Spotify has added three new controls to its Home feed, announced on 12 November 2026: remove a tile from the top of Home, remove individual items from the Recents shelf, and an expanded “Not interested” option that now covers specific shows and authors.
All three controls work the same way: press and hold the item on your Home feed and choose “Remove from this section” or “Not interested” from the menu that appears.
Removing a tile or a Recents item is cosmetic only — it tidies up what you see, but it does not change what Spotify recommends to you in future.
“Not interested” is different: it tells Spotify you want less of a particular show or author, and it feeds into the recommendations you receive going forward.
The controls are rolling out globally on mobile to both Free and Premium listeners. The rollout is gradual, so they may not appear on your phone immediately — updating the Spotify app is the first step.
Your Home Feed Finally Listens to You
Open Spotify on your phone and the first thing you see is Home: a row of recently played music, podcasts and audiobooks across the top, followed by shelves of recommendations underneath. It is the screen most listeners live on, and until now it has been stubbornly hard to tidy up. A podcast you tried once and abandoned kept staring back at you. An album you finished weeks ago still occupied a prime tile. An audiobook you sampled for five minutes refused to leave.
Spotify has now given listeners a way to take charge. Announced on 12 November 2026, three new Home feed controls let you hide content you are done with and, just as importantly, tell Spotify what you do not want more of. The changes apply to music, podcasts and audiobooks alike, and they are rolling out globally on mobile to both Free and Premium listeners. Two of the controls clean up your screen; the third actually teaches the recommendation system — and knowing which is which is the point of this update.
Control 1: Remove a Tile From the Top of Home
The first control targets the row of recently played content at the top of the Home feed. If an album, podcast or audiobook you have finished with keeps showing up there, you can now hide it. Press and hold the tile, then select “Remove from this section” from the menu. The tile disappears from that spot, making room for something else.
The gesture is deliberately simple — the same long-press that Spotify already uses for other quick actions — so there is nothing new to learn. It also works on any kind of content in that row: a finished album, a podcast series you have lost interest in, or an audiobook you no longer want displayed. Removing something does not delete it from your library, and it does not remove it from your listening history. It simply takes it out of that section of Home.
This is the control most listeners will reach for first, because the top row is the most visible part of the app. It is also the most personal: the tiles there reflect what you actually played, so a stale tile feels like clutter in a way a generic recommendation never does. Clearing it is a small satisfaction, but it is one Spotify users have been asking for, and it is now a two-second job instead of an impossible one.
Control 2: Clean Up Your Recents Shelf
The second control applies the same idea to the Recents shelf further down the Home feed. Where the first control handles the prominent tiles at the top, this one lets you remove individual entries from the Recents list — a single song, episode or audiobook chapter that you do not want sitting in the list any more.
The method is identical: press and hold the item in Recents and choose “Remove from this section”. The item drops out of the shelf, and the rest of the list stays exactly as it was. Spotify stresses that, like the top-row removal, this is purely a cleanup action. It does not change what the app recommends to you later, and it does not affect your library or your play history.
Why have two separate removal controls instead of one? Because they target two different places where the same frustration appears. The top row is a small set of large tiles that dominate the screen; Recents is a longer list you scroll through. Giving each its own removal option means you can tidy both without hunting through settings, and it keeps the gesture consistent — long-press, remove, done — wherever you are on the Home feed.
Control 3: “Not Interested” Now Covers Shows and Authors
The third change is the one with the most lasting effect. Spotify has expanded its “Not interested” option across the Home feed, so you can now use it to say you would like to hear less from a specific podcast show or audiobook author — not just to dismiss a single suggestion.
This is a meaningful widening of a tool that already existed in narrower form. Previously, “Not interested” was mostly a way to brush away an individual recommendation. Now it works at the level of the creator: a podcast you tried once and did not enjoy, or an author whose books keep appearing even though you never finish them, can be quieted at the source. Spotify says those choices feed into future recommendations, so using it tells the app to show you less of that show or author over time.
The distinction is the heart of this update, and Spotify is explicit about it. Removing a tile or a Recents item changes what appears in that section, and nothing else. “Not interested” changes what Spotify recommends to you in future. The first two controls are housekeeping; the third is feedback. Knowing which is which is the difference between a tidier screen and a better feed.
Hiding Is Not the Same as Feedback
It is worth pausing on that distinction, because it is easy to use the wrong control for the job. If you hide a finished album from the top of Home, Spotify will not take that as a signal that you dislike the artist — the album simply stops taking up space. That is the right outcome when you loved the album, finished it, and just do not need to see it any more. But if a podcast keeps reappearing in your recommendations and you never want to hear from that show again, hiding one tile will not solve the problem. The show will come back in another shelf, in another form, because you never told Spotify to stop recommending it.
