This bug is a pain in the ass. Deleted downloads on SD after reboot.

[luxactor]

I've been watching this for what feels like years, and the bug still hasn't been fixed. On Android, every time you restart, whether because of an update or because the battery is low, the SD card in the phone is not recognized by Spotify, and all downloads are simply gone.

Then you have to select the memory each time, and download everything again. This is not so funny when you are on vacation and have to change the SD or SIM card, for example.

When will this finally be fixed? It can't be that hard to set it up so that Spotify waits until the operating system has initialized the SD card.

[Alex]

Hi there @luxactor,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

This issue is related to how your phone handles SD cards and it's dependent on the version of your ROM set by the manufacturer rather than on the Spotify app itself. What happens is after a reboot the phone doesn't load up your SD card straight away for security reasons, and this is the moment when some apps detect whether the phone has an installed SD card as external memory or not. If they don't detect the card they automatically switch the download option to the phone's internal storage. 

You can read more about the discussion here. 

In case you haven't already, we'd recommend trying the following, as users report that it works on some phones:

• Enable permission for storage option for Spotify. This can be accessed by going to Settings > Apps > Spotify > Permissions > Storage.
• Check that the Spotify app is set as an exception for any cache clearing apps. On Samsung phones, there are processes which increase performance or save battery by automatically clearing app cache. Spotify downloads are contained in the app cache, so it's a good idea to disable such processes for the Spotify app.

You can also try the workaround suggested by @Tink3rb3ll in this thread. 

Hope this helps 🙂

[luxactor]

Hello Alex,
your trouble shooting doesn't work. For five years now the some answer. Please fix it in the future.

[gjwolfswinkel]

No other apps have this specific issue, and yet Spotify keeps waffling about workarounds that no other app needs to continue to function well. The problem is with Spotify. It was my main reason to leave Spotify, as I didn't want to lose access to my music while on the road. I was traveling to some pretty remote areas with poor internet access and didn't want to lose access to my music. 

Every now and then I check back to see if there is a permanent solution, but apparently Spotify still can't be bothered?

[EarlPurple]

I am having the same problem on my Motorola.

One of my playlists has over 6,000 songs on it. Why? Because I can't shuffle play a folder, so what used to be multiple playlists in a folder had to become a single playlist.

And then? Yes, I got a 512GB SD card. After reinstalling it once and setting the permissions and saying to download to the card, I downloaded my playlists, and then come back to find them all gone from downloads. Yet the SD is full of Spotify folders.

So they're downloaded and fine, and all of a sudden gone.

"Remove all devices for offload listening" below is a dead link. What does it mean anyway? I would like it if you didn't insist on "connecting" all the time.