Eyes

Your Playlist on the Screen

A Dinner for Two, a Playlist of Love Songs and a Headache

A song in a music app can play with a video moving behind it.1 This is one of those evenings, in Leila’s kitchen.

  • In Spotify, a song can play with Canvas, a short looping video in place of the album art. Spotify’s settings have a switch to turn Canvas off.1
  • YouTube Music can play a song as its music video. A switch at the top of the player moves between Song and Video, and a setting called Don’t play music videos keeps every song to its audio.2
  • For people with vestibular disorders, motion on a screen can bring on dizziness, nausea and headaches, and the W3C’s accessibility guidelines have a rule about animation for that reason.3
Leila in an apron in her kitchen, looking down at her phone propped against a bowl of fruit, a cutting board and pan beside her

Leila puts on a playlist while she cooks

It is Saturday evening, and Rafael is coming over for dinner. Leila props her phone against the fruit bowl, opens Spotify and puts on a playlist of love songs. On the screen, behind each song, a short video plays in a loop.

Leila chopping onions at the counter with her eyes turned toward the phone leaning on the fruit bowl

Leila keeps looking back at the phone

The disco song Rafael always hums is not on the playlist, so Leila plays it in YouTube Music, and it starts as its music video. She is chopping onions with the phone at the edge of her eye. Every few seconds the picture cuts to something new, and every time, her eyes go to it. She loses her place in the recipe twice.

Leila at the counter with one hand to her forehead, the phone lying face down in front of her

Leila turns the phone face down

Twenty minutes in, she looks up from the cutting board with a headache and a queasy stomach, and she cannot think what she ate. She goes back to the playlist in Spotify, turns the phone face down, leaves the music on and opens the window. Rafael rings the bell soon after.

Twenty minutes into the playlist

Leila had taken the moving pictures for part of how music plays on a phone. She had no idea Spotify and YouTube Music each kept a switch for them, Spotify’s called Canvas, in its content settings, and YouTube Music’s under Data saving.

True to you

What your phone does is up to you. We think so too. So we built TrueTo to make every app behave the way you do. That’s what true to you means.

TrueTo goes into each app and changes the setting the way you would. Every one of them is reversible, one at a time.

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Leila puts on a playlist while she cooks

If Leila had used TrueTo, it would have gone into Spotify and YouTube Music and turned off the video behind the music in each for her.

Leila keeps looking back at the phone

In YouTube Music, the song would have played as audio only, with no video beside her.

Leila turns the phone face down

After dinner, the videos would have been hers to turn on again, in either app on its own, with everything else left as it was.

Canvas

In Spotify, under Settings and privacy and then Content and display, Leila can turn off Canvas herself, in the section headed Videos and Canvas.4 In YouTube Music, under Settings and then Data saving, she can turn on Don’t play music videos.2

Frequently asked questions

Does Spotify Canvas drain battery?

Spotify doesn’t publish Canvas-specific battery data, but looping video playback uses GPU cycles that audio alone doesn’t. Turning Canvas off removes the video rendering layer entirely, which reduces processing load during playback. The setting is in Spotify → Settings and privacy → Content and display → Videos and Canvas → Canvas.

Does turning Canvas off apply to all my devices?

Yes. Canvas is a per-account setting rather than a per-device one, so switching it off in the Android app switches it off everywhere else you’re signed in. On a family plan, the plan manager can set it for members.

Can Spotify Canvas cause motion sickness or headaches?

Canvas plays a looping video clip behind every song that has one. Continuous ambient motion is a known trigger for vestibular discomfort, including nausea and headaches, especially for people with motion sensitivity or migraine. Turning Canvas off removes the video loop entirely.

Sources

  1. Schoon, Ben, “Spotify for Android testing option to disable those music videos that replace album covers,” 9to5Google, March 11, 2019.
  2. Google, “Turn on audio-only or video mode,” YouTube Music Help, read October 12, 2026.
  3. W3C, “Understanding Success Criterion 2.3.3: Animation from Interactions,” Web Accessibility Initiative, read October 12, 2026.
  4. Spotify, “Video settings,” Spotify Support, read October 12, 2026.