Spotify desktop doesn't play anything nor shows playlist songs

[Quiterio14]

Plan

Free

Country

Portugal

Device

Desktop (RTX 3060, intel i7 7th gen, 16gb ram)

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

My Spotify app doesn't play anything, if I use the web browser I can do everything I want normally but the application on desktop just doesn't work, it shows everything right in the middle below "Good evening" with the last albums I played and playlist but in the "Your Library" section acts like I don't have any playlist with "Create your first playlist", on the app my username is the digits that appear on the URL for my profile and not my actually username. When I try to open any of my playlists it just tries loading it forever and doesn't, when I open an album it shows everything correctly but I can't play anything. I already tried doing everything on the firewall and System32, deleting everything I have on my pc from Spotify and reinstalling. Spotify support isn't really helpful as they always suggest the same things over and over again.

[Lyubka]

Hey @Quiterio14,

Welcome to the Community and thanks for reaching out. 

First off, open the Desktop App's Settings and turn off "Enable hardware acceleration". This setting is located under Compatibility then restart Spotify. After you toggle it off, the setting should look like this.

As a second step, we'd suggest that you disable any antivirus or ad-blocking software that might interfere with the app's performance on your PC. 

Lastly, you've mentioned that you've performed some actions in System 32, however, it's also worth checking your hosts files - steps for this can be found here.

In case the issue persists, we'd like you to try to reproduce this with a different account. If a family member has a Spotify account, could you ask them to log in on your device to see if the app behaves the same way?
 

Hope something here helps. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have further questions 🙂 

[Quiterio14]

I did everything you asked and I logged in with another account, nothing was solved though and I still can't play any song. When I tried to login there was a message about the firewall but by disabling it it disappeared. But then with the same settings I went back to login into my main account and the firewall error occurred again so I guess it's something with my firewall, but it persists even if I disable it.

[Lyubka]

Hey @Quiterio14,

Thanks for keeping in touch.

As you mentioned this issue could be caused by an active firewall on your device, which might be blocking certain networking ports. We'd recommend that you check this again and make sure that your firewall is not blocking Spotify's connection to the internet. More info on how to do that here.

It's also a good idea to try connecting to another network (like a mobile hotspot) to check if everything works as expected while using different network connection.

Lastly, if you're using a VPN, we suggest that you disable it since it can affect the app's performance on your PC. 

Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes. 

[Quiterio14]

As I had said I already had tried switching the firewall off, it didn't work. I also tried connecting to my mobile data to see if it would work with another network and it also didn't work. At this point I don't know what to say else cause nothing works and I've already stated everything that has happened, at this point I just start thinking it might be more of a software problem than a problem on my part.

[Lyubka]

Hey @Quiterio14,

Thanks for getting back to us and for the troubleshooting you've tried so far.

Something else you can try out is deleting the prefs file, which holds information about the currently logged it account:

1. Open Spotify and make sure it’s running in the background.
2. Open the Task Manager in Windows and switch to the Details tab.
3. Locate the process Spotify.exe, right-click it and select Open file location to open the Spotify folder. There you'll find a file called prefs, which holds info about the currently logged in account. Simply delete it.
4. While in the Spotify folder, you'll also find a Users folder. Open it and delete its contents as well.
5. Restart the Spotify app.

Keep in mind that if you manually add lines to the prefs file we can't guarantee the app will work as intended.

Also, before you log in, click on Settings and change the proxy type to "No Proxy". Screenshot for visibility below. 

In case the issue persists, would you mind checking this thread here and trying the workaround that the user suggested in their reply. You can see it as a solution in the post.

Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes. 

[Quiterio14]

I did that and installed the new intel drivers and the problem persists, I thought it would be this time that the issue would be fixed but it wasn't

[Alex]

Hey there @Quiterio14,

Thanks for the reply.

There is one more thing you can try:

1. Start Windows in Safe Mode
2. Uninstall the Spotify app and remove all related files that you can find. Sometimes when you uninstall the Spotify app, not all related cache files are removed, which causes issues on some systems
3. Start Windows normally
4. Install the Spotify app. If you've previously had it installed from the website, try installing it from the MS Store instead and vice versa. 

I've had similar issues in the past with my Desktop and this has worked, but in some cases, this depends on the device itself and the drivers installed. 

If none of that helps, we suggest using the Web Player for the time being, even though I know it's not the same experience. 

Hope this helps.

[Quiterio14]

Yeah I'll stick with the webplayer I guess but it's odd that the spotify app is the only one which doesn't work on my pc, because you'd think if it was some driver issue more apps wouldn't work.