Spotify's new Podcast Clips feature wants you to stop screenshotting timestamps

Spotify has finally worked out that half its users were already screenshotting timestamps and texting them to mates, so it built the shortcut for you.

The new Podcast Clips feature landed in May and gives listeners a scissors icon right in the Now Playing screen. Tap it, trim the moment you want, preview it, then send it wherever you like, Spotify Messages, group chats, or straight out to other apps.

It works across audio and video podcasts, and it's rolling out globally on mobile to both free and Premium users, with more shows being added over time. Every clip you save also lands in a "Your clips" folder inside your Library, so the good bits from an episode don't just disappear the second you close the app.

This isn't really about a scissors icon though. It's about discovery, which has always been podcasting's actual problem. Nobody commits an hour to an unknown show off a vague recommendation. A 30 second clip of the single best moment does a lot more convincing, and TikTok already proved that years ago with music.

Spotify clearly knows this. CEO Daniel Ek has been talking about 2026 as a year of "raised ambition" for the company, and the framing behind it is Spotify as a media platform, not just somewhere you stream music. Podcast Clips is a small feature doing a lot of quiet work toward that bigger positioning.

For creators, this is a genuinely useful new distribution channel that costs nothing extra to use. One killer soundbite clipped and shared properly could do more for a show's discovery than another paid ad ever would.

If you've got a podcast, start thinking in clip sized moments instead of hour long episodes. If you're just a listener, go clip something ridiculous your favourite host said last week. That's the whole point.