Time out of sync between web and desktop client

[awakcon1234]

Plan

Premium

Country

Vietnam

Device

Macbook Pro 2019

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I'm having an issue where the time displayed for the currently playing song is different between the Spotify desktop app and the Spotify web player. When I play the same track on both platforms at the same time, their timers do not match up. But when I open two instances of the Spotify web player on separate browser windows and play the song on one of them, the playback times on both web clients match perfectly.

I've verified this problem occurs consistently every time I compare the two during song playback. I've attempted to clear the application cache and reinstalled the Spotify Desktop app, but the issue persists. Please see the attachment where the top one is the web client and the bottom one is the desktop client.

[Joan]

Hi there @awakcon1234,

Thanks for reaching out. When using Connect, the two apps should indeed stay in sync, but because the information and inputs need to be communicated to the servers and back and because different apps communicate in different ways, a delay of a few seconds between them is to be expected. Have you ever seen a more significant desync between the two? Does this happen with different networks as well?

Let us know how it goes.

[kaworu_bloodpaw]

Hey @awakcon1234,

Along with what @Joan said, please be sure you sync the clock of both computers. I've seen the time be off via Connect when the time is not completely synced (a few seconds fast or slow on your computer.)

[awakcon1234]

Hi @Joan and @kaworu_bloodpaw

Thanks for your response, there is a significant drift between two apps, around 5 to 15 seconds to be precise. I haven't tried to test this on a different networks, but I found out one thing is the time sync properly when the web client is the host playing the song, and the issue happend when the desktop app is the host playing the song instead.

Also about the clock of each computer, I don't think this might be the issue because I can reproduce this on a same computer, running both web and desktop app.

There is also another issue when changing the volume in the app, the out of sync time got much worse. Please see the attachment bellow to better see the issue I'm mentioning.

[Maria]

Hey @awakcon1234,

Thanks for sll the additional info! 

If possible, you can double-check if the same thing occurs when using a different network. While we’re not able to confirm if or when your specific request about the syncing displayed time will be fixed, we recommend keeping your Spotify app up-to-date to guarantee you get the latest features and fixes as soon as we launch them.

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