If you like listening to Spotify on your computer or smart home device, you can actually use your smartphone as a remote to control your music playback!
What You'll Need for a Spotify Remote
To use your phone as a Spotify remote, you'll need the following:
- An iOS, Android, or Windows phone with the Spotify mobile app installed.
- A device to play the music on: this can be a smart home device like the Chromecast, Google Home, or Amazon Echo, or a computer running Spotify in a web browser or desktop app.
- A Wi-Fi connection.
How to Control Spotify Using a Phone
Now you're ready to start listening:
- Open Spotify on your phone and make sure you are connected to the same WiFi network as your computer or smart home device.
- On your phone, start playing the song of your choice.
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You may see a popup message letting you know there's a device available that you can cast to. If you don't, open the now playing screen and tap the Devices Available icon and select the device you want to use to listen to your music.
On your phone, you can navigate to the playlist or album that you're playing and you can use all the features in the Spotify app as a remote. You can scrub back and forth in a song, skip to another song, select a different song from a list of search results, playlist or album. You can also turn the volume up or down.
You can see the process in action in the video below:
You can also start the process on your computer:
- Open Spotify on your phone and computer. On your computer, this method will work both with the desktop or web version Spotify.
- Make sure that you are logged in to your Spotify account on both devices and that you are connected to the same Wi-Fi connection.
- Find song of your choice and start playing it on your computer.
- On your phone, you should now see a pop up screen letting you know where the music is playing.
You can still receive and make phone calls without interrupting playback.