Podcasts: choice between showing the podcast cover art or the captions

[rach33el]

Captions are great and can be super useful, but it’s not great when it’s in place of the podcast’s cover art. Give us a choice to see the captions or the cover art. Some times it is very distracting and it would be nice just to see their cover art! Other times reading along might be better but you still have the option when you scroll down to “read along”. I know it’s not just me who it annoys.. Spotify gave us the option when we are listening to music to see a short video clip or the album cover let us choose here to.. Thank you!

[nohnaynever]

Workaround for the distracting motion:

1. Long-press the transcript until it goes full page

2. Scroll up/down, so the changing and distracting 'current' lines are off screen. Aaaaaaand...resssst! Ahhhh

Not a good solution for utterly **bleep** UX design. Spotify is generally awful in this respect, even for mature UI
As a UX designer for $b enterprise products, I wouldn't put my name to Spotify's mess of a UI. It's almost like Spotify users are paying good money to NOT be the product and yet remain an infantilised, emasculated enshitifed* resource.

*deliberate variation of the correct spelling

[hughjanus]

It’s 2025 and the ability to toggle crappy distracting AI subtitles off is still not present.

I would almost rather watch ads than have this buggy mess which makes my Spotify crash and lag terribly.

Accessibility is great and letting users have control over their display is the most accessible thing of all!

[Keanubln]

It’s ridiculous that the captions are displayed by default instead of the cover art and we still have no option to change this setting.

In the meantime I found a workaround (no more distracting captions, only the nice and clean cover art):

- start your podcast

- lock your iPhone

- now you can see the Spotify Player on the lock screen playing your podcast with a small cover art icon on the left of it

- click on the small cover art icon and it will become big on the whole lock screen

You won't have all in app functionality but at least I can listen to my podcast without distractions and enjoy the cover art. 

[Yaro67]

Seriously it's almost 2026 the fact that there's not a toggle to turn this feature off is simply annoying I want the cover art back for the podcast that's it like give me the option don't shove your closed captioning down my throat i get it the artist or the individual posting the podcast with a group or whatever has the option to turn this feature on put Spotify is not giving us the option to turn this feature off which is b******* I'll get off my soapbox now thank you for listening! 

[vonmanstein43]

I listen to a lot of podcasts and would prefer to use Spotify to have music and podcasts together but this is so frustrating if I have to go back to Apple podcast app may as well go back to Apple Music

[dcole]

While listening to a podcast, I would love to see the podcast show's artwork up, not a streaming run of the captions. I can definitely see how the captions would be a value-add to many users, but can we get the option to revert back to just the show's artwork (also not sure if that's the right terminology, but I'm sure the team gets what I mean).