Spotify app killing play store downloads

[joshw111]

Country: Canada

Samsung Galaxy S10, running Android 10 on the November security patch

For the past couple months, Spotify is killing my Play store downloads. As long as Spotify is installed, 90% of the time I go to download apps, they will get stuck in a "pending" or "downloading" state. Force stopping Spotify will allow the apps to download after waiting a few minutes. I factory reset again last night and everything was working perfectly all day. I downloaded Spotify this evening, and an hour later, Play store downloads were stalling again. As soon as I uninstalled Spotify, they immediately downloaded. This is a major issue and I've been back and forth with Spotify support multiple times and have gotten little to no help. I love Spotify, and don't want to leave, but my patience is nearly gone.

Really hoping someone can help me out here.

Thanks

[joshw111]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your patience while we looked into this.

We've gotten word from the relevant team that such issues can be caused by a faulty Bluetooth connection, which leads to unexpected behavior with some apps. We recommend that you follow these steps and see if the issue gets resolved:

1. Turn Bluetooth off completely on the phone for a period of say 24 hours.
2. Unpair/ Forget every Bluetooth device in the list on your smartphone. You can use this Google guide.

Keep us posted if this does the trick. We’ll keep an eye out for your replies.

[CarlosE]

Hey there @joshw111,

Thanks for reaching out about this and welcome to the Community.

As a first step, we recommend running a clean reinstall of the Spotify app by following these steps. This can be helpful to get rid of any cached files that might be causing trouble.

If the issue persists, can you check if using a different connection like another WiFi network makes any difference?

We also recommend selecting Over any network under Auto-update apps within the Play Store settings and let us know if it happens when using mobile data too.

Keep us posted. We'll be looking out for your reply.

[joshw111]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I have tried all that and the issue still persists. I've even went as far as to factory reset my phone multiple times since the issue began.

Even with those settings tweaks, it's still an issue on other wifi networks and mobile data.

[CarlosE]

​​​​Hey @joshw111,

Thanks for trying and keeping us posted.

We recommend giving these steps a try to remove the Google Play Store app cache and data:

• Head to Settings, then Apps.
• Locate Google Play Store and tap it.
• Underneath the Disable, Uninstall updates, and Force stop buttons, you will see App notifications and other options. Tap on Storage.
• Make sure Google Play is closed and then hit the Clear Cache button.
• If you don’t want to repeat steps, you can clear the data as well.
• Restart your phone.

If that doesn't do the trick, try clearing Play Services and Download Manager app cache and data.

To do so, head back to Apps. In the upper right corner tap the menu button (usually three dots or three lines) and select Show system processes. This will allow you to see system apps. Locate Google Play Services and repeat the same steps - clearing cache and data. You can then restart your device or go straight to the Download Manager app. Once again, clear app data and cache and then restart your phone.

We hope this helps. Keep us in the loop on how it goes.

[joshw111]

Thanks for following up. I have tried these fixes as well a few days ago. They resolved it temporarily, but it near immediately went back to having the same issue. 

I've installed an older version of the app, and the issue is not occurring. The fact that it isn't an issue with the older version makes me believe this is an app issue. Now I am just getting battery usage warnings, which I remember being an issue present in the app a few months back (which went away after a couple updates)

[Ver]

Hey @joshw111,

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

It's important to keep the app up-to-date in order to avoid potential issues. You can see the newest version of the app with these steps. Does the issue persist?

In case you're using any battery optimization or power saving apps, it's a good idea to deactivate them for Spotify.

Let us know how it goes. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[joshw111]

I have been using the latest version of the app until a couple days ago. It seems I have a choice of either using a version of the app from August with no known issues, or a version from October with battery issues, or the current version which has the Play store downloads issue. 

I'm not using any third party battery optimizing application, and I have tested the newest version of Spotify with all of the Samsung battery optimizations disabled, and the issue still persists.

Really hoping I can escalate this issue to some sort of developer team to have this addressed.

[Ver]

Hey @joshw111,

Thanks for keeping us posted 🙂

We can only offer support for the latest version of the app downloaded from our official sources, for example our website.

In order to investigate this further, we'll need more information. Does the issue occur when the app is running, opened or it's in the background?

Keep us in the loop! If you have questions, we are here for you.

[joshw111]

Thanks for keeping with me to troubleshoot this! I truly appreciate it.

