Spotify

Spotify has, for years, included some social features that make it easy to share playlists with friends, and even see what your friends have been listening to. But for as long as those features have been around, they’ve never been available in the mobile app. Now, Spotify is finally preparing to bring friend activity to the mobile app with a “Community” feature.

While Spotify’s Car Thing device isn’t exactly pointless, it certainly has a narrow use case as we detailed in our recent review. Now, Spotify Car Thing is picking up its first major update with the ability to answer phone calls, control other apps, and more.

We’re all encouraged to keep our hands off of our phones while driving, but as our media shifts from the radio to streaming apps, that becomes just a bit harder. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using Spotify Car Thing to control music on my drives, and while it’s a device full of great ideas, I can’t help but feel it’s somewhat redundant at this point.

Four months after being “retired,” Spotify is letting customers test out a completely overhauled automotive interface called Car Mode.

Music is a core form of entertainment while on the road, but Spotify has been shuffling its car strategy up as of late. Now, just a week after releasing its “Car Thing” hardware to the public, Spotify is pulling support for in-car head units from Pioneer and other brands.

Spotify has been working on its own car hardware for a while, with “Car Thing” having gone on sale last year for a limited number of interested users. Starting today, though, Spotify Car Thing is available to everyone in the US, just in time for a major update to the product.

Less than two years ago, Spotify added support for a “Car View” to its mobile app on Android and iOS, which would display a simplified UI while driving. Unfortunately, Spotify is now ending support for that feature.

Following years of user demand for the feature, Spotify today announced that it would add support for real-time lyrics across its apps, including on Android and Google TV.

Smartwatches have long been neglected by Spotify, offering only controls instead of offline listening. Following a launch on Apple Watch earlier this year, Spotify is now rolling out its revamped Wear OS app with support for offline downloads, and it works everywhere.

Spotify has long been notorious for neglecting its Android app, but it seems the company is finally giving the platform some attention with recent updates. After introducing a new homescreen widget, Spotify is now testing a new in-app miniplayer to match.

Android 12 puts a new emphasis on widgets, and perhaps just ironically, Spotify is now preparing a brand-new homescreen widget.

Amongst a bevy of Wear OS announcements at Google I/O, Spotify has shared that their smartwatch app is getting enhanced with the ability to download music and podcasts.

Spotify has a lot of great features, but one of its best and most unique is Connect, a method of keeping the same listening session synced across all of your devices. Unfortunately, what seems like a bug is breaking Spotify Connect in multiple ways when using Google Assistant or Chromecast devices.