Tired of switching between your fitness app and your music app during your workouts? The new Strava-Spotify streaming partnership aims to solve that.
As long as you have a Spotify account, you can sync it with Strava and see music controls, playlists, and recommendations right inside the fitness app. Connecting the two is simple, but if you need help, here’s how to use Spotify in Strava and add some much-needed thump to your runs and reps!
How to use Strava’s Spotify playback controls in the app
1. Install and sign in to both Strava and Spotify first, or create accounts if needed. NBYou can use Spotify free or Spotify Premium on Strava, although the latter gives you more options.
2. In the Strava app for Android or iOS, tap register Tab as if you were starting an activity, and then click Music note symbol.
3. “Stream Spotify on Strava” will appear; handle Open Spotify to bring up a mini Spotify menu.
4. Select the color green Click to listen to Spotify icon; You should be taken to Spotify.
5. Approves To allow Strava to “view your Spotify account data” and “take actions in Spotify for you.”
You’ll be taken back to the Strava app, where you can start playing or switch between your Spotify playlists and recommendations. You’ll see the Spotify logo right inside the Record tab once you start your workout; Tap it to see what’s currently playing.
On Strava, you can swipe left and right between four automatically generated sections like “Made for Your Name” or “Popular Radio.” You can also click on the area showing the song name and the play/skip/favorite buttons to see what’s next in the queue.
If you want to choose something that isn’t there, you’ll have to Click on the Spotify icon at the top left of the menu to bring you back to the app. Once you’ve queued up the right playlist, you can go back to Strava and — if you have Spotify Premium — select specific songs from that list.
Why does Spotify keep disconnecting from Strava?
Once you know how to use Spotify in Strava, reconnecting the two apps for your next workout is easy. But every time you start a new workout on Strava, or even pause your Spotify playlist for more than 30 seconds, you’ll have to “tap to listen to Spotify” again, which will take you to the app, and bring up the “authorization”-up window, Then back to Strava.
Fortunately, it only takes a few seconds on a fast phone, but it’s a little annoying to do it repeatedly. Maybe it’s a way to make sure you don’t keep using Spotify in Strava after your Premium subscription ends, or something about how phones handle background apps.
on this Strava help page (Opens in a new tab)the representative says that “re-opening the application is required to reconnect and cannot be prevented”, so it seems that we have to get used to this extra step.
Can you use other music streaming services with Strava?
Unfortunately, Spotify and Strava appear to have an exclusive partnership, at least for now. So if you use other top music streaming services like YouTube Music, Tidal, Amazon Music or Apple Music, you will have to go back and forth from one app to another.
Of course, if you buy a fitness smartwatch that has music playback controls or music storage, you can skip past songs there, or record workouts from your watch and export them to Strava so you can keep your favorite music app open on your phone at all times.
As a side note, if you ever decide to cancel your Spotify, and want to un-sync the app from Strava, simply log into Spotify on your web or mobile browser and go to spotify.com/account/apps (Opens in a new tab). You will see a list of synced apps and you can tap on it Remove access next to Strava to end the connection.
However, this is a great feature for athletes, since Strava is our pick for the best running app out there, and this partnership makes it much easier to stay in the zone during workouts rather than switch between apps trying to maintain the right cadence.