Spotify Client shows no "Connect" devices

[codebeaker]

Long-time linux user here, but never really as my full-time desktop (Fedora 30).

I've tried Spotify from Flatpak and found the "Connect Device" list to be extremely unreliable, now basically useless (only shows the help, no devices). I have 5 SONOS devices in the house, not to mention other machines running spotify (phone, macbook) and the linux machine is the only one seeing nothing.

Client version is 1.1.5.153.gf614956d installed from LPF, Flatpak (latest, whatever # that is) also same behaviour.

I'm not even _exactly_ sure how Spotify conect works, I'm assuming some kind of avahi zeroconf UDP multicast thing, which if it were documented anywhere I ought to be able to debug.

AFAIK my machine is running no firewall, I have top-notch home network gear (Ubiquiti throughout), I'm in no VPN (although, I do regularly use one), I have no HTTP proxy congfigured, I have solid UPv4/6 support on my LAN/WAN and I have no idea how to diagnose this.

Any Linux experts able to suggest anything about diagnosing this with tcpdump and/or some network traffic inspection thoughts?

[mmusil]

Same with app installed with snap (Fedora 31). Spotify version: 1.1.10.546.ge08ef575-19

Also If I want to switch from phone to snap app on Linux, quite often it just stops broadcasting music on both devices and acts like there's no music in the queue.

[iPaq]

Hey Codebreaker, did you ever find a solution to this?

My Windows machines and iPhone can see both my Linux Laptop and Linux Desktop -- But those two Linux machines cannot see each-other.

Even with Avahi installed and enabled with an open firewall ruleset and both machines on the same broadcast domain.. no luck. Did you get anywhere with your efforts?

[codebeaker]

Hi Jared,

Sorry, I also didn't get any further diagnosing this. The one wrinkle for
me is that I believe my home wifi set-up is responsible.

I have Unifi gear, three APs which *should* seamlessly pass traffic between
them (one of the selling points is being able to walk from one end of the
house to another without dropping a video call). I noticed that when my
Linux Spotify client *could* see a speaker, it was always the one in the
nearest physical proximity, so the same network AP.

None of this should matter, but it seems like it does. I didn't compare
traffic on another client, Android or Windows to see what the Linux client
is doing differently with regard to networking.

I don't even know if this is a problem of the Linux client not seeing
incoming broadcast traffic from the speakers, or a problem of the speakers
not seeing PING/PONG type echo-requests from the Linux client.

I wish I could be more help 😞

[iPaq]

Hi Codebreaker,

Thanks for your quick reply. I also use UniFi and have witnessed the broadcast packets between each machine (Wired + Wireless) just fine. So it's been a head scratcher... but I found what I think is the bug we're encountering and a workaround.

Have you tried temporarily changing your home directory and then running spotify? Please try this command on one of the two machines: `HOME=/tmp/spotify spotify &`

The other day I discovered that if Spotify is running on two machines and has the EXACT SAME home directory path on each machine... for some bizarre reason they can't see each-other in the Spotify Connect menu.

If you have the resources available, I'd love if you could run that command above on one of your machines to give it's Spotify a temporary working path and see if this solves your issue too.

[codebeaker]

Thanks for the homedir hint, for me the set-up is a little different. I
have 4 Echo devices (my wite's spotify account is bound, and I don't expect
to see these) and 5 sonos speakers, grouped into three rooms. (so, three
"software" speakers?)

We have a mix of phones, android and iphone, and laptops on mac and
windows, and nothing should have a common home directory name.

Most often on the linux machine the connect a device menu shows empty, but
if I start playing music on my phone (android) then suddenly the menu will
change to "This Computer | Pixel 3a", but I still can't see any of the
sonos devices. On my phone, the linux machine shows up as
"ip-192....eu-west-1.compute.internal" which is my company LAN address.

Just trying now, if I disconnect the work VPN, for whatever reason now, I
can see all my devices. This must be a fluke, because it hasn't worked in
1.5 years of having this machine. I'd actually given up on it ever working.
Maybe this is solved by magic.

If, whilst I have it working, I can run some diagnostics to help you
diagnose what your machine and mine are doing differently, let me know.

[Keikan]

Hi,

this worked once. After a restart I cannot see my other linux devices.

Thanks!