Spotify has announced Car View, a new feature for those of you who listen to Spotify while driving. Car View is essentially a simpler Now Playing view, says the company, which allows for easier use when listening to Spotify in your car over Bluetooth. The company says that this feature is already rolling out globally, but that it may take a while until every single Spotify user gets it, so sit tight.
Once you connect to your car’s Bluetooth, Car View will be enabled automatically, and your music / podcast will start playing. You can always tap your library and browse or search for whatever you want to listen. Once you’re listening to a song or podcast, you can simply use the seek bar in order to skip to another part of the current song / podcast, or move to a new one. Spotify also notes that free users will be able to enjoy this Car View experience via shuffle mode.
Now, if you connect to your car’s Bluetooth, but you do not want to listen to anything, you can simply opt out of Car View by clicking the three dots menu, in which case it will connect again next time you connect. If you’d like for Car View not to launch automatically when you connect to Bluetooth, you can set such preferences as well, from Spotify settings.
Now, some users had questions regarding this new feature, and the company opted to answer some of them. For example, one user asked if Car View will launch (or if he can set it that way) when he plugs in an AUX cable, and Spotify said that it will not, that the feature works only with Bluetooth, at least for now.
Another user wanted to know if the landscape mode is supported by Car View, and Spotify said that it will, it doesn’t really matter if you want to use it in portrait or landscape mode, as the feature supports both smartphone orientations. The company also said that the feature is exclusive to Android at the moment, but it will arrive to iOS at some point.
First New Feature In A While
Spotify had released quite a few updates over the years, but Car View is the first feature that we’ve seen in the last couple of months, ever since the company released a new Wear OS application back in October.
Prior to that, back in September, Spotify actually increased its offline download limit, to 10,000 songs, which more or less ensured that you will not be limited by that functionality in any way, shape or form. The company was also caught experimenting with ad-skipping last year, but we did not hear anything about that for months now, so we’ll see if anything comes out of it.
All in all, Car View seems like a rather solid feature for those of you who use Spotify in your cars, and it seems like quite a few people do these days, while commuting to work or otherwise driving somewhere. It would be nice if the feature worked with an AUX cable as well, but it’s not surprising that it doesn’t, as it seems like the vast majority of users use Bluetooth in such instances anyhow.