Application slowness

[Mlakio]

Plan

Premium

Country

EU

Device

Samsung Galaxy

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

Hello,

Since May, 10 the application on my phone works extremely slow. Music is played ok, except sometimes next track is loading ~5 seconds, but it takes to load any artist's page, album, playlist or queue around 1 minute. Sometimes, it takes few seconds to stop/play a track. I re-installed the app (current version is 9.1.48.1663), cleared cache and app data, tried different internet operators. Other apps are working well. Before 10th of May everything worked fine (except really big playlists or history)

[Billy-J]

Hey @Mlakio, thanks for reaching out to the Community!

This type of issue can be related to several factors. Let's check a few things to narrow down the cause of this issue.

• Do you have a large collection in Your Library - playlists, albums, Liked Songs etc.? Keep in mind that this can affect the app's performance. If you have large playlists, you can try splitting them into smaller ones to see if that helps. 
• Double-check your internet connection. Slow responses might be related to network issues. You can try unplugging your router from the power > waiting for a couple of minutes > plugging it back. It's also worth trying with a different network to check if the same happens. 
• Does the same happens on other devices? If it's only happening on one specific device, make sure to check if there's enough storage space on it and if the OS is up to date. 
• Performing a clean reinstall of the app is always useful especially to get rid of any cached files that might be causing trouble. We highly recommend following these steps to do so. 
• Are you using an SD card? If so, we suggest that you remove it > restart your phone > perform a clean reinstall of the app with the steps mentioned above > log back in to your account and check if the issue persists. 
  

Keep me posted 🙂 

[Mlakio]

Hello, thank you for your reply.

I do have pretty large collection, but it is not changed much during the last month. I have only one big playlist "Liked songs", but another ones are 60 songs max. I struggle to open even a single, EP or search page

I tried different providers, DNS servers. Another apps are working well. I can watch video without an issue on any internet page

I checked on another phone - same issue (it was on Android too by the way). Spotify works well on my PC

I did re-install the app, clear cache and app data

I do not use SD-card

[Dessi]

Hey @Mlakio,

Thanks for confirming all the steps you’ve already tried! 

Since the usual fixes didn’t improve things, let’s dig a bit deeper into this to see if we can find a potential cause. On some Android devices (especially Samsung), aggressive battery optimization can heavily throttle apps and cause delays when loading UI elements or switching tracks, so we'd recommend checking the following:

• Go to Settings → Apps → Spotify → Battery (should be under Usage)
• Set it to Unrestricted 
• Also disable any system-wide power-saving mode

Something else that comes to mind is setting the streaming quality in the app to Normal temporarily to see if that helps. Since you mentioned this happening on another Android phone as well (with your own account, we presume), we want to check if it might be account-related. It'd be great if you can ask a friend or relative to log in their own account on your phone to see if they experience the same thing. 
 

Keep us posted.

[Mlakio]

Hello,

Unfortunately, change of battery optimization settings did not help. Streaming quality adjustment did not change anything too. 

I did not try with another account, but there is an update I want to share. Now the app version I have is 9.1.50.1906 and it works a bit better. I can load library, main and search page without an issue. Track cover loads a bit faster too. The issue is still persisting with albums (EPs, singles etc.) And now suddenly app data is almost 2 GB, however cache is 86 MB only

[Ivelina]

Thanks for the response @Mlakio and for sharing these updates.

Something else that comes to mind is to force the app to temporarily stop syncing with Spotify's servers to see if background loading is causing the lag with enabling Offline Mode.

To narrow this down further, on your phone try logging in with a temporary, free account that has no liked songs. If the app loads instantly, it could confirm that the issue is tied to your main account's data rather than your phone.

If the size of your Liked Songs playlist is the culprit, you could help the app by moving tracks into separate playlists. The easiest way to do this is on the desktop app using these quick shortcuts:

• Select individual songs: Hold Ctrl and click the tracks you want.
• Select a block of songs: Click the first song, hold Shift, and use the Up/Down arrows (or click the last song) to highlight a large chunk.
• Ctrl + C to copy the songs > Ctrl + V to paste the songs in the new playlist(s).

We're here if anything else comes up.

[Mlakio]

Hello, 

I tried with free account - it works much better, so the most probably, the issue is with my account. Also, after I clean up app data and cache it's working fine for some time.

[Mlakio]

Hello,

The application works well when I clear the folder "app data". The folder becomes 4GB size during few days. No download is turned on. Is it normal behavior? I believe, it never happened before, though I use Spotify almost all the time. Meanwhile, the cache folder does not exceed 300MB size  

[Paula_Vi]

Hi again, @Mlakio 

Thanks for keeping in contact!

Just to confirm, did this "app data" folder getting bigger in just a few days issue start after an app's update or some other specific situation? Also, does it happen the same if you use a different internet connection? Maybe another Wi-Fi network you haven't used yet, mobile data or a mobile hotspot.

Keep us in the loop!

[Mlakio]

Hello, I noticed this around 10 days ago. Before this the application never had such big size. Even when the phone was out of memory (because of big video files etc.) I never cleaned Spotify's cache and data because there was no need. I tried different wi-fi networks, but I did not track if the folder grows up when I was connected to another network. 

[MihailY]

Hey @Mlakio,

Thanks for the additional info.

Our engineers are aware of some performance issues for users with large libraries and are working on them, but since this is a continuous process, we can't give an exact ETA. 

In the meantime, feel free to check if changing your streaming quality settings will make a difference in the app's performance.

Cheers,