Spotify Won't Open Mac

[tinyfeesh]

Plan

Premium

Device

Macbook Pro late 2012

Operating System

macOS Mojave 10.14.6

When I try to open my Spotify app on my mac, it opens for a split second with a black screen and then suddenly closes itself. I have tried to find as many troubleshooting options as possible that I have found but no success yet.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, missing the music this side...

[Loxer]

Hey @tinyfeesh, welcome to the Community.

Hope you're doing great!

Could you try disabling Hardware Acceleration, you can do that from the Spotify option in the Menu Bar.

Keep me posted 🙂

[tinyfeesh]

Unfortunately, I can not access the Spotify menu because it shuts itself down in less than a second.

I have tried adding it to the accessibility permissions through System Preferences > Security and Privacy. Reinstalled. Restarted Mac. Nothing yet has made a difference. Maybe there is another way to turn off hardware acceleration? 

Thanks for the help so far!

[Loxer]

Hey @tinyfeesh,

Could you try a clean reinstall of the app? Just follow these steps.

If the issue persists try using Sign Out Everywhere and Remove Offline devices options from your Spotify account.

Let me know how that goes 🙂

[tinyfeesh]

Hi @Loxer,

Okay, so I tried both ideas. Logged out everywhere. Reinstalled.

Interestingly enough when I went to go delete the cache and the app support before reinstalling. There were no Spotify files to be found. I still reinstalled to check if they would be there after doing so, however they are still not there?

When I did reinstall after the Install Spotify file downloaded the Spotify app, it instantly opened with the same initial symptoms. Black window and instantly closes.

Houston we have a problem...

[Loxer]

Hey @tinyfeesh,

Copy that!

Could you try doing that from Safe Mode?

To enter Safe Mode just hold the Shift key while booting but make sure Firmware password is off.

If it still persists try installing and opening Spotify from a new user account?

Keep me posted. Over 🙂

[BenjaminPace03]

Hello Loxer,

Surprisingly i've been having the same exact issues on a mac. I have followed every single step until this last comment between Loxer and tinyfeesh, and still does not work. The Shift key booting also doesnt work. any other solutions??

Pls help. Over 🙂

[BenjaminPace03]

@loxer

[Loxer]

Hey @BenjaminPace03,

To enter Safe Mode disable the Firmware password in Recovery Mode, to enter that hold CMD + R.

Thanks 🙂

[tinyfeesh]

Hi @Loxer,

Hear you loud and clear.

We still have a problem but have some new symptoms.

After following your advice, I got my Mac into safe mode (however not sure if after logging in, I still was in safe mode, because the red safe mode in the top right disappeared). I also still had the same result when opening the Spotify App.

This brought me to sign in to the guest account because I thought maybe not having a password on that account would make a difference and this was part of the previous advice you gave.

Good news! The Spotify app opened (still with no files in App Support and Cache to be seen).

Expect, I feel like it woke up on the wrong side of the bed because it was lagging heavy, loading extremely slow and unable to play music... Almost like there were a few files missing, cough cough app support and cache where are you?

Progress made, but still, feel like we are stuck on the dark side of the moon with this one. Houston, we have faith in you.

Over.

[Loxer]

Hey @tinyfeesh,

This is Houston, I hear you loud and clear!

I'd suggesting the following the steps in this manual to see if the problem gets resolved.

Make sure to try it out of the safe mode, just restart the Mac to return to the normal mode.

Also, it would be worth trying this in a new user account in your Mac then installing Spotify there.

Houston over. I'll be right here for you 🙂

[Tvignapiano]

Consider using the web player in Chrome.  It's responsive and does not seem to lag.  The Mac app is just too frustrating and unenjoyable to use.

[gringogordo]

I had this problem too, I tried all of the suggested solutions several times. I'm not sure if it's still a problem for other people, but what seemed to work for me was I did a search for spotify files throughout my mac OS.

In addition to the library files, and the application, there was also some files with 'crash' in the name. I think they might be some files associated with the first time the app crashed.

Once I deleted those, and also deleted the other spotify files, re-installed, I got the login screen and it worked.

[gringogordo]

The web player won't let you download files and play offline. For me, also, I use a lot of browser tabs for work and the player ends up getting lost and accidentally closed. Just simply switching to the web player isn't a viable solution, and wasn't at all the question asked.

[Magaard]

What worked for me, was deleting every single file, besides the one called 'prefs' the folder called 'spotify' and the Spotify app itself ofc. Next time I opened Spotify, it was back like normal.

Hope this helps.

[pinket]

What worked for me:

Go to Library > Application Support > Spotify (folder)

Another way to go to the Spotify (folder) is to do a spotlight search.

Now, delete all the folders in the Spotify folder except 'Storage'. And open the Spotify App.

No need to uninstall, reinstall, and restart.

[EwanH]

Oh my goodness you solved the issue for me thank you so much, I'm really disappointed that I'm gonna have to redownload my music though 😭 ( I have my playlists downloaded for when internet is patchy and to save usage)

This randomly occurred today on my MacBook Pro 16" 2019 running latest OS Catalina 10.15.6. Cache files etc that were suggested to be deleted were nowhere to be found. Reinstalling didn't work either. I did what you mentioned and did a search for Spotify in finder and deleted everything except Spotify app and pref file and when it restarted it didn't crash and wen't straight to login screen.

[EwanH]

This worked for me thanks so much!