Now playing screen freezes, app not operable anymore

[_0TheLizard0_]

Plan

Premium

Country

The Netherlands

Device

(Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G)

Operating System

(Android 11, One UI 3.1)

My Question or Issue

Hi Guys,

Difficult story, i'll try my best to explain. 

Since a month and a half I have weird but very annoying problems with playing music on Spotify. 

Imagine: starting up Spotify and start listening to music (on phone speaker or via bluetooth does not matter.) After an uncertain amount of time (could be 10 minutes or 3 hours) the 'Now Playing' screen freezes while still displaying the current playing song.  But the music thats playing continues.

Play button says the song is paused at the moment. But it's not.

When messing around with it:

Press play again, play button changes to 'play'. Now playing screen keeps stuck on the song that froze a second ago. Music is still playing. When hitting pause, music pauses too. You'll notice that after 10 minutes, 4 songs ahead, the song that froze is still on the 'Now Play' screen and have not changed to another song thats playing.

I'll add a screenshot to illustrate/elucidate it a bit.

As you see the song seems paused, but is actually playing another song then thats displayed on the screenshot

There are two ways (I mentioned) to temporarily fix this issue:

1. Reboot phone, and the situation starts all over.

2. Force stop the app Spotify, that's a temporarily fix too.

What have I tried:

- Reinstalled of Spotify itself but the problem keeps existing.

- I've tried to install a Spotify .apk from the end of 2020. Did behave as normal.  Then updated the old version to the latest one, problem continued, explained as above.

- Software updated my phone, didn't do any good too.

I don't know what to try anymore, music is part of my life 🙂 Help!

[Alex]

Hi @_0TheLizard0_,

Thanks for sharing this extensive description with us.

Sorry to hear that you're having such an experience with the app.

We'd recommend running a clean reinstall of the app. Please follow the steps from this Spotify Guide exactly, as this will assure that all app data is cleared completely, before reinstalling.

Also, make sure that Battery optimization is not enabled for Spotify from the system app settings, as well as that the app is granted all permissions. These settings could be hindering the performance of the app.

Keep us posted on how you get on with this.

Cheers.

[mbenak]

Hi!

Premium user here.

I have the very similar situation.

After switching to the new phone (from Samsung Galaxy S8 to Samsung Galaxy S21+) Spotify mobile app started to behave badly. 

I use Spotify desktop on Windows 10, Android app on my mobile phone, Spotify app on my Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, Spotify on Android Auto in my Hyundai i40 car, Spotify app on my smart TV (Samsung, not sure which model, some older one) and on my internet radio box which supports Spotify connect (Auna CD Connect). Everything used to work smoothly before. But freezing of Android app started recently, very similar as described by original poster.

I'm not sure is this due to the new Android version, new Spotify app version or something else.

The simptoms are the following:
- app freezing completely
- app playing but the "playing now" window is frozen and it doesn't update when skip to new track

- app doesn't start at all

I tried everything suggested:

- force stop

- clear cache

- clear data

- reinstall completely.

This is very annoying. I originally subscribed to Spotify because of Spotify connect functionality which is veri convenient and I liked it a lot. But now it is frustrating. I have to intervene almost daily. 

Please help.

Thanks.

Tech data about my mobile phone:

Android 11

One UI version 3.1

Spotify app version 8.6.64.1081

[_0TheLizard0_]

Hey, thanks for your reply's guys!

The reinstall manual did not do any good too. My way of fixing this through
the day is to constantly force stop the app and it will work for another
round untill the problem appears again.

[mbenak]

Thanks! I do the same, but this is very annoying. I just want to listen to the music 🙂

[Alex]

Hi folks,

Thanks for the posts.

Can you let us know if you've made sure that Battery Optimization/ Saver is not enabled for Spotify?

Also, let us know if this happens when listening to music from the phone itself, or when you have headphones connected?

Cheers.

[_0TheLizard0_]

Hi!

Battery saver is off. The individual settings for Spotify energy saving is
off too.

It doesn't matter if you're listening through the phone itself or a
bluetooth connection.

Thanks!

[mbenak]

Hi!

Battery optimization is off for Spotify app. Battery saver is off.

I will let you know about behavior of the app with and without headphones.

[mbenak]

HI!

I still have issues with Android app. During playback the image of the track played is not displayed, as well as images on the queue track list. 

This is the same no matter how do I listen to Android app: through Android auto, through wired headphones (using USBC connector), or without headphones. All previous suggestions followed. I still need to force stop the app daily, but images are not displayed 😕

[Mario]

Hey @mbenak,

Thank you for posting again on the Community.

There seems to be a newer version of the Spotify app out for Android, go ahead and update it, to see if the situation changes afterwards. One more thing it'd be great for you to try is to log in and out from your mobile app two times in a row, which should shake things up a bit.

Hope this does the trick for you, reach out if you need more help!

[mbenak]

Hi!

In the meantime my app has been updated to the current version.

I tried to logout several times in a row. Nothing changed. Still the album images are not displayed on the playing now window and on the queue lists. Not for all lists, but for some of them (about half of lists).

I really don't know what to do. I can delete data and cache, than clean reinstall. Will try later tonight and let you know. 

This is very frustrating. Previously everything worked fine. 

[mbenak · Accepted solution]

Hi again!
I've deleted data and cache, uninstalled the app, then installed it clean. So far so good. It seems that it works normally. I will post here my experience in a couple of days.
Thanks for support.

[Mihail]

Hey @mbenak,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Happy to hear that the issue has been resolved after doing this troubleshooting together, and let's hope your experience remains smooth and undisturbed!

Do keep us posted. We'll be on the lookout in case you need a hand with anything else.