Spotify—one of Apple's main rivals in both the latter's services strategy and in antitrust investigations—has released a new version of its iPhone app that supports home screen widgets, one of the flagship features of iOS 14.
Spotify is one of the most high-profile apps on the App Store, and it finally made the jump with version 8.5.80 of its iOS app. Unfortunately, the new widget isn't all that powerful or useful. While Spotify can’t officially integrate with Siri, there are some workarounds to get a similar experience on Spotify. Using the new Shortcuts automation app in iOS 12, you can now use Siri to start Spotify playback, play a particular song or an album, search for a playlist and more, all just using your voice.
Spotify is the best way to listen to music and podcasts on mobile or tablet. Search for any track, artist or album and listen for free. Make and share playlists. Build your biggest, best ever music collection. Get inspired with personal recommendations, and readymade playlists for just about eve. There's not much to be said about the iPhone app for Spotify unless users shell out the $9.99 a month for their premium service. Premium service grants unlimited streaming of all of their content, offline syncing of Spotify music, on-the-fly playlist creation and the ability to sync and play an iTunes library through the app.
Last month's release of iOS 14 brought home screen widgets—previously only the domain of iPads and Android phones—to iPhones. As we noted in our iOS 14 review, the value of the feature depends entirely on strong adoption and clever uses by third-party app developers.
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Releases of widget-supporting apps from developers have been slow. Part of that was because Apple launched iOS 14 with less notice to developers than usual, meaning many were racing to play catch-up. But even now, a month later, the roster of widget-supporting apps has only grown a little.Spotify is one of the most high-profile apps on the App Store, and it finally made the jump with version 8.5.80 of its iOS app. Unfortunately, the new widget isn't all that powerful or useful. It essentially does the exact same thing the Music widget does: it shows a list of recently played songs or playlists that you can tap into from the home screen.
Tapping an entry doesn't just take you to the song in the app—it starts playing it right away, saving you an extra tap. Many users will wish they could customize what appears in the list or that they could control playback, as they currently can in the Android widget. As the setup stands now, the widget offers no customization options at all.
Some app developers (like Spark) have found creative ways to use the somewhat limited iOS widgets API (WidgetKit) to offer multiple, flexible uses of that precious home screen real estate. But users have said a lot of widgets just aren't that useful at the moment.
Those same users might wonder why we're not seeing essentially fully working slices of apps appearing on the home screen. Apple is likely to expand what developers can do with WidgetKit in future software releases, but there will always be some big limitations because of an emphasis on maintaining battery life.
Lots of interactivity and live data from multiple apps on the home screen could have a negative impact there—that's probably why Apple and many devs have generally been conservative in terms of making widgets ultra-powerful.
By contrast, the Android Spotify widget offers playback control. But Spotify actually removed that comparatively powerful widget in August of last year, only to reintroduce an improved version of it shortly afterward when users complained. The brief removal led to a plethora of user-made widgets to replace the lost functionality.
But at least Spotify is supporting widgets on iPhones at all—that wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Listing image by Samuel Axon
Spotify App Store
- Spotify is adding standalone streaming to its Apple Watch app.
- Previously, Spotify Premium subscribers had to have their iPhone with them in order to stream music from the Spotify app on their Apple Watch.
- Spotify has yet to formally announce the update, but it is now rolling out globally and should begin to appear on every Apple Watch in the days ahead.
Spotify brought its app to the Apple Watch all the way back in November 2018, but in the two years since, the only way to actually use the app has been to carry around your iPhone with you as well. It basically served as a remote for Spotify’s iPhone app, but according to TechCrunch, Spotify began rolling out support for standalone streaming on the Apple Watch app this week. Testing began last fall, and soon everyone will have access.
“With Spotify for Apple Watch you can control the Spotify experience from your wrist. You can now stream Spotify directly from your Apple Watch and even use Siri to control the playback!” Spotify states on a new support page that was recently added to its website to reflect the new feature. “In addition to streaming Spotify directly from your wrist, you can also control playback of Spotify, with the Spotify Connect feature built-in you can select which device you want to play Spotify on and select anything to play from your recently played tracks.”
Apps For Spotify On Iphone Xr
Spotify also notes on this support page that in order to stream music directly from your wrist, you’ll need to have a Spotify Premium subscription, an Apple Watch Series 3 or later with watchOS 6.0+ (though watchOS 7.1+ is recommended), a cellular or WiFi connection, and the latest version of the Spotify app on your iPhone.
Spotify For Ios
When I told one of my coworkers the news about standalone streaming coming to Apple Watch, he was ecstatic. He is just one of many Apple Watch users who wear the device when they exercise, but were previously forced to drag their iPhone along as well if they wanted to listen to music on Spotify. He and all other Spotify subscribers will soon be able to leave the iPhone behind and stream music over a cellular or WiFi connection.
“We’re focused on developing experiences that enable users to listen to Spotify wherever and whenever they want – regardless of the device or platform,” a Spotify spokesperson told TechCrunch when asked about the update, which has yet to be formally announced by the company as of Wednesday evening. “After an initial testing period, we are now rolling out streaming capabilities for Spotify on the Apple Watch.”
Apps That Work With Spotify Ios
The spokesperson also added that this is a global rollout, so in the coming days, everyone with an Apple Watch and a Spotify Premium account should finally be able to start streaming music iPhone-free.