“Not interested” is the tool for that second case. It is the only one of the three controls that reaches into the recommendation engine, and Spotify pairs it with Taste Profile, its existing tool that lets eligible Premium listeners say what they would like to hear more or less of. Taste Profile remains in beta in the United States and New Zealand, so it is not available to most listeners yet — which makes the expanded “Not interested” option the practical recommendation control for everyone else, right now.
How to Get the New Controls
The new controls are rolling out globally on mobile to Free and Premium listeners, and Spotify says nothing about a desktop or web player version — for now, this is a phone update. Because the launch is a gradual rollout, the features may not appear for every listener immediately. If you do not see them yet, the first step is to make sure you have the latest version of the Spotify app installed from your phone’s app store.
Once the update reaches you, there is nothing to switch on. The controls appear in the long-press menu on Home items, so they are available the moment the rollout lands on your account.
One practical note: the rollout began on 12 November 2026, and Spotify has not given a date by which every listener will have the controls. Gradual rollouts like this one typically take days to a few weeks to reach everyone, so if the long-press menu on your Home feed does not yet offer “Remove from this section”, it is most likely a matter of waiting rather than a problem with your app or account.
Part of a Bigger Push: DJ Voices, Taste Profile and a Cleaner Home
The Home feed controls do not arrive in isolation. Two days earlier, on 10 November, Spotify announced nine new voices for its AI DJ feature, along with a setting that lets Premium listeners switch off most of the DJ’s spoken commentary between songs. The DJ update gives listeners more say over how the app sounds; the Home controls give them more say over what it shows. Together they point in the same direction: Spotify is handing listeners more of the levers that shape their own experience, rather than asking them to accept whatever the algorithm serves up.
What This Means for Spotify Listeners
For most people, the update will feel less like a new feature and more like a missing piece finally arriving. The top of Home will stop showing albums you finished last month. Recents will stop listing the podcast episode you abandoned after ten minutes. And the show that keeps reappearing in your recommendations despite never being played will finally have an off switch that works at the source.
The practical advice is simple. Use “Remove from this section” when you are done with something but still like it — a finished album, a completed audiobook, a podcast series you enjoyed and moved on from. Use “Not interested” when you want less of something — a show that is not for you, an author whose work you keep skipping. Mixing the two up will not break anything, but it will not get you what you want either: hiding does not teach, and flagging something you actually liked would quietly push it out of your recommendations.
It is also worth remembering what the controls do not do. They do not delete anything from your library, they do not erase your listening history, and removing a tile does not change your recommendations. If you are worried about losing something, you are not — the content stays in your library and in search, and it can come back into your feed the ordinary way, through your own listening.
FAQs
Q1: What are Spotify’s new Home feed controls?
A: Spotify announced three new controls on 12 November 2026: remove a tile from the top of Home, remove individual items from the Recents shelf, and an expanded “Not interested” option that now covers specific shows and authors. All three are rolling out globally on mobile to Free and Premium listeners.
Q2: How do I remove a song, podcast or audiobook from Spotify Home?
A: Press and hold the item on your Home feed, then select “Remove from this section” from the menu. This works for tiles at the top of Home and for individual items in the Recents shelf. It hides the item from that section only — it does not delete it from your library or your listening history.
Q3: Does removing something from Spotify Home change my recommendations?
A: No. Removing a tile from the top of Home or an item from Recents is cosmetic only — it tidies up what you see but does not affect future recommendations. Only “Not interested” and Taste Profile feed into what Spotify recommends to you going forward.
Q4: What does “Not interested” do on Spotify Home now?
A: Spotify has expanded “Not interested” across the Home feed, so you can now use it to hear less from specific podcast shows or audiobook authors, not just to dismiss a single suggestion. Spotify says these choices help shape future recommendations.
Q5: Why can’t I see the new Spotify Home controls yet?
A: The controls are rolling out gradually on mobile, so they may not appear on your phone immediately. Make sure you have the latest version of the Spotify app installed, then wait for the rollout to reach your account. Spotify has not given a date by which every listener will have them, and the announcement covers mobile only, not desktop or the web player.
Related reading:
- Spotify is growing fast in audiobooks too — its audiobooks service arrived in India with 3.5 lakh titles
- Another app update worth knowing about — Google Health 5.12 adds blood pressure and pregnancy logging
- Google’s Calculator got smarter in the same November Pixel Drop — Pixel Solver AI and unit conversion
Sources: Spotify Newsroom, “Three New Ways to Shape What You See on Spotify Home” (12 November 2026); RouteNote, “Spotify introduces new Home feed controls to give listeners more control over recommendations” (12 November 2026).
