Hidden Spotify Features

The Scandinavian music platform has long been the standard for music streaming. This is not surprising, given that Spotify has advanced recommendations and good apps on all platforms, a huge media library, and advanced user recommendations.

At the same time, Spotify has many small and often unnoticeable features. Many users of the service who have been familiar with Spotify for many years may simply not know about them.

Sorting Playlists in the Desktop Version

Saved playlists in Spotify on Mac and PC are sorted by date added (from new to old). This is not a problem if there are not many playlists. But if there are at least more than 10, then constantly scrolling the list is not very convenient.

The developers have provided for this and allowed you to manually drag and drop playlists by holding the left mouse button.

If desired, playlists can be combined into folders. Here’s how to do it:

1. Right-click in the playlists area.
2. Select “Create Folder”.
3. Drag playlists into folders.

All changes are synced with Spotify apps on other platforms.

Bringing the Volume Back to Normal

Users of Apple Music and other services may have noticed that tracks in Spotify are playing noticeably quieter, especially when using headphones. The thing is, Spotify reduces the maximum volume so that all tracks sound at the same level.

How to disable this feature:

1. Go to “Settings” → “Playback”.
2. Turn off the toggle switch next to “Turn on sound normalization”.

Apple Music also has this option (Settings → “Music” → “Volume Correction”), but it is disabled by default.

Restoring Accidentally Deleted Playlists

Sometimes there are situations when users accidentally delete their playlists. What to do in this case? In other services, there is only one option: create a new playlist and add tracks to it.

But Spotify developers thought about even such a non-standard situation and allowed you to restore deleted playlists.

Go to the Spotify website under your account and select “Restore playlists” in the menu. Then find the desired playlist and click the “Restore” button.

The function only works with your own playlists.

What Friends Are Listening To

In Spotify, you can follow what music your friends are listening to in real time. To do this, you need to link Facebook to your Spotify account. How to do this:

1. In the right column (if it is not there, enlarge the application window), click the “Find friends” button.
2. In the window that appears, click the “Link Facebook account” button.
3. Select the friends you want to subscribe to.

After that, a list of friends and the song they are currently listening to or the last played track will be displayed on the right.

Friends can also subscribe to you and follow you. If you want to hide information from them, use the settings.

Playlist for Your Pet

Yes, in Spotify you can create a playlist for your pet based on their interests. To do this, go to the special Spotify website under your account, select your pet and answer a few questions.

In the case of a cat, they will ask how energetic and friendly it is. You can add a photo of your pet to the playlist cover, and its name to the title.

Integration with Siri

Spotify is one of the few music services that supports Siri. You can ask the voice assistant to play a track or find an artist in Spotify. The main thing is to clearly say “In Spotify” at the end of the sentence, otherwise Siri will open Apple Music.

For example, “Play Bon Jovi songs in Spotify” or “Play the album 7 Rings”.

You can only use Siri on iPhone. The feature does not work with Apple Watch, HomePod, and Mac.

How to Make Friends with Spotify and Shazam

If you now find a track in Shazam, most likely it will offer to listen to it in Apple Music. It’s no wonder Apple bought Shazam.

But you can use Spotify instead of Apple Music. Here’s how:

1. Open Shazam.
2. In the “Library” tab, click the settings icon in the upper left corner.
3. Click the “Connect” button next to Spotify (a warning will appear, you need to confirm the action).
4. Spotify will open and a window with the agreement, click the “Agree” button.

Return to Shazam. If you followed the instructions, Spotify will be used instead of Apple Music. Here you can also enable syncing Shazam with Spotify.