Spotify might finally learn something from YouTube with this video upgrade

Spotify music videos feel so normal now that it’s easy to forget they’re still officially a beta feature. That’s a good thing, because it means some of the rough edges are still being ironed out. One of the biggest issues with them is what happens when you leave the Now Playing screen while a video is playing, and it looks like Spotify might be following YouTube’s example in working on a fix.

Premium users in several regions, including the US and Canada, can already switch between audio and video directly from the Now Playing screen. That part works well enough. The problem starts when you navigate elsewhere in the app. Currently, the video collapses into the Now Playing bar at the bottom. It continues to play just fine, but it’s so small that it might as well not bother. The screenshots below show how it currently looks.

In Spotify version 9.1.20.567, we’ve spotted new strings that point to an option labeled “Larger video in Now Playing Bar,” with a description that says it would show a bigger video when browsing within the app. The wording suggests Spotify is experimenting with a more visible mini-player instead of the tiny one it uses today. Here are the strings we found:

We didn’t manage to enable the feature, so we didn’t get a visual of how it might look if and when it arrives. However, one of the world’s biggest streaming services made a similar move a couple of years ago that might give us a clue.

YouTube used to rely on a similarly small mini-player before moving to the larger, resizable version it uses now, which makes it far easier to keep watching while navigating the app. We don’t know if Spotify would go the exact same direction — the code string suggests the player would remain in the Now Playing Bar rather than float around — but it’s reasonable to assume Spotify has a similar solution in mind.

As with all APK teardowns, there’s no guarantee this change will ever roll out, or when it might appear if it does. Still, it’s a sensible refinement for a feature Spotify clearly wants people to use, and while some would argue that Spotify already does many things better than YouTube, it’s always worth following a successful lead.