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It's very strange how these types of nice UX things seem to be lacking in big modern apps nowadays. I think we all know why, they aren't revenue drivers. But, surely this wouldn't be that hard for Spotify to do themselves.

Shout out to this project and all the others mentioned in this thread that are adding the niceties that seem to be missing.




My guess is it's also down to the proliferation of cross-platform UX toolkits that allow for A/B testing of every single component. Making a cool UX thing that requires native OS features would go against that philosophy. And, as you say, it's not a revenue driver so nobody will be fighting for it.


Modern OSes, as much as they pretend not to, are patchworks of antiquated components and designs where it's a wonder that anything integrates at all.

Why is the OS not handle states and events globally? If I turn on do not disturb, it show show me as unavailable on Outlook/Teams/Google Workplace. Yet the "official" method is to go into individual apps and switch it. And god help you if you turned on DND but forgot you had an alarm, instead of vibrating first it's just going to ring loudly in the middle of wherever you are (talking of iOS, I know android has a few options but it's still messy).

Scrolling is still "viewing" as if the screen was an A4 (or similar) paper. You could have dynamic vision tracking with a magnifier to boost ergonomics, but no, the button for "close window" that is used once in 10 minutes is as big as the start menu or the right click button and is the same px size as the text you're reading.

Context awareness is absolutely crap on EVERY major OS, be it android or iOS or Windows, and I'm pretty sure MacOS and Linux too. Everything is a silo (fine) but does not integrate together. (Side note, if anyone wants to fix this feel free to contact me via my email in my profile. I'm not really a coder but I know a bit about systems engineering.)


macOS and iOS publish DND/Focus states and events; it's up to Outlook/Teams/Google Workplace to do something with them.


I don't disagree at all. It's a cultural/corporate thing where Microsoft can basically go "Nah, Teams is too big and we don't have time to integrate it." Basically, there's no real competition, and no one's switching away from Teams just because they don't pay attention to details like this. It's annoying/infuriating but also just the reality nowadays that everyone accepts.


Displaying playback status in the menu bar means you have one less reason to switch to the app and “engage” with it.


Spotify is particularly atrocious when it comes to UI. Never have I seen an app go out of its way to make its UX worse as upgrades are released, it’s infuriating. I’d have been gone a long time ago if there were any serious competitor to switch to.


Thank you! :-)




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