How to prevent local files from playing?

[diotapio]

I've got tons of MP3s on my Mac, many of them live. It happens very often so that when I play an album from Spotify, it suddenly plays one of the tracks from the local hard drive instead of the one on the album. I prefer to use iTunes to play the local MP3 files.

How I can force Spotify play only music from online and not from my local drive? 

[Loxer]

Hey @diotapio, welcome to the Community.

Hope you're doing great!

To prevent Spotify accessing the local files you have just head to it's Settings under Local Files section toggle the switch to off. You should be good to go!

Let me know how it goes 🙂

[diotapio]

In the settings I've turned off both options (Downloads and My Music) under the "Local files"/"Show songs from" section. It has no effect whatsoever on this behavior.

[Loxer]

Hey @diotapio,

I know it sounds simple, but it's often overlooked. Could you try restarting your device? If that doesn't help, try a quick clean reinstall of the app. Just follow these steps.

If you're still having trouble, could you let me know the exact version of Spotify and the exact version of the operating system you're running?

I'll see what I can suggest next!

[richbobv]

I've been having this same issue for years, and it's driving me nuts.  I'm trying to listen to albums on Spotify, and the software keeps pulling live versions of the same songs from my hard drive to play.  I do not want this to happen.  I've tried the fixes suggested here and they do not work.  I have had the "Show Local Files" toggled to 'off' the entire time, and it has not effect. When I toggle it on and try to manipulate the source of mp3 files Spotify should use, I am only permitted to add sources but not remove them.  I'd really appreciate a fix for this.  I really like Spotify, but this one feature has ruined by listening experience too many times.

[Katerina]

Hey there @richbobv,

Thanks for posting about this here in the Community!

If you haven't already, could you give it another try after moving the folder containing your local files to a different location in your device?

Once you've done so, it would be a good idea performing a thorough reinstallation of the app with the steps linked in this Spotify Answer instead.

If that doesn't do the trick, it'd be helpful if you could share a screenshot of how the app's Local Files settings look for you - just make sure that any private/sensitive info is not visible. 

Let us know how you get on! We'll be right here if you need more help.

Have a lovely day 🙂

[poiuz]

Hello,

I'm in the same boat as richbobv, and I've already made a clean installation under Windows 10 following the linked page (apart from step 10: "Shut down your device, wait a couple of minutes and switch it on again." - there's no sense in waiting after shutdown).

It would be very helpful if you could just state that it is impossible to prevent Spotify from scanning your whole music library. The setting has absolutely no effect.

And please don't expect me to move approx. 4 TB of data to another location.

[theoneChris]

Hey everybody,

I resolved the problem now by enabling the button 'show local data' instead of leaving it switched off. And then just disabling the two buttons that now show off. This is disabling: 'downloads' and 'my music'.

Now there is no more local files on Spotify available.

Let me please know if it resolved your problem as well.

greetings

Chris

[poiuz]

I can confirm that this solves the problem, thanks!

[richbobv]

This worked perfectly.  Thumbs up!