Now Playing and Library tabs opening automatically

[Alpheus7th]

Plan

Free

Country

Australia

Device

Lenovo ThinkPad X250

Operating System

Windows 10 Pro

My Question or Issue

I do not find the Now Playing tab useful, so I have closed it. However, it constantly reopens itself, usually after ad breaks. It will pop up during the ad, but then it won't close again at the end. It will also expand to its maximum size if I reopen the app, covering half my screen.

The Library sidebar on the left also expands to cover a third of my screen every time I reopen the app, which may be separate, I'm not sure. They are similar behaviours though. Combined with the Now Playing tab, I often have less than a quarter of my screen showing my playlist, which is what I want to see.

[Eni]

Hey there @Alpheus7th, 

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community. Sorry for the delayed reply, we just came across this thread.

First up, we suggest that you try logging out and then logging back in twice in a row. This will trigger a sync between your account and device. 

If this doesn't do the trick, it's well worth running a clean reinstall of the app to get rid of any cached files that might be causing trouble. 

If the issue persists, could you check if the same happens on a different PC? 

We'll be on the lookout.

[Alpheus7th]

Hello,

I have tried both suggested solutions, and neither have produced any effect.

Trying a different device with the same account did seem to solve the problem though. I'd guess based on that that there's something on my computer causing the problem, which didn't get removed during the reinstall.

Thanks for the help.

[Vasil]

Hey @Alpheus7th,

Thanks for letting us know!
I remembered that back in the day the following steps could help out in such situations, so we could give those a try if you'd like:

Open Notepad as an administrator (right-click > Open as Administrator)

1. Go to File > Open, and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
2. Choose All Files instead of Text Documents next to the File Name box
   1. You'll see a handful of files, pick hosts and click Open.
3. When the file is open, you will see a block of text with # in front of each line and might see entries like 0.0.0.0 website.com127.0.0.1 website2.com
4. Check for any entries with Spotify in the address
   1. Examples may look like 0.0.0.0 weblb-wg.gslb.spotify.com0.0.0.0
5. If you do find any lines with Spotify, please remove them
6. Save your changes and restart Spotify
    

Hope this helps! Keep us posted on how things go 🙂

[Alpheus7th]

Hello,

The file you specified didn't contain any mention of Spotify in any form. In fact, there were no lines that weren't commented out with a hash symbol. There was nothing for me to change.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Ivelina]

Thanks for the cooperation, @Alpheus7th.

Does the same thing happen even in the Web Player with your account? 

If you haven't already, you can disable the Now Playing sidebar from opening by going to Settings > Display > Show the now-playing panel on click of play (toggle the button so it's gray).

What you can also do is disable Hardware Acceleration by clicking on the three dots on the top left corner > View and untick Hardware Acceleration. This is to check if it'll make any difference with the app's behavior.

Keep us in the loop.

[Alpheus7th]

Hello,

Testing with the web player, the issue is still present.

I had disabled both of the settings you mentioned before submitting the initial report, so I doubt they are involved. However, I haven't tested with them enabled.

I noticed during testing of the web player that I couldn't skip ads (another bug), but this made me wonder whether skipping or interrupting playback of ads was a part of the issue. The now playing tab seemed to appear regardless of whether I interrupted playback in the web player, and also in the desktop app. I also retested a different computer with this in mind, since I initially tested it by simply letting it play in the background, muted, for an hour, and so I didn't skip the ads. I got the same results as on my own desktop this time - the now playing tab appeared periodically with and without ad interruption.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Maria]

Hey @Alpheus7th,

Thanks for the additional info!

If possible, you can ask a friend or a family member to log into their own Spotify account on your device, to see if the same thing happens to them. However, as a heads up, it seems like it might be related to the specific setups. In this case, unfortunately, we’re not able to confirm if or when your request about the Now Playing View will be resolved.

To guarantee you get the latest features and fixes as soon as we launch them, we also suggest keeping your Spotify app up-to-date.

If anything else appears, the Community is here for you!

[Alpheus7th]

Hello,

I created a second account and logged it into the Spotify app on my computer, and the Now Playing window continued to appear. This issue is not tied to my account specifically.

I am curious as to what you mean by not being able to confirm if this can be resolved - I cannot see how this would be an intended feature, and by my understanding one of the purposes of these forums is to find and resolve bugs, which this is.

Thank you!

[Maria]

Hi @Alpheus7th,

Thanks for checking with another account!

We haven't been getting other reports of this nature, and we are not able to recreate the issue from our end. This is why we can only assume that the behavior lies within the specific setup you have going on. With this in mind, we cannot guarantee when this would be resolved for you, as the root cause quite possibly lies in how the app interacts with the devices, accounts, or an network you use, but doesn't affect every user of Spotify. 

With each new version of the app we change things, which means that in the future, it's possible that whatever was causing the inconsistency would change and not interfere, but we're not able to give a timeframe for that.

We hope this clear things up!

[Alpheus7th]

Hello, it's been a minute.
I've noticed a few things about these behaviours recently, so I'm hoping it can be tracked down now.
Regarding the library and now playing tabs resizing, this occurs consistently when the window is resized through any method, including the 'restore down' button, the Win+arrow shortcuts, and the Win+shift+arrow shortcuts.

The now playing window also seems to consistently open after every ad break now, although I haven't actually tested this yet. I'll pay closer attention to it over the next few days. Especially with the queue now being another tab (which I don't appreciate but that's another thing), I think this is now a more significant issue.

Thanks!