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.

[juanmaj0027]

Thank you so much! This works perfectly on Moto G 3 Marshmallow

[djzeromx]

perfect. It worked for me. Moto G3. android 6.0 Marshmallow

[Cpng]

I would like to try this, buy as I've adopted the SD card, I can't actually access the internal memory anymore. Doesn't show in my file manager - and I believe when I attach to a PC I'll only see the adopted SD memory too?

This issue has broken Spotify and Play Music on android. Really big mess up from Google, but they don't care

[sergiofbsilva]

Well it does not work for me.

Device: Unrooted Moto G 3rd gen 6.0

Spotify 4.9.0.992

SD Card formatted as internal storage

Factory reset + formatted SD as internal storage + installed spotify + gave storage permissions

Storage option does not show, please fix this or I have no choice and will cancel my subscription.

[jmscaramal]

sergiofbsilva, first of all, you need a rooted device for try this fix. Follow the instructions posted by KimNguyen in this thread

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Android-6-0-Marshmallow-no-SD-Card-download-possible...

[sergiofbsilva]

Rooting is not an option it will void my warranty.

[jmscaramal]

Hum.. Sorry for that.. But that fix is only for rooted devices..

Did you tried to clear Spotify data, unninstall it, format sd as external storage (it should have more free space than internal storage), reinstall Spotify, give it the permissions, launch it and finally save some Playlist?

[sergiofbsilva]

Yes it works with sd as external storage.

[gfunkzero]

guys 

I dont know why this is still being discussed, spotify have updated the Android app so you can manually choose the storage location in settings now, it even copies what you have on the internal storage over..

[sergiofbsilva]

When the sd card is formatted as internal storage the option is not there!

[Daniel]

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@sergiofbsilva wrote:
When the sd card is formatted as internal storage the option is not there!

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Correct. Please see here for more information about Adoptable Storage and the affect this has on Android/Spotify

[gfunkzero]

ah, fair enough.

Adoptable storage is the worst idea ever, I've had all sorts of problems with SD cards even the top branded ones

[Daniel]

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@gfunkzero wrote:
ah, fair enough.

Adoptable storage is the worst idea ever, I've had all sorts of problems with SD cards even the top branded ones

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Agreed. That's why I thought I'd pin something to the top as a kind of warning that it will cause issues and affect the life of an SD card.

I can see why Google have implemented it, but I think there would be a better way.

[Cheiz87]

For people with adaptable/internal storage on marshmallow: I have that and I somehow managed to get playlists downloaded to the SD card (without root, on a moto g 3rd gen)! I am not sure how I did it, at some point I was downloading a lot of music in 'extreme quality' at at some point I noticed in the storage settings that my used SD card size was increasing and not the used internal storage size. After that I deleted Spotify data again and I downloaded a playlist with normal quality and it also went to the SD card. The weird thing is that the data does appear when I go to settings -> storage -> internal storage -> apps -> Spotify, but this data does actually not increase the size of used data on internal storage (so I guess it could report Spotify using 5 GB internal storage while the total internal storage used by apps is 2 GB, so there is definitely something strange going on here. In ES file explorer I see the data at /sdcard/Android/data/com.spotify.music/files/ (the size of this matches with what android reports as data used on internal storage while in fact it is on the SD card!)
One possibility is that somehow the storage was switched to SD card after I 'flooded' the internal memory with big playlists on extreme quality, because I believe I first saw the used internal storage increasing but then the used SD card data (after about 4 of 4.6 GB of internal storage was used). I hope this will help others and by the way I am still frustrated by the fact that I have 8gb internal memory, android OS uses 3.5 GB, it reports apps using 2 GB and only about 0.7 GB is free so there is about 2gb unaccounted for... But I am happy at least I bow seem to be able to download 30GB of Spotify songs!

[VibrantFlow]

I have an LG G4 and after reading this thred found an option in the Spotify settings called "Storage" (right at the bottom) and that allowed me to choose from my Device Storage and 128GB SD card and without me having to redownload the songs, I suggest giving it a go if you already haven't.

[DW78]

Company phone: no root

[user-removed]

Issue persists in 6.0.1
Solution does not work.
Also, even i having root, I'd like a non root solution, the app simply being unmovable is inadmissible

[deivid27]

Thank you it worked on my moto G3! 

[undrgrndhp]

Well.. i have Android 7.1 and there is no ext_sd, there are two shortcuts "Self" and "emulated", but both rediret you to the same main storage... Seriously spotify needs to fix this.

[undrgrndhp · Accepted solution]

You can store Spotify data on your sd, but that would imply having your main app there, too. This doesn't seem to be a problem, but when you have a poorly-performanced sd card it becomes a big issue. Spotify goes REALLY Slow, but acceptable for listening. This won't happen with high end SD cards, such as those for action cameras and U-class.


You will have to enable developer options, this by coing to settings -> About Phone and repeatedly over "Build number" or "Baseband Version" even "Kernel version" all depending on your rom. A toast notification will show telling you you have enabled developer options.

Then you go back to settings and you should see { } Developer options.

There you should enable them, and near the end of the list you will find "Force allow apps on external" With that enabled you will be able to move Spotify with all of its data to SD card without having to reformat as standard.

The thing here is: How fast your sd is?

Hope i helped

Cheers.