Spotify seems to be working on a long-awaited accessibility improvement by creating an in-app Reduce Animations setting, which will tone down the service’s lively visuals without making you customize behavior for your whole phone.
App code in a recent Android build surfaced a specific toggle that would turn off the array of autoplaying animations spread throughout the interface — one tiny little switch with major potential comfort, focus, and usability benefits.
What the app code shows about reduced animations
Strings found in Spotify version 9.1.6.1124 detail a Reduce Animations toggle that’s designed to “disable various autoplaying animations that can be distracting,” suggesting this will have widespread impact rather than just be a tweak for one thing.
Today, Spotify mostly relies on the system accessibility settings such as Reduce Motion on iOS or Remove Animations on Android. Those are global switches that apply to every app. This control helps decouple Spotify’s visuals from the OS, allowing listeners to tweak the behavior without killing motion elsewhere on your phone.
Why reducing motion matters for accessibility on Spotify
High-motion interfaces may appear slick, but they can cause discomfort for people with vestibular disorders or motion sensitivity — including dizziness and nausea. Accessibility advice from the W3C and teams responsible for web platforms at Apple and Google has been recommending for years that developers offer motion-reduction features or respect system preferences. The Spotify-specific toggle does follow those best practices and is likely to be more accessible to some users.
This is also a matter of cognitive load. Everything from looping artwork to animated transitions to autoplaying previews competes for your attention while performing mundane tasks like browsing albums or queuing up a podcast. Providing users with a tool to settle the interface encourages better focus, in fewer taps.
What could change in the UI when animations are reduced
The setting isn’t live yet, but it appears to focus on elements that are high in motion and auto-play. In practice, that might involve playing back looping video on the Now Playing screen, animating cards in the Home feed, and pushing motion-forward transitions in discovery sections. The aim isn’t to render the app static, but instead to replace high-velocity visuals with more subtle states (or still frames where applicable) — a theme that is often utilized in Reduce Motion adaptations.
There are secondary benefits, too. Reducing animations can save a little work by the graphics processing unit and background video decoding — potentially saving some battery life on older devices and modestly trimming data use if artwork or previews are based on short video loops.
A move from global to granular animation control
Until now, listeners who found Spotify’s visuals distracting have had to depend on OS-level switches or settings that blunt device-wide motion in developer settings. If you want richer animations in games or social apps but a more sedate music player, that all-or-nothing approach is less than ideal. And a per-app switch is the middle-of-the-road option that accessibility professionals have fought for, making it similar to what some peers already do. X (formerly Twitter), for instance, offers a Reduce Motion option through its accessibility menu, and TikTok includes controls to restrict motion effects inside the app.
The business context behind Spotify’s motion settings
On Spotify, additional visual storytelling has been added to support discovery — from looping artist canvases to video-first previews in its feed. Those elements can enhance engagement, but they also heighten the stakes of accessibility and user choice. The company reported in its recent earnings that it has more than 600 million monthly active users, and even a fraction of them wanting less animation is in the millions who would benefit from a calmer experience.
Crucially, accessibility features aren’t intended for an exclusive class of user. They make music apps more usable for everyone: commuters on the go, users of low-end hardware, and anyone who would like their music app to be about sound rather than spectacle.
What to look for next as Spotify rolls out the toggle
The Reduce Animations toggle is not in the current public release, and Spotify hasn’t said when it will arrive. Features found in app builds tend to gradually roll out through server-side switches, so availability varies by region and account when it lands. When it does show up, expect to find it in Settings under Accessibility or Playback, depending on platform norms.
If executed well, this one switch would make Spotify meet accessibility guidance from the W3C and the design playbooks for iOS and Android. More importantly, it would put power in the hands of listeners to decide how much motion they want or don’t want when they welcome new sounds into their regular listening lives — and it feels like a quality-of-life upgrade that’s long overdue.
