Insanely high battery impact and usage

[bigmanmuffin]

Plan

Premium

Country

Denmark

Device

MacBook Air 2023

Operating System

macOS 14

My Question or Issue

Recently I've began noticing an issue with the battery impact and usage of Spotify. Sometimes when using the app it'll randomly shoot up to like 300 energy impact and at times like 4000 power usage the last 12 hours and my device runs hot. I've spoken to Spotify Support, reinstalled and cleaned the cache but to no avail.

[bakoolguy2]

Me too.

Spotify 12 hr Power impact is 573 when all it's doing is playing music in the background. Apps I'm heavily using in the foreground like Brave, Xcode only have impact of 137, and 20 respectively. When I go to details it's the Spotify Helper (Renderer) process. I have a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro. 

Please fix this!! 

[umertoru]

MacOS Sequoia 15.1.1
Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.52.442.g01893f92
Had extreme battery usage of 1399.2 in last 12 hr,
It was more than my vs Code

[williaiam]

I have been having trouble as well on my mac that the spotify helper renderer process uses a lot of cpu (34%) while I am not even playing music on spotify. Also spotify shouldn't even render itself, when it is simply playing in the background. 

Btw, I can't drop a standard mac screenshot here, because this website says the file isn't supported. even though it is a jpg file and they say it is supported. It says it's a jpeg, which isn't supported apparently, but when I check it in finder, it says jpg file. 

[Yordan]

Hey everyone,

Our tech folks have made some improvements in the latest version of Spotify. Could you try updating the app to see if everything looks good?

Happy holidays 💚

[brinkeguthrie1]

Is this issue still happening? I just signed up for Premium but if it hammers my battery, that's a different matter. Running M3 MBA, Sequoia 15.3.1.

[Eni]

Hey @brinkeguthrie1, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this here in the Community. 

Could you let us know the exact Spotify version your PC's running? Also, make sure to send us the info @AlejaR and @Dessi asked for previously. We'll take a closer look. 

Keep us posted. 

[brinkeguthrie1]

Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.57.463.g4f748c64

Is battery usage still a problem for MacOS, that's my question. Sequoia 15.3.1, 2024 M3 MBA

[Dessi]

Hey @brinkeguthrie1,

Thanks for the reply!

As @Yordan mentioned previously, after this was reported and investigated by our tech folks, improvements were made to the app and the issue should no longer be present. In case you're experiencing something similar, I'd recommend trying some of the steps that we suggested here.

Cheers.

[bakoolguy2]

Update: This has been resolved. Thanks! 

[brinkeguthrie1]

by what means?

[bakoolguy2]

By an app update. 

[tonyofthehills]

This is happening with me too.  Tons of power usage on my M1 MBP despite not using it at all.  

Version: Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.59.514.g834e17d4

[Yordan]

Hi, @tonyofthehills,

The original issue should now be resolved, so what you're experiencing could be related to something else. In any case, some troubleshooting you can try is logging out and signing back in to your account 2-3 times in a row - this will force a resync of the app which might help here. If there are any pending OS updates, it's worth installing them as well.

Should the issue persist, could you let us know which of the Spotify processes seems to use up the most resources? Is it the Spotify Helper (Renderer)? Could you confirm that the Web Player doesn't exhibit this behavior?

Let us know how it goes 👍

[ClaireMe]

Hi there,
I'm a Premium user and have been having the same problem for a while now, with Spotify Desktop on MacOS. Tried disabling all the things that could explain a 100% CPU usage, tried to log out/in 3 times, tried to un/reinstall the app. Still at 80-100% CPU usage whenever I open the app (don't even need to play a song). The responsible process is Spotify Helper (Renderer).
When I try to double click on it for more info, it shows a "virtual memory size" of >1Tb, which seems quite weird since all other processes that I tested are around 30-40 Gb. I have no idea what this means, but I'd be glad to have a solution for this, since I have been forced to use Spotify on my phone only for weeks.

Thanks !

[Donjuan2968]

How is this still not fixed?

macOS: Sequoia 15.4.1

when app is open with no song being played.

when the app is open with a song being played.

[AlejaR]

Hey there folks,

Thanks for posting in the Community and welcome. 

We haven't received similar reports recently, so we'd like to investigate yours further.

@ClaireMe, kudos for all the troubleshooting you've tried so far. Just to confirm, have you tried some of the suggestions you can find in this Apple Community thread? 

We'd also like to know:

• If this started to happen after some specific event, such as an OS update.
• The exact Spotify version you're running.
• If this is happening while using other streaming apps.
• If this is happening when using the web player.

@Donjuan2968, we'd recommend you try some of the suggestions proposed in this thread before, such as performing a clean reinstall of the app. If that doesn't do the trick, it'd be awesome if you could send us:

• The exact Spotify version you're running.
• Does this happen when using the web player?
• Does this happen when using other apps?

Keep us in the loop!

[Donjuan2968]

I just did a fresh install of the app didnt change.

Tried to log in and out 3 times didnt help.

version: 

Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.62.580.gb27ad23e

Tried the webapp and the renderer still had spikes that went to 300 but not as much as the app which went in the 2000's

It happens regardless if i use other apps.

Other screenshots that might help:

The context switches and the faults keep increasing with the renderer.

[AlejaR]

Hey there @Donjuan2968,

Thanks for your reply and for all the info you kindly shared with us.

We've gone ahead and passed this info onto the right folks. Meanwhile, we'd suggest you subscribe to this thread on its three-dot menu to get notified as soon as we post any news about this.

We'll be around, so don't hesitate to let us know if you have further questions.

Cheer!

[ThePodfather]

@Donjuan2968 are you on the MacOs beta by any chance? 

[Donjuan2968]

I am on Macos: sequoia 15.4.1