cancel search. The words on the search bar "What do you want to play?" is also distracting and unnecessary (the text should be lighter, like it is in the YouTube search bar at least).

[mebix]

The new UI sucks I hate it. Fire whoever came up with it. I hate the search bar at the top in the middle. I hate**bleep** on the right that pops up when I play a song. I just want the old spotify back. **bleep** this **bleep**bleep**.

[mebix]

Yes I hate the new UI.

There are people employed at companies who have no purpose and have to change things around pretending to add value. UI teams are the worst offenders.

I hate this update so much.

[tunedIN]

Vertical space is a valuable resource. I was okay with having these functions in the side panel.

Dear Spotify please stop changing the UI to what you perceive a person new to Spotify might like. 

Wouldn't it be better to ask users through this community, or a panel of long servering loyal subscribers, for feedback about proposed changes, before implementation?

What seems to be occurring recently is changes are implemented that nobody is asking for. Resulting in existing users becoming increasingly frustrated.