I love Spotify, but its Android app still gets one thing wrong

Judging by the sentiment shared by my colleagues, I’m in all probability the one particular person at Android Authority and maybe the broader world who dislikes Spotify’s overreliance on shortcut gestures. What can I say? I desire tangible suggestions, the kind that solely tapping a button offers.

I’m a agency believer in giving customers choices, particularly relating to app design. Prescribing a selected workflow to customers assumes that everybody is similar, and this merely isn’t true. All of us have totally different wants, expectations, and strategies for finishing a job successfully. It’s essential that you simply perceive my perspective, because it’s not the performance that Spotify’s shortcut gestures present that alienates me, but fairly the compelled implementation of them.

Should you’re not a Spotify person, you’ll probably want some extra context — simply know that the app presents so many shortcut swipes, faucets, and long-presses for playback and queue administration. You’ll be able to swipe proper so as to add songs to the queue, which is supremely helpful when actively managing a session. Then there’s the swipe left within the queue to take away the observe from it. Different choices embody the fairly pure swiping up/down to cover or reveal the Now Taking part in display, swiping left or proper on the taking part in bar to skip or return to the earlier observe, and long-pressing on a tune to deliver up the observe’s context menu.

On the floor, Spotify’s gesture system alongside its fluid interface is smart. In apply, it encourages errors from errant swipes and faucets.

Let me present a real-world instance. My fiancée and I have been just lately listening to tracks in our front room whereas I browsed YouTube and she or he studied. I had a reasonably nice move going, leaping from Solange to Janet Jackson, Cornershop, and a-ha. When the previous couple of songs within the queue arrived, I wished so as to add extra tracks from my library. I swiped again to return to the earlier display — , the default Android again gesture — but Spotify as a substitute interpreted it as a swipe throughout the taking part in bar. This compelled a skip to the following observe, regardless of this being the final thing I wished.

This isn’t the primary time I’ve performed this, both. I’ve additionally by accident eliminated tracks from my queue and from rigorously curated playlists containing a whole lot of songs.

I’ll admit, gestures are helpful. As I talked about above, swiping left or proper on a observe in a playlist is a fast approach to transfer choose tracks to the queue. It’s a far smoother, extra pure motion than a number of faucets to realize the identical outcome. But I reside in fixed concern that I’ll by accident take away a tune from a playlist, by accident skip a observe, or like a tune I’ve by no means even heard. I solely discover some Spotify gestures helpful, and the app offers no approach to disable those I don’t. Importantly, such a change wouldn’t simply profit me. Providing varied management choices is accessibility-friendly.

Fortunately, I really feel that there’s a easy repair for my gripe. Spotify might simply add a menu merchandise in settings, name it Gestures, and add toggles for every gesture. From there, customers can resolve which actions to activate or deactivate, thereby crafting their very own workflows.

Higher but, Spotify might go one step additional and let customers rearrange, conceal, or add buttons to the Now Taking part in display and the playback bar. I solely use the Join button as soon as per session; it’s losing house that may very well be used for the Queue or Shuffle buttons. The identical goes for the Like button.

The Create button is a transparent demonstration that Spotify builders perceive that totally different customers want direct entry to various things. The Cut back animations toggle additionally signifies they acknowledge the significance of accessibility choices. Why can’t this pondering manifest in different areas of the app?

I wish to make this very clear: I’m not for one minute saying that Spotify ought to bin its intricate gesture shortcut system. The present system received’t make the bounce to a different streaming service, both. I’ve spent loads of time with YouTube Music, and it, too, has varied gesture shortcuts with no choices to change them off or change them.

All I need is extra customization choices and the choice to show off the distracting and disruptive gestures. Selection is a constructive for all customers, whether or not you love or dislike Spotify shortcut swipe controls.