Playlist Folders Lagging, folder expansion takes seconds to minutes

[SustainedNote]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA 

Device

Macbook Pro late 2021 M1

Operating System

Ventura 

My Question or Issue

Spotify folders are lagging extremely. When I open a folder to view my contained playlists, the "opening" of the folder can take up to 3-30 seconds, sometimes doesn't even happen at all. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app. When I "open" a folder in Spotify, Mac Activity Monitor shows Spotify jumps from 0.06% of CPU to 99.6% usage! I am running a M1 Pro with 36GB RAM! How could opening a folder pull that much of my CPU? 

I've filmed a video of this issue here.

Thanks!!

[pjhsea]

I'm also experiencing this problem. I've been using the Spotify app on my 2021 M1 Pro MacBook since I bought it, never had any performance issues until three or four weeks ago, around the same time that @SustainedNote reported this issue. All of these operations in the app now lag for several seconds before completing: opening and closing folders, adding and deleting songs from playlists, and moving playlists between folders. CPU utilization spikes when performing these operations. The suggestions to toggle hardware acceleration and adjust the Local Files settings do not have any effect. I'm running MacOS Sonoma 14.5 (23F79).

I'm also a long-time Spotify user with over 3000 playlists organized in numerous folders.

> Also, keep in mind that a lot of the lagging issues within the app are usually related to a huge library. We understand this might not be ideal, but downsizing your library is another option that could help.

This is not a reasonable solution. Please consider that the users with huge libraries are those who have used Spotify for a long time, please take their concerns seriously. If something has changed in the app then these users probably aren't imagining it.

I suggest forwarding this bug to a software engineer who can help. A recent release of the Mac app likely changed something so that these operations are now iterating over every playlist in the user's library for some reason, or a linear operation over the playlists was changed to an n^2 operation.

[TanyaS]

Hi,

The lag and behaviour of app can be improved via clearing the host files.

Windows: 

1. Open Notepad as an administrator (right-click - Open as Administrator)
2. Go to File - Open and navigate to

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

3. Choose "All Files" instead of "Text Documents" next to the File Name box. You'll see a handful of files. Pick hosts and click on Open.
4. The file is opened. You will see a block of text with # in front of each line and might see entries like

0.0.0.0 website.com
127.0.0.1 website2.com

Check for any entries with spotify or fastly in the address. Examples may look like:

0.0.0.0 weblb-wg.gslb.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 prod.b.ssl.us-eu.fastlylb.net 

(and any variations inbetween)
5. If you do find any, you can delete the line. You can also add a # in front of the line, that's 'commenting out'. 
6. Save your changes. Refresh the Web Player.

If you have downloaded the application from the website, I would recommend installing the version available on the Microsoft store and vice versa to see if it makes any difference.

[MihailY]

Hey @pjhsea,

Thanks for your detailed post.

Can you send us your exact Spotify version so we can forward the issue to our tech team? @SustainedNote, we'd need yours as well so please share it in your next comment and let us know if the last troubleshooting steps have made a difference in the loading times.

We'll be on the lookout for your replies.

[LeeMortis]

No difference installing from Microsoft Store or Spotify Website (except I lost the Spotify icon when installing from Microsoft).

As for the notepad thing - well no spotify or fastly lines were present in the hosts document. The web player version works mostly fine for me... it is the desktop version that does not.

Actually... I think it has gotten even worse. It is now 15 minutes and I am still unable to load the playlist shown in the video.

[TanyaS]

Hi,

Thank you for letting us know

We recommend disabling the local source file in the setting

Please Note that Show song from will only be visible if Local Files are enabled. Hope this helps

[LeeMortis]

It has always been disabled - so that's not it.

[pjhsea]

My Spotify version is:

Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.41.434.g39a25e2c

[LeeMortis]

New update today. No change.

Please get this fixed. The desktop app is completely unusable as it is right now. Anything I try to do on there takes 1+ minute. Even if I manage to play something, when exiting the app the music keeps playing for another minute before it goes quiet.

Starting to get frustrated with this. I would really appreciate an install version prior to the version I listed in my original post. I had no issues with that one.

[1121729064]

I recently cleared the cache of the spotify desktop app on my iMac. Big mistake.
Since then, the app is unusable. Every action takes about 30 seconds or more. Playing a song takes 15 seconds to start. Scrolling through my folders and playlists is nearly impossible.

I made several clean reinstalls now but nothing changes.

Can I delete my spotify account now and try some competitor with a functioning app or is there still hope?

[1121729064]

I am having the exact same problem as Lee. 

The desktop app is basically unusable now. Every action takes about 30 seconds or longer. Playlists "cannot be found". Starting a song takes up to 15 seconds.

