I can only play some downloaded songs when offline

[James_Hou]

Premium

Country

United States

Device

iPhone 11 Pro 

Operating System

iOS 16 

My Question or Issue

I started to not be able to play essentially the majority of my downloaded songs when I went offline, and I'm not sure exactly what the problem is mostly because I can play a handful of downloaded songs that seem to have no distinguishable pattern with each other. When I try to play a song, it comes up along with the cover art and everything looks like it's about to play, but the time slider just stays at 0. I originally ran iOS 15.7 (because I hate the UI of 16), but I decided to update my phone to see if it would fix the problem but it didn't. I am reluctant to do a reinstall because I have around 35GB of downloaded music as well as local files that I do not have access to anymore that I don't want to lose. Is there anything that I can do before I try a reinstall?

[Dealmusical]

A mi no me eliminó como 400 canciones de mi lista de me gusta y aparte borro la playlist más grande que había echo yo misma en la app😡😡😡😡😡

[Alex]

Hi there @James_Hou,

Thanks for the post.

Sorry to hear that you're having issues with the downloaded music. Something else you can try before doing a clean reinstall is to log out and back in twice in a row. This will force sync your account with the servers.

@Dealmusical, Hope you don't mind us replying in English, as that's the official language of the Community! Can you clarify what exactly has happened and why did you delete these songs and playlists? Did you have issues playing them offline as well?

Cheers.

[James_Hou]

Hi Alex,

I know you didn't reply to my question, but I tried your solution that you had provided and it didn't seem to work. I was just wondering if there was any way to extract the local files from my phone? If I can do that and put them onto my computer, let's say, it would make reinstalling Spotify feasible. Thanks!

James

[Eni]

Hey @James_Hou, 

Thanks for your reply. 

If you have your local files on your phone, reinstalling the app wouldn't affect them since the app would be able to re-sync them afterwards. Additionally, you can transfer them to your PC anytime you want. 

However, if you don't have your local files on any of your devices, we wouldn't be able to guarantee that you can recover them. 

On another note and to make sure we're on the same page, would you mind sending us a short screen recording of the issue happening so we can take a closer look? You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert Video option in the post editor. You can also upload it to Google Drive and share the link with us (make sure the video has the permissions for anyone to see it).

We'll be on the lookout. 

[James_Hou]

Hello @Eni,

Thank you for the reply. I made a screen recording to show what I mean. In terms of the local file storage, I've never been able to actually save local files on my phone; I've only been able to download them onto my computer and then sync them with my phone. The problem with this, however, is that I've used a few different computers to do this over the time I've had Spotify on my phone, and I don't have those computers with those files anymore. I have been itching to know if there is a way to actually store local files on my phone... is there? Regardless, please let me know if there is anything else you need from me.

---

@Eni wrote:

Hey @James_Hou, 

Thanks for your reply. 

If you have your local files on your phone, reinstalling the app wouldn't affect them since the app would be able to re-sync them afterwards. Additionally, you can transfer them to your PC anytime you want. 

However, if you don't have your local files on any of your devices, we wouldn't be able to guarantee that you can recover them. 

On another note and to make sure we're on the same page, would you mind sending us a short screen recording of the issue happening so we can take a closer look? You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert Video option in the post editor. You can also upload it to Google Drive and share the link with us (make sure the video has the permissions for anyone to see it).

We'll be on the lookout. 

---

[MihailY · Accepted solution]

Hey @James_Hou,

Thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, we can't offer any alternative to a clean reinstall of the app for resolving this issue. However, you should be able to upload local files to your phone using this guide.

We hope this helps. Let us know if you have other questions.