- Spotify has rolled out a bold upgrade for Wear OS
- As well as new visual elements, you can now use tap gestures to play and skip songs
- It's available to all Wear OS-compatible devices, so long as you update the Spotify app in the Play Store
Are you a Wear OS user and a Spotify subscriber? Your on-wrist experience is about to get better thanks to a major upgrade coming to some of the best smartwatches — which includes a new graphic redesign and handy tap gestures.
If you’re a power-user of a Samsung Galaxy Watch or Google Pixel Watch, you’ll now have access to the new Spotify experience for Wear OS so long as you’ve installed the latest version of the Spotify app via the Play Store. In an email sent to TechRadar, Spotify details that the new wave of Wear OS features are “redesigned to be more intuitive, more discoverable” bringing “the best of Spotify to your watch”. So, what’s new?
First off, Spotify’s Wear OS revamp puts visual aesthetics at the forefront of its new ‘Now Playing’ screen, which displays creator art behind the current playing song as well as the playback controls. You can also view and amend your music queue from this view and control audio output too. When you swipe from top to bottom, it takes you to a new ‘immersive view’, where the creator art is displayed in its entirety without the obstruction of the pause and play icons.
When you swipe up on the ‘Now Playing’ screen it takes you to Spotify's main Home page, where your Liked Songs, Downloads, recently accessed playlists, podcasts, artists, and more will be front and center. That said, one of the more handy tools is the search function allowing you to look up a song to add to your queue, bringing music discovery features to your wrist.
However, the new update isn’t just about how pretty it looks, it also has a slew of practical 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 the playback. One tap will pause and play music for you, while two taps will skip from one song to the next.
I’m an Apple Watch user, and I’m envious of this upgrade
The best part 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 isn’t dissimilar to its new Wear OS update. You can still amend your music queue, search for songs, and access your full Library of saved artists, albums, and recently streamed playlists — but it’s certainly 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 Apple Watch just displays the song title and artist, with pause, play, skip, and queue icons against a plain black background. It’s far too simple for my liking and, dare I say, slightly dull.
However, Spotify for Apple Watch does replicate 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 do hope that Spotify gives its watchOS version a bit of TLC in the near future — it should at least emulate the Liquid Glass aesthetic that Apple has been pushing for almost a year.