Clean deinstallation and re-installation doesn't help at all.

This is all on my iMac.

On my Macbook the desktop app is running fine and using the web player on my iMac is also fine (except for not being able to play local files)

It is really disconcerting that the issue couldn't be fixed at all in over a month now. Maybe stop making the user jump through hoops and make ridiculous suggestions like deleting all our playlists or switching off Local Files and start looking at your side of the tech to solve this....

[1121729064]

So no support at all? 

[TaylorFranklin]

also the playlists on the left aren't working. when I open a folder, it only shows some of the playlists. the folder I want to open disappears. sometimes a bunch of gray bars is the only thing that shows up.

[Ivelina]

Hey there @TaylorFranklin,

Thanks for posting this thread!

Does this happen only on one device and when did you notice it for the first time? Do you notice the same behavior on the Web Player?

What you're explaining sounds like it may be a connection issue so if you've not done this already, you can restart the router in case you're using one and even test with a different internet connection. You can share mobile data to your desktop via hotspot. 

Additionally if you're using a VPN try disabling it as it can also cause performance issues.

Keep us posted 🙂

[1121729064]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

iMac

Operating System

MacOS Sonoma 14.5

My Question or Issue

Starting a song after opening the app: 15-30 seconds

Clicking in to a playlist: 40-60 seconds until the songs appear

Scrolling in a playlist with a significant amount of songs: 10-20 seconds until all songs are loaded

Adding a new song to the playlist: 40-60 seconds

Drag and drop a song within a playlist: 20 seconds

Right click: 40 seconds until a menu appears

Adding a new playlist: 50-60 seconds

and so on...

Clean delete and reinstalls: twice so far, with rebooting the iMac - no change

Turning on and off local files: no change

Streaming via iPhone Hotspot (change the network): no change

I am a paying customer since 2011. I had my sorrows with the app on different devices. In the end it always worked out fine again. 

So give me something here. 

[diegoperl]

I have exactly the same problem, have a lot of playlists and folders, it went all well till some of the upgrades some months ago. when I click on a folder it takes almost a minute to open, when a click on play a song or album , the same

[thisisgok]

I've switched to to using the browser version. It's *much* quicker than the desktop version for some bizarre reason...

[1121729064]

So again, NO HELP AT ALL

Is there any other place to get technical support? The admins here are obviously absolutely USELESS.

[SustainedNote]

It's a little faster on the Web player and incredibly fast on the mobile app. It's just the desktop Mac app that's lagging so hard. I have the fastest mac too...

[SustainedNote]

Having a very similar issue. Any update?

[LeeMortis]

Ok. Let's get real.

I've been patient. I have done as asked to assist with locating wherein the issue lies. At the end of the day I am but a paying customer who is still charged on a monthly basis for a service that can not be used as expected. It has now been a month since I brought this issue to light - and 2 months since you have apparently been made aware of the problem as per the merging of topics - and absolutely nothing has been done.

We have an issue that renders the desktop version of your service completely useless. Yet this problem has not even been included in the "Ongoing Issues", which (at least to me) shows that this is not a priority issue - less so than, say, the shuffle button occasionally switching to on... which the end user can solve in about 1 second when it happens to them. Not that that issue shouldn't be fixed, but we are faced with something that we cannot fix and we cannot use the software because of it.

So - let me give you a little bit about my experience and theory on where this issue seems to stem from, and let's hope that this can be taken seriously from now on.

When starting the Windows desktop app I immediately click the menu and select the preferences option. It then takes about 1 and a half minute for that to display (it just stays on the home page in the meantime - which loads pretty fast upon starting the app). Then it takes about another minute and a half for the Local Files and Cache to fully load. I have included a picture to show what I mean.

Also, looking at the size of the cache - that seems very unreasonable to me. And it keeps growing every time I try to start the app (is it duplicating previously downloaded data?).

Based on your suggestion of deleting downloaded files I would assume you are aware of some issue regarding those. Now, I have nothing downloaded, yet it claims 1MB in download files. I even tried deleting the Storage folder to allow Spotify to rebuild it - which didn't help.

So I would suggest looking at how your software handles the cache - specifically when having a large library.

For other users with the same problem - perhaps we can narrow it down by confirming what we have in common that can possibly be the culprit.

1. Large library of songs. (State an approximate)

       I have 100.000+

2. Many created playlists (100+, 1000+).

      10.000+

3. Many custom pictures for said playlists.

      Thousands

4. Folder structure including sub-folders.

      Full alphabet with individual folders for each artist within each letter.

Let's start there, as I am fairly confident the issue lies somewhere in there.