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.

[Bronzer]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

17 pro max

Operating System

(iOS 26.2

My Question or Issue

I have set Spotify to use high quality on cellular connection instead of lossless. However when connecting to wired car play it still uses lossless which has used all my data allowance in 1 week. Seems to be a bug where it doesn’t respect the cellular quality preference.

[Paula_Vi]

Hi there, @Bronzer 

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!

[Bronzer]

Hi Paula,

I have the settings as you suggest. The reason for this topic was to highlight that even though the data setting is turned down on cellular, it still streams lossless when in car play mode. Using offline mode does stop the cellular connection, but that’s not a good long term solution. 

The bug should be corrected so I can use Spotify in my car without it using all of my data within a few hours. 

[Paula_Vi]

Hi again, @Bronzer 

Thanks for keeping in touch!
 

Just to confirm, does this happen when you try connecting to your car in a different way (for instance Bluetooth or Spotify Connect)? Let's try a clean reinstall of the app too. Also, include in your next reply the exact Spotify version you're currently running to investigate further.

Keep us posted!

[i-s4zj4s_p8nj]

I have the same issues using my car with my Pixel 8 Pro.

[Eni]

Hey there @i-s4zj4s_p8nj, 

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

Could you let us know which troubleshooting steps you've tried so far? If you haven't tried the steps we suggested in this thread, make sure to do so and let us know how it goes. 

Also, we'd like to know if this started happening after a specific event such as an update. 

We'll be waiting for your reply. 

[mightbeross]

Definitely just a quirk that Android OS has with Android Auto because Android Auto makes apps think they're using a WiFi connection rather than using mobile data.

As a temporary workaround, you could set up an automated Gemini/Bixby task that swaps the WiFi Streaming Quality setting down from Lossless whenever Android Auto starts up.

It would be nice if Spotify could detect that Android Auto is in use and have an additional setting to adjust quality. The app already has a fair bit of native Android Auto integration, so this check should be possible on the developer end.

[Bronzer]

Hi,

Bluetooth doesn’t seem to have this issue. I’ve noticed that when playing a non downloaded playlist then it takes the correct settings. But if I have a playlist that is downloaded, but with some songs not yet downloaded then they play as lossless and use up my data.

i have all my settings set to not download over cellular. 

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