I would love to be using the latest version of the app, but unfortunately it more or less breaks many things on my phone, as described. So for now I have to use the old version, or do without this service I'm paying for. All troubleshooting steps described have been performed on the latest version of the application, prior to me starting this thread. I'll gladly download the newest version of the application and test again if there is anything I can try to fix that I haven't already.

It happens about 90% of the time, whether the app is open or not. Sometimes play store will download just fine, but rarely. I have noticed sometimes if I open spotify, it will allow apps to download normally, but this is rare, maybe working 1/20 attempts. Most of the time I have to force stop spotify, wait several minutes, and then the play store will work fine. Since installing the old version of spotify a few days ago, I've had zero instances of this issue and everything is working fine. So it must have been something that was changed in the app since August.

Thanks again for all your help!

[Eni]

Hey @joshw111, 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. 

Could you let us know if you're using an SD card in your phone? 

If so, we suggest that you make a back up of the important info in your SD card and format it before trying again.

Let us know how it goes!

[joshw111]

Thanks for the suggestion Eni. I had not been using an SD card in my phone, but I went and got one just to troubleshoot about a week ago. Freshly formatted, on the latest version of the app, and the issue was still present. The SD card is currently working fine while using the old version of the app.

[Eni]

Hi @joshw111, 

Thanks for all the info you've provided us with so far. We've passed this on to the relevant teams who will take a closer look at what's happening.

Could you let us know if this is happening while Spotify is running either on the background or otherwise, or while the app is completely closed?

Additionally, we suggest that you check if the issue persists using Offline mode. 

On another note, would you mind letting us know the exact old app version that works for you and the latest one that you're having this issue with? You can check this info following these steps. 

Also - sending us a screen recording of the issue happening would come in handy. 

Cheers - We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂

[joshw111]

Sorry for the delayed response. I am out of town for the holidays and will test as soon as I get back. I appreciate the assistance and will update asap.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @joshw111,

Thank you for your reply.

No worries! Take your time 🙂

We're always one reply away.

Happy holidays 🙂

Cheers!

[joshw111]

This seems to happen at any time at all, regardless if I have had spotify open recently, or haven't used it at all. It's pretty random. When the issue occurs, the only way to alleviate it is to force close spotify from the Settings>applications menu (which I should add sometimes takes several minutes to close).

I had tried it in offline mode in my previous attempts, and that did not change the outcome.

The latest version (and all versions for the past few months) has been the one giving me trouble. The working version is 8.5.24.762, which I think was from late summer 2020.

I could send a screen recording, but it would definitely be more than that 5MB maximum attachment size for this forum. Are there any other means of sending it in? It would more or less just be a video of my play store downloads saying "pending" until I force close spotify and wait a few minutes, at which point they will download fine.

Thank you for your help!

[Mihail]

Hey @joshw111,

Thanks for getting back to us.

We've passed the info gathered so far to the relevant team that is looking into this. We'll keep you posted as soon as there are any updates on the matter. In the meantime we'd still appreciate it if you share the exact version number that gets displayed at your end with the build that seems to cause the issue.

A video would also help us pinpoint the root cause of this behavior quicker. You can either compress it or upload it to a video sharing site and post the link here. We'll make sure that it reaches the relevant team.

Keep us posted, we'll be here if you have any questions.

[joshw111]

I just replicated the issue using app version 8.5.89.901, which is the newest version available to me in the play store (non beta).

I've created a screen recording and shared it via Google Drive: (https://drive.google.com/file/d/13xt_0D90fwrPHzRZlACJhh9JPz34_9dg/view?usp=sharing)

You can see the app (MyFitnessPal) is stalled at 99%, which it had been for 20 minutes. Sometimes I will get a partial download, other times it will just say "pending". The last time I used spotify was about an hour prior. Also in the recording, you can see me force stop spotify multiple times (not sure if it just takes time to kill, or if multiple attempts are needed, but this is how I've done it before). I switch back, and the download is still stalled. I then switch back to app settings and force stop spotify again. When it's finally successful (as indicated by the force stop option "greying out"), I then return to the play store and the app finishes downloading immediately.

Appreciate all your help on this.

[Eni]

Hey @joshw111,

Thank you for letting us know this!

We passed your information to the right team. The folks there will investigate this further. We'll keep you posted.

If you have questions, you know where to find us 🙂

[joshw111]

Should I expect any kind of notification if and when there is an update or change to the app I should try?

[Novy]

Hi again @joshw111,

Thanks for getting back to us.

The team in charge is currently looking into it and we'll keep you posted on any news regarding this.

We'll be here if you have any other questions.

Cheers!