Spotify starts playing automatically when a bluetooth device is connected and phone makes a sound

[jazengo]

Plan

Premium

Country

Norway

Device

Samsung S9

Operating System

Android 11

My Question or Issue

Whenever a bluetooth device is connected to my phone, Spotify automatically starts playing the last song it was paused on if my phone makes any "noise". If I recieve a Messanger message, it starts playing as soon as the "bing" sound is over. It starts playing automatically after I've hung up a call, etc.

I've disabled auto play, I've reinstalled the app and cleared cache.
Under "car view", both "Turn on automatically" and "Always on" is disabled.

I'm unsure what more I can do.

[Jarod997]

I'm on Android, and what I think works is that you have to swipe the notification off of your lock screen, even if your phone is unlocked. It's dumb, but IIRC that's how I made it stop.

[Matikitorch]

Hi all,

I am on the same boat as everyone here, but my question/concern mainly lies in how is Spotify able to bypass all of your Android settings, security, and privacy? In order to try and narrow down exactly which setting is the problem, I took the following steps.

1) In the Spotify app itself I turned off just about every setting I could find about automatically playing and background usage. Every setting in "Playback", "Apps and devices", "Data-saving and offline" is turned off.

2) In the Android settings itself I revoked every permission from Spotify, restricted its battery usage, and disable background usage. Again, revoked/turned-off every setting I could find.

Even after revoking just about everything I could find, Spotify will still launch itself and start playing music when I get in my car through Bluetooth. I used Pandora for many years and never had this issue, didn't even know that this was a possibility.

How is Spotify able to bypass all revoked permissions and still launch itself? This is what makes me uneasy, the auto-playing is annoying, and I wouldn't mind loosing features to disable it, but the fact that Spotify seems to be bypassing your Android settings is something else... (For this reason I will be cancelling Spotify and going back to Pandora as soon as we're done watching a Hulu show.)

[cohendylan1]

Going back many years, this is a problem for many users, with many threads on Spotify, Reddit, and many other places. I have spent several hours looking through all the threads. It affects thousands of users, with no solution. People are so frustrated. Many claim they deleted the app.

Here on Spotify, there are many threads that claim the problem is solved, and have been closed. Users continue to post that they are not solved, and post frustrated replies continually. Please Spotify engineers, I have taken the time to put together a very good description, please take the time to understand the following.

When a song is playing and paused on Spotify, because the user wishes to go back to the song or playlist at the same spot later, on Android or iPhone, the problem is in common to both devices, and then a bluetooth player is later connected, either Android Auto or an earpiece or any other bluetooth player, Spotify automatically resumes playing. Every single time. Personally, it happens every time I connect to my Honda, and every time I power on my Plantronics bluetooth earpiece.

The problem is not with Android Auto, and not solved when the setting "Start music automatically" is toggled off in the Android Auto settings. Please for the love of God do not suggest that again. Hundreds if not thousands of users have reported that does not stop the problem. Again, this happens with any bluetooth device, including my earpiece. The problem is in Spotify with any bluetooth reconnection.

The problem is also not solved by toggling off the Spotify autoplay setting, which again only applies to playing of similar music. All of us thousands of users have that setting off as well. Please for the love of God do not suggest that non solution again either.

The app simply needs a setting to prevent resume of playing, the same as other apps do. For example, see this video https://youtu.be/sAaDWu_2Yr4?si=Kx9CXoA_6YIA9Uam which shows that Samsung Music has a setting "Allow external devices to resume playback" that can be turned off. The video also shows that Youtube Music has a setting for this, also called "Allow external devices to resume playback" that can be turned off. This is what Spotify needs. Why on earth, after so many years and so many reports from frustrated users, hasn't Spotify implemented the same setting?

Many many many thousands of hours have been spent by thousands of users on this problem. I just made a trip to go shopping with my wife. I paused my playlist a few days ago, and will want it to resume from the same place, WHEN I CHOOSE TO. However, every time we started the car my playlist started blaring from the speakers. Every... single... time. I paused it again, and swore forcefully every time.

Please, for the love of all that is good, implement the same solution as Samsung Music and Youtube music, and provide the same setting, probably using the exact same language they do "Allow external devices to resume playback" that can be turned off.

It has been so many years. Please, for the love of God, provide a solution with a simple update to your app, iPhone and Android, that will work with any bluetooth connected device on connection. Please. Please. Please. Why wouldn't you?

For completeness: Premium / Canada / Samsung Note 20

Thank you.

[cohendylan1]

Please everyone upvote the feature enhancement here:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Option-to-disable-auto-connect-and-play/idc-p/7087801