Spotify app update 8.4.3 has brought some long awaited updates for Apple CarPlay users.
As a daily Spotify user, it is great to be able to interact and stream from the popular music streaming service in my car via Apple CarPlay, but there has always been some frustration with the lack of, what I feel are fundamental, controls on the Now Playing screen.
In the new 8.4.3 app update, I’ve noticed that Spotify has finally implemented shuffle and repeat controls on the CarPlay’s now playing screen. As they say, better late than never, and it is great to be able to control these functions from the CarPlay display than, rather dangerously, attempt to toggle the buttons on the iPhone that’s tucked away.
But let’s not stop there Spotify!
Looking across other music apps on CarPlay, it seems Apple’s UI/UX for media playback has three ‘zones’ that run along the bottom, below the playing track’s time bar. Currently, on playback of Songs added in your library, the new shuffle and repeat buttons take up the left and right slots respectively, however I would love to see a middle button to contain the ability to toggle the ‘Save to Your Music’ option.
Spotify has this middle button (above) used for something similar, during playback of a radio station, where you can give the playing track a thumbs up or down from a popup contextual menu. It would be even better to be able to use this area for adding and removing tracks from my music, something I do very often when previewing albums and sorting my saved tracks from playlists.
Here is a mockup of something Spotify could do to achieve what I have described above.
Come on Spotify, let’s make it happen in the next update. Please!
Let us know what feature you’d like take up this middle button area in the comments below.
