What Do Icons and Symbols Mean in Spotify

Spotify’s UI has undergone several changes in recent years and manyfans of the music streaming serviceareunhappy with it. Here is a detailed guide on what all the icons and symbols mean in the Spotify app. We will go through each Spotify screen, menu, and tab to explain what the icons and symbols look like and mean so you know what to expect when you tap on them.

The home tab is where you land when you open the app for the first time. So let’s begin from there and understand what each icon and symbol means in Spotify’s home tab.

Note:Previously, the home tab had three icons – bell, clock, and cog icons. Now, all three options have been tucked away in a single menu that you can access by tapping on your profile photo in the upper left corner.

What Icons and Symbols Mean on Spotify? Complete Guide

Notice the song playing at the bottom of the screen? Tap on that to expand it and find more options.

Trick:you’re able to nowuse one of the Spotify songs or tracks as your morning alarm.

Profile Tab

Let’s head over to your Profile tab. This is where you can manage your account settings, find your listening history, and customize your Spotify experience. Let’s break down the icons and options you’ll find here:

What’s New

The ‘What’s New’ section is your hub for discovering fresh content. It highlights new releases from artists, podcasts, and shows you follow. Let’s explore the icons that help you manage these new releases.

Your Sound Capsule (Premium)

Your Sound Capsule lets you revisit your past listening memories. These icons help you navigate and share those musical memories.

Recent Tab

The ‘Recents’ section keeps track of your listening history. These icons help you understand and interact with your recently played tracks and episodes.

Song Screen (When You Play a Song)

When you play a song, this is the screen you see where you can interact with the song, view lyrics, and do more. Let’s explore the icons and symbols on this screen:

Inside Song Queue Screen

Inside the Queue screen, you will see songs that will be played next. Let’s explore what these three Horizontal lines icons mean.

Reshuffle (Three Parallel Horizontal Line):Hold-n-drag to reshuffle the play order using the three-line icon on the right side of the song.

E stands forExplicit,meaning the lyrics of the song have violent, adult, or offensive words.

Search Tab

Search for songs, albums, artists, podcasts, etc.

Camera Icon

Spotify users cancreate a unique barcodewith an album cover for any song, album, artist, or playlist on Spotify. Anyone Spotify user can then use their camera icon toscanthese bar codes and immediately load the song or playlist shared. Tapping it launches the in-app camera.

Your Library Tab

Podcasts List Page

Spotify also carries podcasts. Since this is an entirely different section, the icons and symbols are slightly different here.

Podcast Player

Just like the music player screen above, there is a podcast player screen too which appears when you are listening to an episode. The options here are slightly different.

Short Videos of Songs in Playlists

Sometimes, within playlists, you’ll find short, looping videos accompanying certain songs. Here’s what the icons in that Shorts video section mean:

Lock Screen

You can access the music or podcast player from the lock screen, too.

Triangle With Three Circles

That’s theAirPlayicon and is visible only on an iPhone or iPad. Tap that icon to connect Spotify with nearby Apple devices like speakers or MacBooks and listen to podcasts.

Spotify app is riddled with several icons and symbols and while some are easy to understand, others you may figure out after tapping on it. But some symbols are just there for information and you don’t know what that means. One such symbol for me was the E icon. I hope this guide on the meaning of Spotify icons and symbols helped clear some air.

Not happy with Spotify or moved to adifferent music streaming service? Learn how todelete your Spotify account permanently.

Gaurav Bidasaria

Gaurav is an editor here at TechWiser but also contributes as a writer. He has more than 10 years of experience as a writer and has written how-to guides, comparisons, listicles, and in-depth explainers on Windows, Android, web, and cloud apps, and the Apple ecosystem.

He loves tinkering with new gadgets and learning about new happenings in the tech world.

He has previously worked on Guiding Tech, Make Tech Easier, and other prominent tech blogs and has over 1000+ articles that have been read over 50 million times.

What Do Icons and Symbols Mean in Spotify