Black Spotify window on Ubuntu 20.04

[srgk]

1. Your device and operating system: Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS. Asus ZenBook UX534FTC (with Nvidia 1650 Max-Q and Nvidia drivers).
2. Type of Spotify account you have (Free/ Premium): Premium
   
3. The app version of Spotify you’re using: 1.1.84.716.gc5f8b819 (snap)
4. Brief description of the issue: The Spotify window displays nothing but a black background. The issue started to appear this week.
   
5. Steps to reproduce the issue:
   1. Start the Spotify app (via the ".desktop" file or from the terminal).
   2. Wait for the Spotify window to appear.
   3. Wait for the UI to appear in the window - UI does not appear.

6. Attach the spotify-dump.txt ( $HOME/spotify-dump.txt ) from Advanced troubleshooting 4: Attached

Additional information:

• Spotify for iOS: loads normally, no obvious issues with the same account;
• Spotify was logged in before the issue started to appear;
• libprotobuf complains about some message from the Spotify server in the app's logs;
• clearing "$HOME/.cache/spotify/Storage" does NOT help;
• strace logs: attached.

Please let me know if you need additional information.

[srgk]

NOTE: Once the window shows up - the device appears in the "Spotify Connect" list on my phone. I can connect my phone via Connect, the app plays tracks and I control the playback from my phone, even when there is no UI in the window on PC. So the app is in some weird state when some modules are working, but UI in the window is missing/dead.

[srgk]

Same issue with the DEB package (1.1.84.716.gc5f8b819).

[srgk]

spotify --disable-gpu does NOT help to resolve the issue. Talking about GPUs, my laptop has Nvidia GTX 1650 Max-Q and Nvidia Prime enabled (the "on-demand" profile). Display server - X11.

I also have a VNC server running in the background.

[srgk · Accepted solution]

Stopping the VNC server works as a workaround.

[qwerjkl]

I've just upgraded Ubuntu from 20.04 to 22.04 and had the same problem. What solved it was installing the nVidia drivers:

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-525