App crashing, lagging and battery overheating on iOS devices

[Yordan]

We've received reports from iOS users about the app getting progressively slower after opening until it eventually crashes after a couple of minutes of use.

[bilbobeuli]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

iPhone 13 mini

Operating System

iOS 17.5.1

My Question or Issue

Since the last update (8.9.58) the Spotify app has become practically unusable for me. As soon as I start using the app, it starts to lag more and more until it eventually freezes and crashes, after about 1-2 minutes. My battery also starts to heat up as soon as I open the app and gets way too hot. 

[Mattct]

I’m having the same issue, lag, app crashing and draining battery on the iPhone XR. Please help!

[Ivelina]

Hey there @bilbobeuli,

Thanks for posting this thread!

As a very first step I recommend a clean reinstall of Spotify on your phone as it often helps resolve different performance issues and it also includes the steps to clear the cache which may be corrupted. Thanks in advance if you've already done this. 

Would you mind making sure that you've got enough free storage on your phone and does the same thing happen with different apps? 

One more step I recommend is going to Settings on your iPhone > Spotify and make sure that Background App Refresh is Off.

We'll be on the lookout for your response 🙂

[bilbobeuli]

Hello Ivelina, thank you for your response!

I’ve just downloaded the Spotify app again, and the problem seems to be fixed with recent update. Before when the problem still happened, as soon as I would go to an artist’s page, that was when the app started lagging and heating up my phone. 

I did have enough free storage on my phone, and the problems didn’t happen with any other app. 

I will try the tip with turning off background app refresh. 

[bilbobeuli]

Update: The problem is still there. Just now my phone got completely frozen and I wasn’t able to use it for about 30 seconds, and my battery is again scorching hot. This immediately happened when browsing artist pages. 

[olliechallis]

Having exact same issue. App freezes then lags whole phone till it crashes.

iphone 13

[AlejaR]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for your replies here and for the info shared.

@bilbobeuli, to continue investigating further, it'd be awesome if you could send us the following info:

• The exact Spotify version you're running as per today.
• A video recording of this behavior. Please attach it in your next reply in mp4 format, or you can also upload it to YouTube or Google Drive and make it public, so we can visualize it.
• Does this happen when using other apps?
• Are other apps running in the background when this happens?

@olliechallis, in this case, would you mind sharing with us the exact troubleshooting steps you've tried so far? That way we'll avoid repeating any steps. You can start by trying what @Ivelina mentioned here.

If none of that does the trick, please send us the info we requested above in this reply.

Keep us in the loop!

[RioJ]

I’m also having this issue on both my 2nd generation iPad Pro and my IPhone SE (2020). I just updated the app to 8.9.60 on both devices and it didn’t fix the issue. I don’t normally have any problems with any other apps lagging/freezing/overheating my phone or iPad but if I try to use basically any function in the Spotify app while also playing music the whole device starts lagging. First the music starts buffering, hitting the pause button changes the appearance of it almost immediately but it takes seconds for the music to pause, all the animations become laggy, eventually just trying to exit the app to close it becomes a struggle since it freezes the whole device. I’ve tried clearing cache, deleting and reinstalling the app, running it without any other apps open in the background, nothing works. 

[bilbobeuli]

The Spotify version I’m currently running is 8.9.60.458.

It is literally impossible to screen record this behavior, because as soon as the Spotify app crashes, so does the screen record feature. I’ve just tried it twice and both times the screen record would not save after the Spotify app has crashed. 

No, this does not happen when using any other apps, only with Spotify. 

Yes and no, sometimes app are running in the background, sometimes the only app I have running is Spotify. 

Spotify has become unusable for me for the past two weeks now. My phone is very hot again right now, and the app just freezes up after browsing through my artists. 

[MihailY]

Hey @RioJ and @bilbobeuli,

Thanks for the info.

@RioJ, can you confirm this only happens when opening artist pages as it does for @bilbobeuli? @Mattct, @olliechallis, it'd be great if we can get your input on this as well 🙏

Just FYI, this has been forwarded to our tech team who are currently investigating the issue.

We'll be on the lookout for your replies.