How do I force Firefox to always open open.spotify.com links in the desktop app? [Premium]

[ACAx1985]

How do I force Firefox to always open open.spotify.com links in the desktop app?

I am using the latest MacOS and the latest desktop app with a Premium account.

Extra context:

The biggest issue is that the open.spotify.com web app doesn't notify you when you add duplicates to a workflow, and it's crippling my workflow of adding new items to my yearly collections. It also doesn't help that the amazing iOS "New Releases" tab isn't on desktop, so I'm forced to use an outside website to generate that, but not being able to launch directly into the Spotify desktop app is making this all way more frustrating than it needs to be if I could just launch links like this directly into my desktop app!

Thanks for any advice!

[MihailY]

Hey @ACAx1985,

Thanks for reaching out.

Links from Spotify should open by default in the desktop app. If this doesn't happen we'd suggest checking out your browser settings or re-installing your browser.

Keep us posted!

[ACAx1985]

Hi, I have reinstalled (clean install / clean settings) Firefox as well as reinstalled Spotify (clean install / clean settings). These links still do not open in Firefox (the default browser for the OS).

What setting(s) specifically should I check to ensure it is working properly?

[Vasil]

Hey @ACAx1985,

Thanks for getting back to us!

Try opening a Spotify link in Firefox. After this, on the Spotify Web Player, find the options menu. In that menu you should be able to select "open in desktop app".
Click on that option and you'll be redirected to a page where you have to give permissions for Firefox to open the Spotify application. 

Hope this helps! Let us know how it goes 🙂

[JaywalkerHB]

No there is no "open in desktop app"-option.

Until a few weeks ago, whenever I clicked a spotify link in the browser, it would just open the song on the desktop app. This no longer works though. How can I fix this?

[Vasil]

Hey there @JaywalkerHB,

Resetting the Firefox Setting might help in this case! 
But if you wish to avoid this, you may want to take a look at this Community thread over here 🙂

Hope this helps!

[shape5]

@Vasil: Sure, that drop-down menu option "open in desktop app" works, but how do you apply this to all links so you don't have to keep clicking the same option for each album that opens in the browser?  In Safari, after you give it permission, it doesn't apply this to other links you click.  Is there a way to set this in Safari? 

Thanks

[Joan]

Hi @shape5,

Thanks for the reply. You should have a box you can tick that allows all links to be opened directly. Is this the option you used? Does this only apply for specific albums? Let us know the steps you followed and provide us some screenshots so we can look into this further.

Keep us posted.

[shape5]

@Joan: Hi, you mean a box in Safari, the Spotify web player, or the Spotify desktop player?  Please be more specific about the box too.  Is it a pop-up window, in the GUI, a drop-down menu, etc.?  It applies to all open.spotify.com links, all albums.

Thanks

[MihailY]

Hey @shape5,

Apologies for the confusion.

If you're trying to set this up in Safari, it's best to reach out to Apple support for a detailed guide on how to set a rule for your browser to always open links in their respective app (in this case Spotify).

Let us know how it goes.

[shape5]

@MihailY: This is not something that you should send users to Apple support for, as it has to do with the Spotify app located in 2 different places (web/desktop), and the Spotify desktop app used to provide a working option to control where the links should be opened via the setting "Allow Spotify to be opened from Web".  I used to have this enabled and it worked great.  But this was removed many years ago for no valid reason, and Spotify never provided a new method to its users.

Also, Safari doesn't have rules, file type/app preferences, or an about:config page like Firefox does, and the browser can’t control the Spotify desktop app.   According to other users, even in Firefox w/ the Spotify Application setting correctly configured, these links still don’t open in the desktop app.  That’s why a Firefox extension was created (linked below).

Have you, or the other mods even tried these on your own systems to confirm that your suggestions do in fact work before posting them as a Spotify solutions?  Can’t you just ask a developer over there, since this is a problem for everyone it seems?

There are countless posts on the web for this very issue, b/c it’s not a typical situation since Spotify Web is a web application with a desktop version as well, as opposed to a standard web site or URL.  The only solutions I’ve seen are browser extensions [Firefox] [Chrome] [Other streaming apps] created by 3rd party developers, to provide a workaround for something which Spotify should have kept implemented.  See this user’s suggestion for a likely solution for the Spotify developers to insert  “a redirection to the [spotify:] URL scheme.”

[MihailY]

Hey @shape5,

Thanks for your detailed reply.

Sorry for the mistake, this is indeed controlled by Spotify and after some digging, I think I was able to find the root cause of the issue. By default, all shared links include a si parameter in the URL (e.g. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXcBWIGoYBM5M?si=4efd4a047d874c53  ) and if that parameter is removed for some reason (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXcBWIGoYBM5M ) the link will always open in the web player. 

Now, opening a link with the parameter included should open a pop up in your browser with the following options:

• Always allow
• Cancel
• Allow

Choosing the first option should prevent the pop up from appearing again (I had a colleague test this out on their Mac and it was working as expected). If you don't see this pop up in Safari or if selecting the first option doesn't do anything, then please let us know so we can investigate further.

Cheers,

[shape5]

@MihailY: Hi, that’s really interesting though, b/c I’ve actually never seen a URL that ended in that parameter before.  I have tons of open.spotify.com links saved to text files from years ago, but none of them end in that either.  This is probably a fairly recent change, b/c in the drop-down menu next to every song/artist/album is an option to share it, which then provides a link to copy.  This link now includes the si parameter, but it didn’t used to.  The older option that existed here, “Copy Spotify URL”, gave you a link without the si parameter.  So I have tons of these links saved to files that now won’t open in the desktop player.

But even with the parameter included, it’s not working properly.  It still opens the web player in Safari, forces you to click “Allow” every time a link opens, then leaves the web player page open, and also opens a new web player page for each link (even if you click the same one again).  I don’t have an ”Always allow” option on my browser version (15.6.1 on Catalina 10.15.7).  And I could have sworn that the older "Allow Spotify to be opened from Web" setting in the desktop player used to open it directly rather than having to open the web player first.  It’s very convoluted now, and differs for each browser, whereas before it was handled by the app and functioned the same no matter what browser was used.  The original setting definitely needs to be re-added to the Spotify desktop app preferences.  

This was the best response I got thus far though, so thanks for researching it.  It doesn’t look like there is a better solution for this at the moment then.  Please pass my comments onto the dev team, so they are aware of the sitauation.

[Eni]

Hey there @shape5, 

Thanks for getting back to us.

In order to pass this info on to the right team, would you mind sending us a short screen recording of the issue happening? You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert Video option in the post editor. You can also upload it to Google Drive and share the link with us (make sure the video has the permissions for anyone to see it).

Thanks!