- Spotify has rolled out a cool upgrade to Wear OS
- In addition to new visuals, you can now use tap gestures to play and skip songs
- It’s available for all Wear OS compatible devices as long as you update the Spotify app in the Play Store
Are you a Wear OS user and a Spotify subscriber? Your wrist experience is about to get better thanks to a major upgrade coming to some of the best smartwatches out there – which includes a new graphic redesign and handy tap gestures.
If you’re a Samsung Galaxy Watch or Google Pixel Watch power user, you now have access to the new Spotify experience for Wear OS as long as you’ve installed the latest version of the Spotify app via the Play Store. In an email sent to TechRadar, Spotify says the new wave of Wear OS features are “redesigned to be more intuitive, more visible,” bringing “the best of Spotify to your watch.” So what’s new?
First and foremost, Spotify’s Wear OS refresh puts visual aesthetics at the forefront of its new ‘Now Playing’ screen, which shows the artwork behind the current song playing, as well as the playback controls. You can also view and change your music queue from this view and also control audio output. When you swipe from top to bottom, it takes you to a new ‘immersive view’ where the artwork is displayed in its entirety without the obstruction of the pause and play icons.
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When you swipe up on the ‘Now Playing’ screen, it will take you to Spotify’s main home page, where your songs you like, downloaded, recently accessed playlists, podcasts, artists and more will take center stage. That said, one of the more convenient tools is the search function that lets you look up a song to add to your queue, bringing music discovery capabilities to your wrist.
However, the new update isn’t just about how pretty it looks, it also has a number of handy new tools. Now you can manually use your finger to pause, play and skip through songs on your watch face, as well as use tap gestures to control playback. One tap will pause and play music for you, while two taps will jump from one song to the next.
I’m an Apple Watch user and I’m envious of this upgrade
The best thing about Spotify’s smartwatch app is that it takes all the best features from the mobile experience and puts them right on your wrist, providing a convenient way to control your music playback when you’re working out or have your hands tied.
Spotify’s Apple Watch experience is not unlike its new Wear OS update. You can still change your music queue, search for songs and access your full library of saved artists, albums and recently streamed playlists – but it’s definitely not as pretty.
Apple Watch users miss out on the album art feature, a tool that makes the new Wear OS Spotify experience so bold and visually engaging. Instead, the Now Playing page on the Apple Watch just shows the song title and artist with pause, play, skip and queue icons against a plain black background. It’s far too simple for my taste and, dare I say, a bit boring.
However, Spotify for Apple Watch replicates the Home tab and your library from the mobile experience, so at least you don’t have to navigate an interface that feels completely different. That said, I hope Spotify gives its watchOS version some TLC in the near future — it should at least emulate the Liquid Glass aesthetic that Apple has been pushing for nearly a year.
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