Please don't remove the current Android Widget

[Neobot21]

I opened Spotify today to be greeted by a pop-up announcing that the current widget is going away, to be replaced with a new widget. 

(I cropped out my personal playlists)

This would've been mostly fine (it's kind of ugly, it sticks out on my home screen in a bad way) except it's larger, has unnecessary/unwanted 'suggestions', and when shrunk down to 4x1, replaces the current song playing with a suggestion (in my case, a suggested Playlist of mine.)

| New (top) and Old (bottom) widgets after pausing a song

| New (top) and Old (bottom) widgets after music has been paused for a while

If I wanted to listen to my "Rock ('24)" Playlist I would go into the app. This isn't "listening my way", I don't want this, and I'm sure there are others who don't want this either. I genuinely just want the current widget to remain untouched, not removed.

I don't have a problem with a new widget being added, I'm sure some people will like it, but I don't want fixed what isn't broken. Please don't remove the old/current widget.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot my home screen is 5x6 wide, so if you don't stretch the new widget out to 5x1 then it only shows the play button, no previous/skip buttons (even though all 3 buttons show when it's at 4x2 size) which is a complete downgrade from the current widget. Even worse! 😞

[locusttoyboxz]

Widget is terrible. Doesn't open Spotify (or do anything) when I tap it, requiring me to go into the app myself. I never had a Spotify icon on my home screen because I had the widget. Now I need both. Why does everything just get worse?

[Iceandrews]

 this looks so bad and doesn't function.  The buttons aren't actively responding correctly. There's so much dead UI space.  And tapping the Spotify button does open the app but only if you're right in the center of it.

[DoctorC2]

I got the same pop up notification showing a fancy new widget and saying the old one is going away.

This morning, I deleted my old widget and put the new one up and it looks like the one posted right above.

No Colors, me fancy display, just a huge gray box with text. 

Seriously Spotify, wth? 

[ThePodfather]

Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback here. Apologies for the delayed response.

Some of you have mentioned that player controls (skip, previous) disappear when the widget is resized down to smaller configurations. That's been heard, and the team has been working on it.

An update is now available (9.1.50) that brings more player controls back to the slim widget sizes. There are still some limitations at the very narrowest configurations, but this should cover most of the setups being described here.

Appreciate you taking the time to flag this

[Wkp82]

**bleep** tried the update and it's better but it still doesn't have the rewind button in the 4x1 set up. Is there a way to get rid of the Spotify logo or at least shrink it to make room for the rewind button? 

[MTBooks]

I agree with others bemoaning the controls and waste of space, but the most important thing a widget should be is reactive/responsive.

The new widget goes completely unresponsive after a while. The old one never failed to at least launch Spotify if you touched it. What good is a widget if I have to go launch the app from some other place for it to be useable?

[riccardoricc]

Oh my goodness, why do they have to downgrade every single thing that was working great?

The new update did nothing. Not only the new widget is absolutely useless: it's just blank, can't see my playlists or anything. But when resized to the 3x1 size I had before, it only shows the current song, not a single button. How on earth is that supposed to be an upgrade?

Somehow, the old widget still works if I have the new widget somewhere, so I'll just hack something there. But my god, Spotify, please stop with this nonsense. You're losing subscribers by the day.

  

[3zr4c4z]

Continually forcing us to accept new features that are worse than what we used to have is ridiculous. Why change the widget at all? Who asked for that? Why not implement ideas people actually request here instead? 

[EMR3]

They're not important enough for me to rearrange my home screen around. Might have to start off my MP3 library. There are other options for finding new music nowadays.

[ScottPen]

The new widget is trash. Im not taking up all that space on a widget just so I can still use the buttons.  It doesn't even show the artwork.  Garbage.

I would bet the new widget adds power to their info dragnet. No clear reason for the redesign since the functionality is essentially the same as the old one.