Among many other music streaming services, Spotify is still one of the best options. It’s easy to use, has a user-friendly interface, a free version and a great set of additional features available for a reasonable price.
Whether you are using a free version or a premium version, Spotify offers many useful features. We’re not going to talk about the obvious things like Discover Weekly or the ability to create collaborative playlists with other users. You already know and love these aspects of the app.
Instead, we’ll dig deeper and show you some little-known Spotify tips and tricks to help you become a professional Spotify user.
1. Restore playlists that you accidentally deleted
If you ever change your mind about deleting one of your playlists, or perhaps deleted it by accident, you can restore it using this feature.
- To recover a deleted playlist, you need access to Spotify on the web (not the Spotify app).
- Log into your Spotify account and find “Recover Playlists†from the menu on the left sidebar.
- Then select the playlist and click “Restore”.
You will then be able to find this playlist in the app again on all your devices.
2. Use smart search
Perhaps you use Spotify every day and are still searching for your music by artist name, album or song.
Here’s another Spotify tip: Spotify does have a smart search feature that makes it easier for you to find the music you want. For example, you can search for songs from specific time periods – just enter a year or range in the search box (try 1969). You can also use filters like genres, labels, and more.
Read the detailed Spotify search guide for the rest of smart searches.
3. Discover Spotify Karaoke
For all karaoke fans, you can now use Spotify to sing along to your favorite songs even if you’re not sure you know the lyrics.
To find this feature, while playing a song, look for the “Lyrics” button in the lower right corner of the app. When you click on it, you should see lyrics for almost every song in the library.
If you want more information about a song you like, you can turn on Behind the Lyrics mode in Spotify settings.
This Spotify tip is also handy when you’re trying to find a song by lyrics. You can do all this on Spotify instead of going back and forth to google search.
4. Learn Spotify Keyboard Shortcuts
This is a very handy Spotify tip that every Spotify user should take advantage of. You can control Spotify almost entirely with keyboard shortcuts. There is a dedicated page on the Spotify network with a complete list of shortcuts for each function of the app (for both Windows and Mac).
You can explore shortcuts for obvious things like playing the next or previous track, as well as for more complex actions like switching to shuffle mode or exiting Spotify.
5. Drag and drop links to your favorite songs
Most people share songs from Spotify using URL links or HTML codes. But there is an easier way to do it.
In your desktop app, you can just drag and drop them. Just select a song, click on it and drag it to any message box. Spotify will automatically turn it into a link to that song with the title and artist name.
Now you can instantly share your favorite tracks with people on Facebook or via email.
6. Hide your listening habits using the secret playlist
By default, Spotify makes your activities public, which means everyone can see what you are listening to at any given time. However, there is a closed session option that hides it for at least six hours at a time.
A more convenient way to keep your Spotify activities private is to create secret playlists to listen to your music. To create a secret playlist, click on the three dots next to its name and select “Make secret”.
You can also turn any of your existing playlists from public to private by changing the playlist privacy settings.
7. Sync Spotify to Shazam
Shazam is great for identifying songs by their sound. What makes it even better is that you can now connect Shazam to YouTube and Spotify. This means you can easily import music from Shazam to Spotify.
After syncing the two apps, try using Shazam to identify the song. You will see an arrow next to the play button. Select Spotify from the dropdown menu to play it in the app.
This feature is available for both iPhone and Android.
8. Listen to non-Spotify music on Spotify
You know that frustrating moment when you open Spotify to play a song that has been stuck in your head all morning but can’t find it? This is actually a simple solution. If the song you are looking for is not on Spotify, you can add it from an external source.
- To do this, open the application and go to Settings.
- Continue scrolling down until you find local files.
- After you enable Show Local Files, an Add Source button appears below it. Click it to add non-Spotify music.
9. Listen to Spotify on Uber
Did you know that you can listen to Spotify with your Uber driver’s sound system? The two companies have teamed up to improve your user experience, and we have to say this is a pretty cool idea.
To enable this feature, you need to go to the Uber app settings and click on “Connect Spotify”. Then log into your Spotify account and you’re done.
One drawback is that not all drivers have this feature enabled. You can check this when Uber assigns a driver for you. Drivers with Spotify enabled get a special badge next to their profile in the app.
At the moment, this feature is only available to Spotify Premium users and only in certain cities. But according to Spotify, they will roll out the feature globally once they finish testing it.
To see if this feature is available to you, check the availability of this feature in the Uber app.
10. Set preferred music quality
Another Spotify tip is that Spotify allows you to set your preferred music quality yourself.
- To find this feature, open the Spotify app and go to settings.
- Under the Music Quality section, you will find options to change the streaming quality and normalize the volume.
- Click the drop-down menu on the right side to set the desired quality. Remember that the higher quality you choose, the more data will be used. Also note that the Very High setting is currently only available for Spotify Premium users.
All of these great features are right on the surface. You just need to know where to look for them. But even with all its functionality, Spotify isn’t perfect. Apple Music is one worthy alternative to Spotify. It also has its pros and cons, as well as a few Spotify tips and tricks to get the most out of your music streaming service.
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