I’ve never been a big fan of watching videos in music streaming apps on my phone. I want to listen to songs, make playlists, and look at lyrics, but I never pick up my phone to watch a video on Spotify. If you’re like me, you’re going to be happy to know that Spotify is now rolling out a new feature that lets you turn off videos in its app. This goes beyond disabling the looping videos that appear when you play songs: The new feature also turns off music videos and vertical videos added by authors, returning Spotify to an audio-only platform.
How to turn off videos in Spotify
Credit: Spotify
Spotify will let you disable videos even if you’re on the free tier. To get started, open Spotify on your phone, and tap the profile button in the top-left corner. Go to Settings and privacy > Content and display and you’ll see the new controls in the “Videos and Canvas” section. Turn off Music videos, Canvas, and All other videos to completely disable videos. On Spotify’s desktop apps, you can find these toggles by clicking your profile icon, and going to Settings > Display. Note that the toggle to turn off Canvas (looping videos during music playback) has been around for a while, but the other two settings are new. If you don’t see these options immediately, you can expect them to roll out to your device in the coming weeks.
If you’re a family plan manager, you can disable videos for other users on your plan too. Tap the profile icon in Spotify’s mobile apps, select Your Premium > Manage, and pick any profile. Then, go to Videos and Canvas and turn off the same three toggles to disable videos. Once you’ve applied these settings on one device, Spotify says they’ll be synced to all other devices logged in to the same account, which means that you don’t have to keep disabling videos on each device you use.
What do you think so far?
Unfortunately, this will not turn off video ads or looping videos that appears alongside some audio ads in Spotify. Even with that annoying limitation, I’m happy to start using this feature right away. I’ll keep hoping that Spotify lets me turn off podcasts and audiobooks too, and let me focus exclusively on the music.
