Spotify today released its highly anticipated iOS 14 widget with the latest app update. The new widget, available for now in both small and medium sizes, allows you to quickly access your recently played artists, albums and podcasts with a tap.
The smaller widget will only show the most recently listened to, while the medium widget will show the five most recent items instead: four in a horizontal row and the most recent at the top. If so, you can actually tap on the little thumbnail for which of the five you want to stream to be taken directly to that page in Spotify app.
Another cool thing about the widget is that the background color automatically updates to match the thumbnail image. If the artist wears red, for example, the widget turns red. If the album is blue, the widget turns blue. And so on.
However, a limited range of colors appears to be available. For example, when we streamed something with a gray and white color scheme in the thumbnail image (eg Taylor Swift's "Folklore"), the widget defaulted to Spotify's green hue.
The colorful widget experience can help it stand out on your home screen. But it could also be problematic for those who have customized their iOS 14 home screen with a certain aesthetic, such as all app icons and widgets in neutral tones or another favorite color, such as pink, purple, blue or black.
According to Etsy's trends, iOS 14 packs in neutral or autumn shades are currently the best sellers, as are those with lighter pink and dark themes in black. The Spotify widget may clash with those designs at times.
However, the demand for a Spotify widget was so strong that prior to the official release it sent a third-party music widget provider to top the App Store rankings as users customized iOS 14 home screens. widget, TuneTrack, even hit No. 8 overall and No. 1 in music on September 19, 2020, when the customization trend was driving millions of new downloads.
The new Spotify widget is available today in the updated Spotify app on the iOS App Store.