Status icons not shown on notch iPhones (X and above)

[sweyers]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

iPhone X

Operating System

iOS 14

My Question or Issue

I have always been super puzzled by this one...maybe I’m missing a setting but honestly there probably shouldn’t even be a setting for this...why are the status icons of the time/signal strength/battery on either side of the iPhone notch hidden on the now playing screen? Every other area I could find in browsing the Spotify app has the icons present, just not the current song screen. What the heck? Apple’s own guidance for developers specifically says to NOT do this unless absolutely necessary, which it’s clearly not here. I’m pretty sure this is the only app on my phone that ever does this, and considering Spotify’s user base and being a fairly large company, this is kind of shocking, nonetheless very annoying to deal with. Any way this can be fixed?

[sweyers]

For comparison, screenshot of the home screen with the icons present

[Mihail]

 Hey @sweyers,

Thanks for reaching out. We'll gladly let you sort this one out.

Let us know if the icons are visible again persists once you've performed a clean reinstall on the affected device. We recommend this step since it'll get you the latest app version with all necessary updates and remove any corrupted files from previous installations. Don't skip restarting your device between the installations - this is a very effective, but often overlooked step. If that doesn't fix things and you have that option - could you let us know if the issue persist when you log in to another iOS device?

Keep us posted, we'd love to investigate this further.

[sweyers]

As for uninstalling and reinstalling, I did just update the app and the issue persists. I only want to completely uninstall as a last resort to avoid having to leave the app running for a half day or more to redownload all my offline music.

Also the thing here is that I am 99% certain that the problem is not specific/unique to my device. We have multiple other iPhones in our house and upon checking the app on two other iPhone 11s the same issue exists with them too. If you could look to confirm on one of your company’s test/development devices, I’m fairly sure you will find this occurring as well. If you would be able to report back as to what is found on your end with this I would appreciate it.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @sweyers,

Thank you for your post.

We understand - but a clean reinstall is where we usually start since that will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

You can also try with another internet connection.

If nothing of the above does the trick - can you let us know which version of the app you have?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂
 

Cheers!

[sweyers]

Clean reinstall had no effect running version 8.5.86.739

[Jeremy]

Hey there again @sweyers,

Thank you for you reply and confirmation.

Can you try with another internet connection to see if the issue persists?

Also - can you log in with another account - such as a friend's or a family member's to see if the issue persists?

Cheers!

[sweyers]

I have this issue everywhere, cellular data, other WiFi, offline, doesn’t matter. I also don’t see why or how that could make any difference as the issue looks to be within the app’s interaction with the OS, not the network.

Also as stated in the above post, yes the issue also exists on two other iPhone 11s, so the issue is not isolated to just my phone. I do think from what I can tell that this affects literally all iPhones with notches (per the title.) I could be wrong but everything I can tell points to that.

Edit: Sorry I misread what you were asking here, in any case, the other phones are signed in to different accounts so I would think that in effect would accomplish the same thing.

[Jeremy]

Hey again @sweyers

Thank you for your reply.

We double checked this and can confirm that it's expected. 

We're always testing things by adding or removing features to make Spotify better overall. We’re sorry that this means you’re not able to use Spotify like you wish to do at the moment.

We're constantly aiming to improve our features so we hope you’ll continue using it and find it gets better in the future. 

Thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help with anything else. We're always one reply away.

[sweyers]

Ok, so you’re telling me your company is worth roughly $50 billion (with a b) and your developers can’t figure out how to follow this extremely basic guidance from Apple for creation of iOS apps?

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/bars/status-bars/

Direct Quote:

”Avoid permanently hiding the status bar. Without a status bar, people must leave your app to check the time or see if they have a Wi-Fi connection.”

The fact that you say this is a “feature” is honestly laughable as well, this is a basic part of the iOS system’s functionality that is not jiving well with your app for whatever reason. That’s an error, an omission, not an absent feature.

Also, having your support starting the thread replies here with a rather arrogant “we'll gladly let you sort this one out” (that’s a direct quote) eventually progressing to “actually we have confirmed that this is normal” (which I pretty much already knew anyway, that’s why I’m writing here) is definitely not a very good public look for your company to be honest, and is in itself kind of rage inducing.

A guy with a laptop who makes apps in his spare time on the weekend can figure this one out, but not the company worth tens of billions of dollars? I have never seen a single other app on my phone have this issue...this is elementary. Get it together.

[sweyers]

I suppose I should let you know that due to lack of response to this thread for over two weeks I have now reported you to Apple for the lack of addressing this.

Maybe that will make you pay attention to following extremely basic developer guidance more than me just complaining on your forum.