Thanks to Car Mode, drivers will have less opportunity to get distracted while trying to interact with Spotify. Here's how it works
Spotify evolves and acquires a new feature designed to increase safety in the car while driving: it's Auto Mode (Car View). This new feature is designed to minimize distractions when using the app to listen to music in the car.
The new mode is automatically activated when your smartphone is connected to the vehicle via Bluetooth and sets up an extremely simplified, stripped down view of the Now Playing screen by itself. In pursuing this path (it really should be said) Spotify is far from alone. With iOS 12, for example, Apple introduced Do Not Disturb While Driving mode, which mutes notifications and various ringtones so drivers can't drive without the nagging of their smartphone constantly beeping.
How is Spotify's Car Mode
This new screen has larger, more readable fonts, has only the heart and shuffle buttons (larger than normal), shows no album cover but only the artist and song information. In practice, in car mode Spotify turns into a sort of walkman with only the essential buttons for listening and changing tracks. Among the few things you can do in Auto mode, by accessing the menu, is to browse the library and use the Search function.
This way you can use Spotify, both in portrait and landscape view, without distracting yourself from driving. This new feature has been released on some smartphones in the United States in recent weeks and now, after a testing phase, it has been spread globally and is coming to Italy as well. At the moment, it only works on devices running Google's Android operating system, but in the future it will be brought to the iOS app as well, although Spotify hasn't said when.
Driver alert
Spotify already offers several features for listening to music in the car, thanks to integration with other apps like Google Maps, Waze and the Android Auto ecosystem. The new Auto mode, however, allows for much easier use than before. One of the limitations complained by those who have tried Car View, which may soon be surpassed by Spotify, is the fact that the simplified mode is activated only if the smartphone is connected via Bluetooth and not even if you connect it to the car's audio system via a classic AUX cable. The reason is simple: the app can't know whether the other side of the cable is the car stereo or the home hi-fi system.
It's conceivable, therefore, that in the future the Car View mode could also be set manually by the user. In the meantime, however, it can be disabled if the smartphone is operated by a passenger in the car and not the driver.