Wireless Android Auto Lossless Bug

[luphiro]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Galaxy s23+

Operating System

Android 16

My Question or Issue

I have set my cellular streaming quality to "very high" and my Wi-Fi streaming quality to "lossless".

However, when I'm connected to my cars headunit via wireless Android Auto (which uses wifi) a lot of the times songs will have the "lossless" badge. I also haven't downloaded those songs.

It would be nice, if this could be fixed so that drives in my car don't run down my cellular plan.

[Eni]

Hey there @luphiro, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this and welcome to the Community! 

Based on what you mentioned, the app might detect the connection between your phone and the car's head unit as Wi-Fi, so it automatically switches to your Wi-Fi streaming quality setting instead of the cellular streaming quality. 

In this case, to avoid high data usage while driving, you can try downloading your content ahead of time time to listen offline or lowering the Wi-Fi streaming quality in the app settings. 

If you prefer, you can also disable Lossless quality temporarily when connected to Android Auto. 

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us as it helps improve the overall user experience. 

If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you. 

[SmXtrem]

Hello,

it would be nice if we had a separate setting for Android auto quality or at least if we can change the audio quality when the phone is roaming. (nationaly i have unlimited data plan)

[MihailY]

Hey @SmXtrem and @luphiro,

Apologies for the confusion here.

The streaming quality in Android Auto should reflect what you've set up in the app settings on the phone connected to the car. 

If you're seeing the Lossless badge on some songs when playing them through the head unit, this likely means that the tracks have already been streamed in Lossless quality when connected to your WiFi and are now stored in your Spotify app's cache and are also available in your Offline Backup playlist (you can find it through Search). 

The tracks from this playlist haven't been downloaded explicitly but are still available offline and are played without using mobile/WiFi data. As explained here, the song files that were already cached in a higher quality will be preferred during playback until the cache is updated or cleared.

I've personally checked this and can confirm that when connected to Android Auto, any tracks which are available in Lossless quality and that I haven't streamed before played in the quality setting that I've chosen for Cellular streaming on my phone.

Hope this clears things up! If the behavior differs on your end, please let me know so I can investigate further.

Cheers,

[woutput]

This might be the same or related, but I have the same settings (lossless for wifi and "very high" for cellular) but still my Spotify app on Android downloads lossless quality while connected to cellular. I can see that in two ways: my cellular data usage has increased enormously over the padt few months and the tag "lossless" shows in the app even when I play songs that I have never played before (so that means they can't be in cache, right).

[Novy]

Hi there @woutput,

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the Spotify Community!
 

Keep in mind there are two different sections in the app's Media Quality menu. You can establish the streaming quality in "Lossless" for Wi-Fi streaming and "Very High" for mobile/cellular streaming, but we suggest checking the download quality is set on those parameters too. Make sure the app only downloads when connected to Wi-Fi. Downloads over cellular option should be off in the app’s settings (under Data-saving and offline).

In that same menu (Data-saving and offline) you can switch the data saver mode to "on" and go to Offline > Offline Mode > Toggle it on, which disables the internet access to limit data consumption. 

Let us know how it goes!

[Gurkburk]

Hi, 

It seems you guys aren't reading into the issue here.

I only recently started downloading Playlists in Spotify & 99% of the time stream music over LTE. 

With that said, I have the issue OP explains.

When I'm connected via forced wifi to my 2025 VW, everything becomes lossless due to wifi being on. Cached songs or not, all of it is streamed via lossless because my setting is set to WiFi>lossless.

How do I know this? I'm not halfway through the month & I've consumed 10,6gb of 20gb cellular data. My average monthly is between 11gb & peaking 16gb within 6 months.

Lossless mode has not been enabled very long in Sweden.

There is a clear bug, or the function isnt set up properly. Because it is 100% streaming lossless when AA is connected via wifi.

Also, keep in mind,  "song radios" or the AI cannot be prepared & downloaded in my case. I hop between song radios several times per day, not gonna lie. 

[Dessi]

Hi folks,

Thanks for all the reports!

We took another look and have passed this on to our tech team for further investigation. We'll let you know as soon as we hear back from them and have any news to share. 

The Community is always here in case you need any help.