Every music streaming apps have its pros and cons. Spotify isn’t an exception. Here are a few things I love about Spotify:
- It’s a cross-platform service. Meaning I can use it on a computer or tablet without needing my iPhone.
- It has a free subscription plan. You don’t have to spend a single dime
- Spotify has tons of music to choose (According to this page, there are 4 million songs that “Have Never Been Played Once.”)
Why I dislike Spotify?
- The app’s UI is a bit dark and complicated aka not my taste
- Limitations within the free plan
- No music download option
- Lack of explicit control
Some people have asked me why I’m still using Spotify even though I hate the service so much. Well, that’s because I have a jailbroken device and there are several Cydia tweaks for Spotify that allows me to fix these problems.
The following packages will let you enhance your music listening experience and get rid of things you may not like in Spotify.
Spotty
Let’s start our list with a simple tweak. Spotty will add an album art next to each song in your playlist view. These album art are cached so that when you go offline, they can still continue to display without an internet connection.
Lightify
Earlier, I mentioned that one of the reasons why I don’t like Spotify is because of their dark theme. This tweak called Lightify should let you change the app into a much brighter theme.
Besides, with these lighter colors, I was able to navigate through the app faster and easier. After you install it from the BigBoss repo, go to the Settings page and enable Lightify.
SpotAlarm
Ever want to set one of your favorite Spotify songs as the alarm? Wouldn’t be cool and motivative to wake up to it, right? SpotAlarm will make the magic happen.
The first thing you want to do is install it from the BigBoss repo (free). Then open the Spotify app > pick a song > tap the Share button > and copy the link. Then, go to SpotAlarm’s setting page and paste that URL.
Keep in mind that SpotAlarm will only work if you disable Passcode and Touch ID. Furthermore, it will require an internet connection to stream the song.
Amplify and Clarify
These are two separate tweaks, but they share common characteristics, so I’m going to put them together. Both are paid tweaks which mean you will have to pay for them.
Clarify will enhance your Spotify app by:
- Adding background downloads
- No Blur
- Hide Recently Played
- Turn on Always Private Session
Amplify is also packed with several new features for your Spotify app.
- Sleep timer
- Show your status bar while in Now Playing screen
- Keep Repeat State
- QuickScroll
- and many more
Radish
There is a time and place for everything, right? How would you feel if you have your Spotify playing at a family dinner and all of the sudden an explicit song start playing?
This scenario seems fine if only adults are present. That’s a big no-no if there are children around.
What should I do?
Sadly Spotify doesn’t care. Users can’t disable or set a particular time when explicit songs are not allowed in the app. Luckily, if your iPhone is jailbroken, there is a new jailbreak tweak called Radish that could resolve this problem.
If you can’t jailbreak your iOS device yet then switch over to another music streaming apps such as Pandora, Apple Music, or Tidal. I’m sure Spotify isn’t the only application you guys have.
How to stop Spotify from playing explicit songs in iOS
- Launch Cydia and reload sources
- Add the following repository: http://repo.ioscreatix.com/
- Download and install Radish tweak from there
It’s pretty easy to activate and use this feature. Once you installed it, open the official Spotify app and go to its Playback Settings in the settings panel.
You can turn Radish on and off anytime from there. This is useful because the tweak doesn’t take away your ability to listen to explicit music. Instead, it will only block Spotify from playing when you want it to.
If you’re a developer, you can find the source code for this Radish tweak from Github or click here.
SpotifySiriControls
If you use Siri on a daily basis, you have got to install SpotifySiriControls. You can easily control Spotify using Siri with the following pre-set commands.
- Search for [Artist] on Spotify
- Play [Song title] on Spotify
- Search [Musician] on Spotify
The only drawback about SpotifySiriControls is that it will only work if users have Assistant+ (a premium tweak) installed.
DefaultSpot
To quickly play music on your iPhone, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen (to bring up Control Center) and then press the Play button.
But most of the time the music being played are from your stock Music app (now Apple Music). That happen because the Music app is your default music player.
If you have all your songs in Spotify, it’s understandable to make Spotify your default music player. From now on, just activate the Control Center, tap the Play button, and a song from your playlist will start playing.
DefaultSpot is now available to install for free from the BigBoss repository.
After getting most of these Cydia tweaks, I can happily say that my Spotify app on the iPhone is much better now. I was able to get rid of the dark theme, decorating the internal app with album art, and restrict explicit songs from playing at certain occasions.
Is there tweaks for other music streaming apps?
Hell yeah!! We’ve made a couple of compilations for these. Check them out below.
