1. Install Spotify App

Spotify—one of Apple's main rivals in both the latter's services strategy and in antitrust investigations—has released a new version of its iPhone app that supports home screen widgets, one of the flagship features of iOS 14.

Last month's release of iOS 14 brought home screen widgets—previously only the domain of iPads and Android phones—to iPhones. As we noted in our iOS 14 review, the value of the feature depends entirely on strong adoption and clever uses by third-party app developers.

Spotify has had an Apple Watch app for years now, but previously, users needed to bring along their iPhone to listen to their playlists on the app. The Apple Watch merely served as a remote. Stanton Moore, Category: Artist, Albums: With You In Mind, Conversations, Flyin' The Koop, All Kooked out!, Singles: Java (feat. Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison Jr. & Trombone Shorty), All These Things (feat. Jolynda Kiki Chapman), Night People (feat. Maceo Parker), What Child Is This? (Greensleeves), Top Tracks: Blues for Ben, Here Come The Girls (feat. Cyril Neville & Trombone Shorty.

Releases of widget-supporting apps from developers have been slow. Part of that was because Apple launched iOS 14 with less notice to developers than usual, meaning many were racing to play catch-up. But even now, a month later, the roster of widget-supporting apps has only grown a little.

Spotify is one of the most high-profile apps on the App Store, and it finally made the jump with version 8.5.80 of its iOS app. Unfortunately, the new widget isn't all that powerful or useful. It essentially does the exact same thing the Music widget does: it shows a list of recently played songs or playlists that you can tap into from the home screen.

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Tapping an entry doesn't just take you to the song in the app—it starts playing it right away, saving you an extra tap. Many users will wish they could customize what appears in the list or that they could control playback, as they currently can in the Android widget. As the setup stands now, the widget offers no customization options at all.

Some app developers (like Spark) have found creative ways to use the somewhat limited iOS widgets API (WidgetKit) to offer multiple, flexible uses of that precious home screen real estate. But users have said a lot of widgets just aren't that useful at the moment.

Those same users might wonder why we're not seeing essentially fully working slices of apps appearing on the home screen. Apple is likely to expand what developers can do with WidgetKit in future software releases, but there will always be some big limitations because of an emphasis on maintaining battery life.

Lots of interactivity and live data from multiple apps on the home screen could have a negative impact there—that's probably why Apple and many devs have generally been conservative in terms of making widgets ultra-powerful.

By contrast, the Android Spotify widget offers playback control. But Spotify actually removed that comparatively powerful widget in August of last year, only to reintroduce an improved version of it shortly afterward when users complained. The brief removal led to a plethora of user-made widgets to replace the lost functionality.

But at least Spotify is supporting widgets on iPhones at all—that wasn't a foregone conclusion.

Listing image by Samuel Axon

The problem with the Apple Watch is that it typically relies on users to pair the smartwatch with an iPhone. The cellular version of the Apple Watch does reduce its dependence on the iPhone, but when it comes to third-party apps, it’s a bit of a mixed bag as it’s up to the developer to choose to create a standalone app designed for the Apple Watch.

The good news for Spotify users is that if you’d rather not have to bring your iPhone with you on your run, you’ll be pleased to learn that the company has since released a standalone app for the Apple Watch. What this means that users will be able to stream music from Spotify through the Apple Watch app directly to their headphones as long as the user has some kind of connection, such as WiFi or cellular data.

According to Spotify, they’ve recently started to roll out this update to its users, so if you haven’t received the update yet, not to worry as it should eventually make its way to you. The company had actually started to test the feature earlier this year, but it looks like they are more or less done and are making it available to more users as we speak.

So if you can appreciate being able to stream your favorite music or podcasts without having to rely on being in proximity to your iPhone, then this is an update that you’ll want to keep an eye out for.

Install Spotify App

Filed in . Read more about Apple Watch, Apps, Entertainment, Music, Smartwatch, Spotify and Wearable Tech. Source: appleinsider