Unable to login due to Offline mode

[beeaitch]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Samsung Galaxy S10e

Operating System

Android 11

My Question or Issue

I must start by saying that I am extremely disappointed that this is still a problem when I found several threads dating back to 2017 about this very issue.  Spotify never promised a fix in those threads, and by golly it looks like they stayed true to their word.  That a serious problem like this could persist for several years without being addressed is just ludicrous.  Makes me want to cancel my membership just based on their apathy alone.

The problem is that I am unable to login to the spotify app on my phone. When I open the app, at first it prompts me to login but then a window pops up saying "You are currently set to offline. Please go online to connect to spotify." with a big green CONNECT button below. Clicking the big button does nothing, the same window just returns.

I have tried the login without a password option, but the emailed links, which are supposed to be good for 4 hours, all say they are expired just seconds after receipt.

In one of the old threads, a spotify employee posted that the "fix" was simply to delete the pre-filled password on the login screen and to re-type the password.  Many users in the old threads reported that this did not work. Unfortunately, I tried this several times and can report that it is not working for me.

Of course this is a chicken and egg thing because I can't change the settings in the app when I can't login to open the app.

[CarlosE]

Hi there @beeaitch,

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community!

Could you try using a different connection, like mobile data or another WiFi network? If that doesn't do the trick, try closing the app, restarting your phone, and trying again.

In case the issue persists, try running a clean reinstall of the app by following these steps. This can be helpful to get rid of any cached files that might be causing trouble.

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[beeaitch]

I have tried more than one wifi system, at home and at work, but it made no difference.  I also tried restarting the phone and clearing the app cache, but neither solved the problem.

Ultimately, I resolved it by deleting all app storage, which is essentially similar to a clean install.  This however is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION.  I have a metered data plan on my phone so I download a lot of files for offline yes, hence why I am in offline mode in the first place.  Having to delete these files and redownload them is not a task I want to do frequently.

The first time this happened to me I was on vacation in the Caribbean.  I had purposefully downloaded a lot of music to listen to on vacation.  Spotify worked fine during the trip down, but would not let me login the first morning on the island.  The resort I was at had terrible internet service to deleting everything and redownloading was not simply a bad idea, it simply would not work.

So far I have had a two major issues with Spotify.  The first was high mobile data usage even though it is set to only download on wifi.  The answer to that (which did not work) was also to do a clean install.  Telling your users to do a clean install every time your poorly written software misbehaves is not acceptable.  YOU NEED TO FIX YOUR BROKEN SOFTWARE.

Seeing as spotify has not produced a fix for this in four years, I will have no choice but to cancel my account.  I simply cannot continue to pay for a service the costs me money in extra data charges, and then won't even allow me to use it without deleting that data and downloading it all again. 

[Novy]

Hey @beeaitch, 

Thanks for your reply. 

We're sorry to hear that you feel like this, but it's good to hear that you were able to sort this out.

Keep in mind that we always suggest performing a clean reinstall as this is part of the basic troubleshooting that often solves cache related issues. 

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us, and will make sure to pass it on to the right folks as we always strive to improve our users' experience. 

The Community will be here if anything else comes up.

Take care.

[hahahatschiii]

Hi there,

similar like @beeaitch, I'm running in the same issue and I'm stuck in front of this login screen which I cannot bypass. This happens several times per year and is really annoying. I looked in several threads and tried different workarounds but the only one working is to re-install the App. Marking this issue as fixed I really cannot understand...

Me, I use the offline mode very often. Usually I go online once a week and rely on the offline capability. This most of the time works really well but from time to time I totally frustrated seeing this same login screen again and I already know the only workaround is to remove the Spotifiy App, re-install it again and re-download all the content again.

Just that you maybe understand the frustration that me and some users have:
Imagine you have a software installed on your PC and you running in a bug that makes the software unable to start. After consulting the support, they tell you to just simply to re-install the software. You do this and after that you find out that all the tiny settings and all the setup in the software (in spotify this should represent the downloaded music) has to be re-configured again. You do this maybe once or twice but after applying the same workaround over and over you may ask yourself, is there not a better way of doing this? Is there maybe a fix possible, but the software developers of the software just not taking you seriously?

I understand that this issue might be not easy to fix. But please be aware that on your official website you advertise the offline capability as one of the key features of the premium account. To avoid having more and more frustrated users, I kindly ask you to look into this issue.
Maybe offer a "force online mode" in the login screen when running into this problem. Or something similar that can be used to quickly go online and confirm the account and then switch to the offline mode again. This might be already a big improvement compared to the heavy weight action of re-installing the App and re-downloading all the music.

Thanks for checking and regards

[Yordan]

Hi @hahahatschiii,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community.

Could you give the steps mentioned in this post a try to see if that does the trick?

Let us know how it goes.

[hahahatschiii]

I tried to click on the "this post" link, but I'm ending up on the post that I wrote in here.

[Alex]

Hey @hahahatschiii,

Thanks for pointing this out.

I've gone ahead and updated the link in Yordan's post. Can you try if it works 🙂

Cheers.

[olgatsib]

I've had the issue with logging in while in offline mode very often in my android app. Usually it was fixed when I had wifi available (I could login via facebook). But this time I couldn't login with wifi either. I created a password to be able to login without facebook, but that didn't help. I couldn't use the app for 2 days until I uninstalled it and installed again. Is it how it's supposed to work - to install/uninstall the app when I can't login because of the offline mode? I've found here the issue was reported in 2017, and you still couldn't fix it?

[stylishtoupee]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 15 Pro

Operating System

iOS 17

My Question or Issue

My app was in offline mode when I got a new phone. After setting up my new phone, I’m prompted to login. But I can’t login because the app is in offline mode. And I can’t switch the app to online mode because I can’t login. Is there any way to login without having to delete all my offline data? I have a lot of music downloaded.