Ghost app / unable to reinstall Spotify

[TheYoungMunk]

Plan

Premium

Country

India

Device

iPhone 7

Operating System

iOS 14.2

My Question or Issue

I was having sync issues between my playback history on Spotify iOS and Android. I contacted Twitter support and they advised me to uninstall apps from both phones and perform a clean (re)install, after they did some backend changes.

Now when I try to re-install the Spotify app on my iPhone, the App Store says the app is present (see screenshot) whereas I neither see the icon nor the app. I tried network reset, soft reset (Vol Down + Power button trick), signing out/in from App Store and iPhone but nothing has worked.

Every time the phone restarts, I see a square blank icon with lines (see screenshot) with Spotify written beneath. The App Library says app isn't installed. What is happening and how do I resolve this? 

[Jeremy]

Hey there @TheYoungMunk,

Thank you for your post here in the Community. We're happy to help.

Can you try clean you cache and cookies to see if that helps?

It would also be great if you can try with another internet connection to see if the issue persists.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[TheYoungMunk]

Can you try clean you cache and cookies to see if that helps?

Tried, didnt help.

It would also be great if you can try with another internet connection to see if the issue persists.

Tried on 2 different wifi networks + 1 LTE network; no difference.

I believe the issue is with leftover files, not with the network.

[Jeremy]

Hey again @TheYoungMunk,

Thank you for your post and confirmation.

Can you try to restart your phone?

Also - what occurs if you click on open?

Cheers!

[TheYoungMunk]

@Jeremy of course I have restarted my phone (several times indeed!). Please see my original post where I have even tried the soft reset (Vol Down + Power button) sequence.

Nothing happens when I click on OPEN. The screen remains as-is.

Also, I am on an iPhone I cant really 'clean cookies'. And since I cannot access the Spotify app (I uninstalled it!) therefore I cant go back and clean the cache anymore.

This is the FIRST time ever that I have encountered such an issue on any app on my iPhone.

[Jeremy]

Hey again @TheYoungMunk,

Thank you for your reply.

We can see that you performed a clean reinstall but we have some extra steps in this article. There's some more steps to help thoroughly uninstall the app from your phone, so if you didn't follow the steps in there when performing it before, we'd highly recommend doing so.

Keep us posted 🙂

Cheers!

[TheYoungMunk]

@Jeremy No, I did not follow that article. Your support team at Twitter gave me a link (https://support.spotify.com/kw-en/article/reinstallation-of-spotify/) which provides basic steps for uninstall (same as any other app on an iPhone).

I would love to uninstall it properly, but HOW do I get back into the app? Neither can I remove it from my phone now (see the screenshot showing the ghost icon) nor can I overwrite it via App Store.

[Jeremy]

Hey @TheYoungMunk

Are you able to follow any steps from our Spotify answers that don't involve app access?

We also suggest that you have a look at this article.

Keep us posted. We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[TheYoungMunk]

@Jeremy - in a nutshell, I cant do anything now after I 'tried' to uninstall the Spotify app. 

I have contacted Apple Support but they aren't of any help either. I have been asked to bring my phone in for an inspection, and frankly, I don't want to do that *just* for one app. My phone is perfectly fine otherwise. I'll rather stop using Spotify altogether if neither you nor Apple can help me out.

I saw the link that you shared and I have already tried all the mentioned steps. Neither of them have worked for me.

[TheYoungMunk · Accepted solution]

@Jeremy I found a solution that worked.

https://bit.ly/36qDpGj

To my knowledge this is the ONLY way you can solve my issue. The OP over at Stack Exchange had the exact same problem with Spotify (and Linkedin) apps upon uninstall.

However, take this as a feedback to your app development team because this has never happened with uninstallation of any other app for me (and I have used countless apps in the last 15 years!).

[Katerina]

Hi @TheYoungMunk,

We're happy to know that everything is working properly. We appreciate your feedback about this and will pass it onto the right team.

In the meanwhile, we hope you don't mind us marking your post as a solution to make it more visible to other Community users experiencing this. 

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to let us know.

Have a good one 🙂