Spotify finally unveils a desktop app mini-player to put an end to window juggling, but there’s a catch
Spotify Premium users are rejoicing – the music platform is finally adding a ‘mini player’ for its desktop app to improve the user experience – a whopping three years after the web app gained a similar feature.
The new mini player has two different designs and can be activated in the bottom right corner of the full-screen player, shrinking the app to a minimized view with media controls and song information. As I mentioned above, this isn’t the first appearance of a condensed Spotify player, but it is the first implementation of the feature for the desktop version of the app.
The new mini player will be available for Windows, macOS and ChromeOS and is similar to the mini players of other apps (such as Apple Music) and users have long been asking for this desktop feature. Some users were so desperate for it that they created their own, with a host of user-made apps currently available on GitHub.
Before this addition, there was a small preview window with media controls that would appear while Spotify was minimized and users hovered over it, so combined with the existing web app mini-player, this development isn’t completely out of the blue. I wonder why it took so long to bring it to the desktop version, since it had been around in the web version for years.
The benefits of this feature update are pretty obvious: many people have Spotify running in the background while doing other activities on their PC. Before this update, you had to minimize your current activity (or resize your open windows) and switch to the Spotify tab even if you wanted to do something simple like skip to the next song or episode or turn up the in-app volume adjust – unless you have special media controls on your keyboard. This was explained in a community post on Spotify’s official websitewith the aim of giving users better control over the player without having to interrupt their activities.
Once users open the Spotify mini player, it appears as a floating window that is always on top, which remains visible before all other open windows on your desktop and works independently of whatever you do in the main Spotify window. The mini player can also play any media you can play in the main app, including music, short videos and podcasts.
The bad news is that the feature is currently only available to Spotify Premium users, so you’ll need to sign up for a subscription if you want to use it. It will be interesting to see if Spotify makes it available to all users in the future.
To use the feature, open your Spotify desktop app and start playing some content. Then click on the mini player icon: the small white square contained within a larger white outlined square. This should open the mini player. If you don’t see the icon or your mini player doesn’t appear when you click it, try reinstalling the Spotify app.
Spotify just overtook Apple Music after ten years by giving this feature to desktop users. What makes it a little more puzzling is that there have been Spotify mini-player features in other versions of the app for a while now (such as a Google Maps integration on Android phones), so Spotify had already worked it out to at least some extent.
Perhaps Spotify thought the demand for a widget-like feature simply wasn’t there, but how many third-party apps there are and how many users have requested such a feature paints a confusing picture. In any case, I’m glad it managed to give users exactly what they asked for, and hopefully it will continue to add features that users explicitly tell Spotify they want to see. Fun novelties are impressive and entertaining, such as AI DJ and Spotify Wrapped, but ultimately users appreciate products that work well.