How to Get Rid of Spotify Videos Looping ‘Canvas’
Have you ever selected a song on your phone using Spotify and watched a 5-10 second video loop? This is “Canvas,” a new type of free content added by Spotify last year, similar to Genius’s “Behind the Lyrics” annotations. They are currently attached to new songs by artists such as Ariana Grande, Logic and Demi Lovato. If you listen to any of the best Spotify playlists, you’ve probably seen them already.
I think Canvas is a great idea – essentially a GIF of the album cover – but I prefer listening to Spotify over watching it, so the idea of looping videos endlessly seems like a silly waste of data. Spotify says Canvas is “optimized for very little data and battery,” so I don’t want to overestimate the impact of turning it off, but it’s still something you should consider if you don’t want to be annoying.
Fortunately, turning this feature off is pretty straightforward. On the Spotify iOS or Android app, go to Your Library and click the gear icon in the top right corner to go to the Settings menu. In the settings select “Play”, scroll down to the canvas and turn it off. You can also turn off “Behind The Lyrics” and any other visual features this way.
As Gadget Hacks points out, Spotify will also automatically stop showing you videos on the canvas if you are using Spotify’s “Data Saver” mode, which you can enable from the Settings menu. I would avoid this unless you really need it, as Data Saver also lowers the audio quality of the app.