Spotify app crashing when used within Android Auto

[JP1006]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

UK

Device

Samsung Galaxy J5

Operating System

Android Version 9

For the last five days I've been unable to use Spotify in the car and, afterwards, the app then crashes on my phone when I try to use it on its own.  

In the car I use the Android Auto app to listen to music on Spotify. The connection could be coincidence - the main time I listen to Spotify is in the car, so it might be that the issue has nothing to do with Android Auto and it's just the situation I was in when first having the problem.  There do seem to be a lot of queries, on here and other sites, with people having very similar issues to mine which is why I'm reporting it here rather than with AA. 

Since the start of the week the Spotify app will play one song (if I'm lucky) and then crash or lag so badly it may as well have stopped working.  Sometimes the timer stays stuck at 0.00 but the song seems to be 'playing' in silence as after a couple of minutes the screen will show the next song and so on.  Sometimes the screen will only show the Play/Pause icon (usually the symbol for Pause) and none of the other controls.  Sometimes, if I try to move between Home/Recently Played/Search Results, the screen will stay black and look as though the app is buffering.  If I try to skip to the next or previous songs there'll be a delay in the screen changing but rarely does any of the song play.

What I've found is that once Spotify has crashed within Android Auto, it then crashes when I try to use it by itself.  I get all the same kind of problems - slow to respond, empty buffering screens, no sound - plus when I close the app the music continues for what seems like a random length of time.

I've tried all the suggestions I've found online - restarting my phone, clearing the app's cache, checking offline mode, closing the app, deleting and reinstalling, checking my phone has enough memory etc.  Nothing makes a difference.  Even though Spotify initially seems to work OK, as soon as I try it via Android Auto it crashes and then I have problems with the app itself afterwards.

I'm not having issues using Spotify on any other device and no one else on the same Premium Family plan seems to be having any problems.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @JP1006,

Thank you for your reply.

In this case we suggest that you perform a clean reinstall of the app. This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

Also - can you log in with another account on the device to see if the issue persists?

If that doesn't do the trick - can you let us know which version of the app you have?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂

Cheers!

[JP1006]

Hi

Thanks for coming back to me.  I'd already done a 'clean install' and it made no difference.   The Version I've currently got is 8.5.85.894

Since posting I've been playing around with the phone's/app's setting though and seem to have got things working.  I'd already checked that 'Optimise Battery usage' wasn't enabled for Spotify as I'd read this could cause problems.  I then disabled 'Allow background activity' - which made an immediate difference and let me use Spotify on its own and through Android Auto without any problems.

It's not a complete fix, of course.  Spotify regularly informs me that I should alter my settings and when I shut down AA, Spotify doesn't shut down with it.  I've also had the odd occasion when searches result in eternal buffering or bring up incorrect results (both in Spotify itself and via AA).  However, as things are, I can work around the less than ideal aspects of the fix and listen to Spotify in the car again.

Obviously, I didn't change anything in either of the apps or my phone before starting to have problems which makes me suspect it was an update for one of the apps or the phone itself which triggered them.  I wasn't aware of any updates to the phone's system being installed, but ones for the apps are all done automatically.

I'll get someone else to sign into their Spotify account on my phone later and let you know whether it works as normal for them.

[Mihail]

Hey again @JP1006,

Thank you for your post and for getting back to us.

We're happy to hear you got things working and will assist you further until the whole experience has been ironed out 🙂 Whether or not you can replicate the remaining issues with another account would help us a lot in identifying their root cause. In the meantime if you could try it out with a different network, that would also contribute a lot to the troubleshooting.

It's also a good idea to check if there are any firmware updates for your car's head unit, your smartphone or for the android auto app itself. If you find any, make sure to restart the device after applying them. this is a simple, but often overlooked step.

Keep us posted, we’ll keep an eye out for your reply.