When I pause the Spotify Mac app, it causes my Chrome browser to not play audio

[Warrenlawless]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

MBP

Operating System

High Sierra

My Question or Issue

When I'm playing music on the Spotify Mac app, if I pause Spotify, it causes my Chrome browser to not play any audio. I have to go back and hit Play in Spotify, then Mute Spotify, then go back to Chrome and resume whatever audio I was trying to listen to.

I've got my Chrome and Spotify updated to the latest versions.

[e468]

Using spotify premium, US, on Windows 10 laptop.

When I pause spotify to go watch a video or something in chrome, pausing spotify mutes the video as well. Any sound on chrome is muted whenever spotify is paused.  What??? I can't have the spotify app open on my computer AND use chrome. 

Help?

[Sebasty]

Hey @e468

I just tried out on someone's Win10. They have Windows Store version of Spotify, and pausing Spotify whilst playing a video in Chrome didn't mute the video.

It might have something to do with audio settings, or the audio driver is acting up.

I recommend trying out the steps described in this Microsoft article.

I also suggest taking a look a Windows' communications setting:
1. Find the speaker icon on Taskbar again. Right-click on it and select Sounds.
2. In the opened window go to COmmunications and set Windows to do nothing.

Let me know how it goes. 🙂

[e468]

Nope. Didn't work 😞

[SergioDavid]

Hey @Warrenlawless, welcome to the Community!

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this. We'll do our best to help out though.

Does this happen when you're switching audio outputs? Also, if you haven't already done so, try a quick reinstall to see if it helps.

Let us know how it goes.

[Warrenlawless]

I tried to reinstall but it didn't solve this. Here's the most common
scenario: I have Spotify and a browser open (it happens with Chrome and
Firefox, at least). I'll have music playing in Spotify, then see something
in my browser that I need to hear. So I either click the Pause button in
Spotify for hit the Pause button on my keyboard. When I do either of those,
it pauses Spotify and stops all audio from my browsers.

I can't find anything in settings about this. It doesn't happen when I'm
changing audio outputs, no.

Thanks for your help.

[johbuldmann]

I HAVE FOUND A SOLUTION!!!

this has bugged me for the last several weeks and today I stumbled, by accident on a solution, at least it is working for me! And now I want to share my joy!

In Spotify you have to go to: „Edit -> Preferences -> Display Options“  and then disable „Show desktop overlay when using media keys“. The Media overlay has bugged me as well so i have no problem with turning that off with the positive side benefit of Spotify now not muting my other Audiostreams anymore.

Best regards, Johannes

[Guido]

Hey guys,

It seems that a few users are experiencing this issue. We'd like some more info from you so we can look into this:

• Which web-browser this happens with
• Version of the web-browser
• OS and version
• Spotify version

Feel free to send us over further info that you think might help us and don't forget to vote if youre experiencing this issue as well.

Thanks!

[Katerina]

Hey everyone!

We haven't heard any updates on this in awhile so we'll be moving this thread back to the Help boards. 

If you're having this issue, you can also try the solution @johbuldmann mentions that worked for him:

In Spotify you have to go to: „Edit -> Preferences -> Display Options“  and then disable „Show desktop overlay when using media keys“. The Media overlay has bugged me as well so i have no problem with turning that off with the positive side benefit of Spotify now not muting my other Audiostreams anymore.

We'll be here if you need more help 🙂

[Warrenlawless · Accepted solution]

I actually solved this: it turned out it was an issue with my Bose
bluetooth headphones. I updated the firmware and this doesn't happen
anymore.