Can't Prevent Autostarting

[1fellswoop]

I recently installed Spotify on a Mac running OS 10.10.3 (Yosemite). Spotify insists on autostarting despite all my efforts to disable it.

The obvious mechanism appears to be to go into Spotify Preferences, Advanced Settings, and choose "No" on the option labled, "Open Spotify automatically after you log into the computer." There are three options: "Yes", "No", and "Minimized". If I change it to "No", then stop and restart Spotify, that Preference resets itself to "Minimized". If I change it to "Yes", it resets itself to "Minimized". If I change it and immediately log out and log in and restart Spotify, it has reset itself to "Minimized". When I also manually remove Spotify from the login item list, Spotify puts it back when it next starts.

The very annoying thing is that I am using Drive Genius' Drive Pulse Login Item monitoring, which opens a warning dialog every time Spotify starts, warning that the login item list has been changed. It gives this warning because this is a known behavior of malware. AFAIK, there is no reason for an app to change the login list except on initial installation. In fact, the Drive Pulse dialog says that Spotify is both removing and adding Spotify.app every time it starts. Drive Pulse also produces a dialog saying that Spotify.app has been removed from the login items list when I change the Spotify Preference to "No". So the Preference setting is doing the right thing, but Spotify forgets the setting the next time it is started.

Via Terminal, I also inspected the list of daemons/agents that are being launched via the launchd process. There is something called  "com.spotify.webhelper" being launched at startup. This appears to correspond to the plist file at "~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.spotify.webagent.plist". If I delete this plist, Spotify just recreates it when the app is started.

Web searching yields many people complaining of unwanted autostarting going back years on both Windows and Macs. Some seem to find a simple solution in the Settings; some don't. Does anyone have up-to-date insight? Does Spotify use a non-standard -- maybe web-based -- method of storing preference settings? The only plist (other than the webhelper one) that I can find is "com.spotify.client.plist", which contains nothing intelligible.

[Skellingtor]

Hello and welcome!

To be honest, I don't know much about the nuances of Mac, even though I'm a user as well. I would suggest a full reinstall with AppCleaner, if you haven't tried it yet. It'll delete the app and any files related to it on your computer. Then you can download the installer again and start fresh.

[1fellswoop · Accepted solution]

My problem somehow healed itself. After a dozen or more tries at different solutions as I posted above, after another logout and overnight computer sleep (not reboot), on the next login I immediately manually removed (again) Spotify from my Login Items list, and launched Spotify. This time, for the first time, there was no warning about changed login items, and when I checked Spotify Preferences, the option to autostart was set to “No”, as intended. No idea why the different behavior.

I had been about to try reinstalling. Running an uninstaller app listed these files that would be removed, had I continued with the uninstall:

Applications/Spotify.app

~/Library/Application Support/Spotify folder

~/Library/Preferences/com.spotify.client.plist

~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client folder

~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.installer folder

Running a search app (EasyFind) that can search everywhere in the file system (i.e. not Spotlight), for “spotify” added these files to the above:

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.spotify.webhelper.plist

files related to a crash log of “Spotify Helper” (com.spotify.client.helper) caused by KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000.

The crash was a from the day before the troubleshooting I was doing, so may or may not be related.

[forthedot]

Same problem here. Whenever I launch Spotify it ALWAYS sets itself to open automatically. I go to Preferences > Advanced > Open Spotify automatically and turn it OFF. As soon as I quit and reopen Spotify, it turns itself back on. I'm running the current version 1.0.5.178.g885b099b. I even thought it may be some other software conflicting, so I did a full format and reinstall of the Hard Drive / OS. With a fresh install, no other programs on the machine, I installed Spotify. Same problem. 

[mikes2400]

This is happening to me as well on the latest version. No matter how many times I change the setting to No, it's changed back to Minimized next time i go in.  Logging in and out doesn't help - it's clearly a fault that needs rectifying.

[gremalkin]

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4908377
All the Best 🙂

[Ubbe]

For every update I am closer to stop use spotify.

In windows command promt, type regedit

then search for the key  HKEY_CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\run

Delete all rows with spotify.

You can make a shortcut to this. Spotify will not start until it's updated next time.

[v326]

My autostart rule was located in HKEY_USERS register. Just try search with CTRL+F and hit F3 until You get something *very* similar.

- Any operations in RegEdit may be harmful for Your system. Do it wisely. -

[Wevenhuis]

I am also experiencing turn off autostart problems with the project centennial app for windows 10. This feature should be easliy manageable for the average user via the app settings too, not merely via HKEY or windows startup menu. See also this link for more info: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Ideas-for-improving-Spotify-on-Windows-10-june-2017/id...

[Wiliam]

Didn't work, there is no entry for Spotify in HKEY_CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\run not even in HKEY_CURRENT USER\Software\wow6432node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\run