Apple Silicon and Spotify

[leoplan2]

Plan

Premium

Country

Device

Macbook Air M1 2020

Operating System

macOS Big Sur

My Question or Issue

Hi! I'm just asking when are you going to release an Universal or a M1 optimized version of the Spotify desktop app, because Rosetta 2 is going soon to be removed from macOS (according to latest macOS 11.3) and that would make impossible to install the Spotify desktop app on Apple Silicon. And also, by releasing a native binary, it would be faster and more stable.

P.D: AFAIK most of the components you use are already ported to Apple Silicon (CEF, and most third-party libraries) so it's on your side

[winkebruse]

For me, the reply of you guys are just not taking our demands seriously. Why is it so difficult to get it done, since there is already spotify app running on iphones. Did you check with your app developer? Give some real answer here please.

[LeifLaCroix]

'Marked solved.' Of course, it is, since a solution for this company just consists in clicking a button on their forums rather than actually going and doing something about the problem.

Absolutely shame-less.

[sterin]

I could understand and have a little bit more patience if we where in December 2020.. But we are almost half road of 2021 and the desktop app for M1 Macs is still super buggy and crashes 3 times per day.

What really grinds my gears is that we our complaints are coming form say a Linux OS Platform, we are talking about the future of the second most used OS in the world..

This is unacceptable for a "Premium" service.

[erikk1]

It crashes at least 4 times a day for me too, M1 Macbook air too
The argument "As with any new CPU and OS architecture, some time might need to pass until apps are optimized to work on those." simply isnt valid here

Even with native mac apps, supporting M1 natively has for most developers been a case of simply recompiling it in xcode. Spotify is a music app, which isnt what i would call super complex where you start to see issues that require much more work to be put in. (like with adobe's suite of apps)

The kicker is that Spotify for Desktop is an Electron app, so basically a glorified website. Electron 11 ALREADY supports M1 and has done for a while now. (initial beta of electron apple silicon support came in October 2020) There is no way that it can take over 6 months to port an *electron* app to a newer electron version.

As well as this, it has been nearly an entire year since apple developer transition kits were sent out.

Making a native apple silicon version should be done anyway, because it would conserve battery life and because rosetta 2 won't be around forever, but theres even more reason to do so now that the new spotify version is a stability nightmare on m1.

Countless far, far more complex and native apps have already been optimized for m1, including ones with much smaller teams. There isnt an excuse to have not ported an electron app over.

[tokenmale]

I have a MacBook Pro M1 and have had the issue of Spotify crashing with the latest redesign and currently 1.1.58.820.g2ae50076-a (I wouldn't use it if I wasn't forced to after any restart)

From what I've found - any wifi or network hiccup will crash it pretty well. 

I have two Google Minis set up and if I click on the speaker/hardware option this will crash it (I assume the wifi has interrupted the casting of the minis) and if the MBP is lid closed/reopened

I have done reinstalls etc and tried turning off HW Acceleration. Neither helped and I would be curious if the folx here find any correlation with their wifi/network connection and crashes. 

Again, the older version of Spotify did not have a problem on M1

[__maxldr]

it's obviously an issue with it being m1 macs, nothing to do with caches or anything

[augustobt]

5 months of 2021 and no updates in this regard. This is unacceptable, seriously.

[violet_athena]

Just release the iPad version to M1 Macs, it would be much easier than porting the native version. 

[martonh]

Same thing happens here several times a day.

M1 Macbook Air, base model.

The crashing typically happens when playback is not going and / or there is a change in network status and / or I close the lid and open it later.

[BR_AM]

Same here, crashes a lot. Especially when loggin in I get the crash message. I did a clean install, but it didn't solve it. 

[FloriKori]

Yeah, The Error Message is always the same

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000140614608ee8
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

[hrumble]

EDIT:

It literally reverted back to the version I'd been experiencing issues with. I wish I'd taken screenshots before redoing the Clean Reinstall! I'll absolutely take down screenshots and get the version # if/when it happens again. As many people have said, the crashes happen most often upon opening my MacBook. You can tell what version you have by how the Filter works in playlists. Is it on the left with the word "Filter" in it? That's the version that works better (for me anyway). Is it just a magnifying glass icon on the right? That's the crash-prone version. I don't understand how Spotify is updating the app without my doing anything. SUPER Annoying!! I pay for this service—there needs to be a fix for this soon or I'm dropping my subscription. Absolutely asinine!

Original (5/6/21):

I'd been experiencing the same problem, and after the clean reinstall it's now working fine. It looks like I was possibly pushed a beta version of Spotify because the version I installed after deleting everything looks different (the filter in playlist function for instance). Also several other bugs I'd been experiencing have now stopped. It's pretty annoying that Spotify would push out updates that give you buggy features. But at least this seems resolved for now.

[1276476818]

Same thing

[the_tack]

I second this! Just enable us to install the iPad OS version from the App Store. No porting necessary! Since we cannot side load anymore, all you need to do it make it available in the App Store. 

[kiwifolk]

Same here, clearly the M1 MacBooks having a problem, come on Spotify its been a year optimise for the M1 already. we pay for this "premium" service.

[xzayda]

Well, what else to expect from typical corporation no mather it once was an innovative leader in its industry? how many meetings of XXX managers will have to be planned, how many spreadsheets and slides will be filled in, how many internal discussions have to be passed before a developer will be allowed to rebuild, test and deploy code to another architecture? PS shame on you, Spotify, even such a corporate as Adobe has already been able to do this with its Photoshop!

[alejandronova]

BTW, I love the amazing support Spotify gives to Linux, and it was one of the reasons why I preferred Spotify over Apple Music or other services with less platform support. Spotify should be more open about the reasons why it can't support Apple Silicon, just like Kodi (Kodi reasons revolve about libSDL, its lack of support towards Apple Silicon, and how they are rewriting that part of Kodi to excise libSDL from Kodi for macOS).

[ke-xr6k_5mm9r]

Why does Spotify hate Apple users so much? Apple has literally the second largest  music service - Apple Music and anyone can transition to it easily.

Spotify should have apple devices on highest priority. Instead they can't fix bluetooth bug for like 4 years now, but in the mean time they add useless garbage like facebook integration or add story functionality which nobody cares about.

If it wasn't for family plan I am currently in, I would have switched to apple music long time ago

[hrumble]

I think the -a version is the one mine keeps reverting to. Next time I restart my MBP I'll have to see if that's what triggers the update. It definitely crashes whenever I have my computer closed/asleep and change network locations, so the wi-fi thing tracks. Sometimes just opening my computer after a while of it being closed, but on the same network, will crash it, but I have a VPN so it necessarily loses internet briefly while that reconnects upon waking the MBP, which tracks with everything you're saying.

[jacobnoori]

You should evaluate Apple One. I transitioned my family over and have no regrets. How do I unsubscribe from this thread? I could care less about this now.