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. 

1000017532.jpg

(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.)

1000017542.jpg

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

1000017543.jpg

| 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! 😞

[Neobot21]

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

[Claeysie]

100% agree. The widget used to provide good functional density, but they are removing it in favor of one with degraded function and aesthetics. I have to expand the widget to 5 ICONS WIDE just to be able to skip! And I still can't access my DJ that I used to be able to do with a smaller widget. DON'T DEPRECATE THE CURRENT WIDGET!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/enshittification/comments/1stpqge/spotifys_new_widget/

[ZhangXector]

Couldn't agree more. Resizing this down to 4x1, which works best for my screen, completely removes the skip button. It's the entire reason I use the widget. If I want to look at playlists, I will open the app. Not having skip is unacceptable. Please fix this.

[userexe]

Please keep the old one! This new widget is so much worse in every way, takes away every reason I have the widget on my home screen.

[Wkp82]

I was coming here to list the same thing. If you want to make a new widget, sure. I actually do like the idea that it's size can be morphed. But in the 4x1 configuration, it should look and function EXACTLY as the current one. I want the option to skip or go back within the widget and not have to open the app. 

[Chrisnn22]

I'm going to one up your great idea. I present:

1000012784.jpg

 

Ya see that? It also used to be a widget!

Since some update ago, the widget went away, and we can only find it as the live notification. 🥀

[zootius]

1000023344.jpg

💯 I have a lot of buttons on my home page, so I keep the Spotify widget small. But even then, it currently tells me the name of the song, and a track image that is recognisable. The new widget wastes its space. Leave the old widget alone! 

[featherclaw99]

This new widget doesn't even work properly for me. It constantly crashes and loses connection to Spotify, it does not react when I tap ANY of the buttons, only the play button works half the time, and only AFTER I've pressed the play button does it even manage to open Spotify. I use the widget as a shortcut into the app itself, and the new one literally cannot do that. It's completely broken and unusable for me. I deleted it and got the old one back, and immediately all issues were gone. Old one works perfectly fine, new one is absolute junk.

[Hedgy369]

It doesn't look good, it doesn't work, you can't open Spotify on it and there was nothing wrong with the old one!

[KB200]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one have all the issues posted above.

I add to this with no dark mode or matching colour palette of phone theme... (I've got a pixel 😎

Which means I'm going to have to move it off my home screen and have the extra faff of putting it all by itself on a second screen. 

So poorly thought out. Gone back to the old widget...

[defpotec]

Genuinely wondering how this "feature" made it out of QC into production. I have found that the new widget will fail to play music or open the app when I tap it about 80% of the time. Presumably a few minutes of testing would have flagged this before a decision was made to ship the new widget and deprecate the old one that worked perfectly? Honest question.

If the old widget is removed without any fixes, I'll just have to remove it and use the live notification instead.

Edit: I use the widget on my home screen on Nova Launcher. I liked having play/pause, previous, skip buttons, album art, and an app shortcut I could tap to open Spotify (which replaced an app shortcut on my home screen). About 80% of the time, the widget shows a spinning circle. Maybe 15% of the time, it displays "Spotify is offline, tap to refresh." (Tapping the widget has no effect.) Maybe 5% of the time I notice it actually shows the current song/playlist and buttons.

The old widget would often show out-of-date Now Playing info when the app wasn't running, but it never bothered me. Whenever I wanted to listen, a quick tap on the widget would launch the app. Now it seems the widget is completely blank unless the app is already running, which defeats the purpose of being a convenient entry point.

I find I actually use the app a lot less just because I get so angry looking at this thing on my home screen. I kept it around in hopes for improvement, but I'm about to give up.