Saving to SD Card on Android 6.0 Marshmallow

[Ressei]

Hello everyone,

I'm an owner of a Moto X Style (Moto X Pure in US) and was having trouble saving my albums and playlists to the SD Card storage. I followed the entire android issues guide on SD Cards, but NOTHING worked. Until I went into the App Properties and saw that it did not have any permissions. And then, it clicked. Spotify didn't have Storage permission.

So, I followed the guide again: cleared cache, uninstalled the app, made sure the "com.spotify.music" folder was deleted on both internal and external storages, turned my device off and on again, re-downloaded the app and, before opening it, went to its properties to give storage permissions. What I did afterwards was to manually create the aforementioned folder on the sdcard folder Android/data. Then, logged onto the app, selected extreme quality and, voilá, problem solved!

Hope the mods can add this tip to the guide, to help anyone out there with Marshmallow.

[Rusty_James]

Thanks a lot!
You saved me, my my 128gb sd card and my 3000+songs
Kudos 🙂

[loneclone]

I tried out theworkaround on an LG G4 with Android 6.0 Marshmallow but it does not work here.

Spotify still downloads everything to the internal storage. 😞

 @Rusty_James: Do you also use a Motorola Moto X Style or on which phone did it work for you?

[Rusty_James]

I use a Moto G 2014 with the official Motorola Marshmallow update.

[loneclone]

Thank you for the information.

So the solution seems to work for Motorola phones - not for LG. 😞

[calum_c]

Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately it doesn't work for me on my Xperia Z3 with Sony's Concept Marshmallow.

I noticed a folder gets automatically created on the SD card but doesn't get filled with offline music.

path I have is 

/storage/public:179,65/Android/data/com.spotify.music

Not sure why the SD card has been named "public:179,65" Perhaps that is part of the problem. Will try to investigate further and report back.

Good to know someone has got it working though.

[loneclone]

Same here - the folder gets created in the SD but there is no data in it.

[matttheazn]

THANK YOU

[yanni4100]

Like calum_c, on the 6.0 ROM for the Xperia Z3, this workaround still doesn't seem to work 😞

[Bretbretterson]

Moto X Pure and this finally worked, thanks a ton! Sorry to hear that's not the case for you LG guys...hopefully Spotify fixes it for you soon.

[yanni4100]

Quick question: Did you format your SD as Internal Storage or did you leave it unformatted / as portable storage?

[Bretbretterson]

This worked for me without having to format the sd to internal storage/leaving it as it was.

[calum_c]

I tried both internal and external. It is possible to save to SD when formatted as internal, but leads to several other problems. see other thread here https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Android/Marshmallow-SD-card-issues/td-p/1253588

[Al2i]

Not working on the S5 with CM13.

[forrestforrest]

Moto X Style - Thank you! Finally found a working solution!

[woodandrew90]

Has anyone with unresolved SD card issue on Marshmallow tried the method of bloating the internal memory?  It definitely works on Lollipop, would like to know if does/doesn't work on Marshmallow.

Method is simple:

1.  Clear the cache and uninstall as follows:

- Go to System Settings
- Go to "Apps"
- Find Spotify there
- On Spotify's page, first, tap "Force Close"
- Then tap "Clear cache" if it's not greyed out.
- Then tap "Unninstall" and remove the app.
- After uninnstalling, power off your device.
- If you can, remove the battery now. Power back on.
- Using a file manager on your phone or with your USB cable and your computer, go to Internal Storage > Android > Data and delete a folder called com.spotify.mobile.android.ui

2. Fill the internal memory until there is 1Gb or slightly less of free space remaining (enough free space to reinstall the Spotify app). This is done easiest/fastest by loading big files such as films or photos via USB from PC.
The objective of this is 'convince' the Spotify app that the only viable large memory space available is the SD card.

3. Now you can reinstall Spotify. Download some music tracks and verify that they are being saved to SD. Once this is done, you can delete the bloat files that you put in internal memory. Spotify will continue to use the SD.

[solaire_]

Didnt work for me. had 600mb free (i also set the permissions right)

[woodandrew90]

Thanks for the feedback.

So saving to SD with Android will be weeks, months or never. With no info coming back from Spotify management, who knows if they are aware, care, working on it or not, capable to resolve it or not.

What a cluster£ù<€.

[solaire_]

Directory Bind does not work either on android 6. I hope they fix it soon. At least they are aware of it as its on their bug list and "under investigation". but who knows how long it will take.

[kiteless123]

The Moto X Pure solution worked for me, thank you!

However, just the idea of having to go thru all of that really grinds my gears. I've already left Spotify before because of the app not playing nice with Android.

I just canceled my subscription to Spotify because Google Play Music allows you to choose if you want internal or external storage. It's right there in the settings, no muss, no fuss. Google Play Music will now get my $9.99 a month, and who knows, I might not come back to Spotify this time.

Hopefully Spotify can get it together one day, because I would think this is such a basic function. This, and an equalizer which plays nice with android marshmallow, but that's another topic...

My advice is Google Play Music, at least for the time being. Save yourself the frustration.