Spotify client keeps restarting after closing it.

[JulianKarhof]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Macbook Pro 2019

Operating System

Catalina 10.15.7

My Question or Issue

Dear Community and Moderators,

I keep having this incredibly weird issue where when i try to close my Spotify client, it just opens up again by itself. This wouldn't really be an issue if it didn't prevent my MacBook from sleeping or shutting down, but it does.

I have tried basically anything, from deleting all Spotify data, to reinstalling Spotify and even a factory reset of the MacBook, but nothing has helped and im just really confused as to how this kind of issue would even come about. I think i can remember faintly than it inconsistently didn't reopen after i reinstalled Spotify once, but after a few days it went back to restarting by itself.

Also heres a video of the issue: 

Thank you in advance for any answers or suggestions!

[Eni]

Hey there @JulianKarhof,

Thanks for reaching out about this. 

You mentioned that you've already reinstalled the app, but would you mind going through the steps of a clean reinstall, as it's more thorough than a regular one?

If this doesn't do the trick, could you send us a screenshot of what you're seeing on the app settings about the startup?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂

[Loxer]

Hey @JulianKarhof, welcome to the Community

Hope you're doing great!

That's really strange. Have you tried using Activity Monitor to see if the same issue happens when closing with it?

Could you try doing this in Safe Mode (hold shift when booting up)? Try a a quick clean reinstall of the app in Safe Mode. Just follow these steps.

Let me know how that goes 🙂

[JulianKarhof]

Hey again @Eni and thank you for the quick reply!

I just tried a clean install and it seems to have worked, though as i said in the past it worked only for a couple days and then went back to its original behaviour, so i will keep an eye out for the issue and if it reappears i will let you know. If it doesn't, i'll just consider this resolved then 👍

Thank you for the help thus far!

[JulianKarhof]

Hey @Loxer and thank you for your reply!

I have tried to stop this in the past with the activity monitor as well as the command line, neither of which were successful at all. In fact i went as far as force shutting down my laptop whenever the issue would arrive since it couldn't be shut down normally as Spotify was preventing the shutdown.

I haven't tried Safe Mode as of yet but if the issue reappears after going away through a clean install as @Eni suggested, this will be the first thing to try and ill post about it if it happens to occur.

Thank you for your help so far! 😄

[JulianKarhof]

Hey Everyone!

My issue is back! It has reappeared yesterday when i tried to get my macbook to sleep and i haven't been able to get it to work again since. (I wouldn't like to reinstall it every couple days anyways) Do you have any other ideas or am i just doomed to do clean installs until the end of time? I've also tried a clean install in safe mode as @Loxer suggested, yet it hasn't helped 😞

Greetings!

[Mihail]

Hey @JulianKarhof,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

It would seem that something is interfering with the integrity of the app files. That would explain why a clean reinstall works temporarily - it removes all corrupted files from previous installations and builds the app anew from the ground up. 

As we haven’t seen any similar posts about this recently, we feel this is most likely isolated to your device or specific setup. For now, we recommend contacting the device manufacturer for further help.

Keep us posted, we'll be here if you have any questions.

[JulianKarhof]

Hey and thanks for the suggestion!

I have come back to this thread since this still isn't resolved for me. I have since upgraded my operating system and only installed Spotify on Big Sur and yet it still keeps restarting. I'm out of ideas as to how this could have anything to do with just my specific setup if a clean install of the operating system doesn't resolve the issue.

Im really grateful for any further ideas!

[Novy]

Hey @JulianKarhof, 

Thanks for your message. 

As @Mihail mentioned, it looks like this issue is most likely isolated to your device or your setup. 

In this case, could you let us know if you were able to reach out to the manufacturer? 

Keep us posted. 

[JulianKarhof]

Hey, thanks for repeating that suggestion to me!

Not wanting to be rude, but why do you think this problem is isolated to my device if i can factory rest it, wiping the Harddrive and it still reappears? This is also a problem isolated to Spotify so i think it's a Spotify side bug rather than having anything to do with the OS or my device. I feel rather stupid reaching out to apple support and asking them for help on a problem that most likely has nothing to do with them.

cheers, and thank you for your time!

[Eni]

Hi @JulianKarhof, 

Thanks for getting back in touch. 

We're sorry that you feel this way. However, we haven't seen similar reports about this and we couldn't replicate the issue on our end.

In this case, we suggest that you reach out to the manufacturer since as @Mihail mentioned, it looks like something seems to be interfering with the integrity of the app files.

Keep us in the loop.

[leanda]

Did anyone find a fix for this? Mine has been doing the same thing for months on my Mac and it's starting to drive me nuts. I can never quit the app, it just restarts itself after a few seconds. I've tried force quit and a reinstall and nothing fixes it.

[JulianKarhof]

Hey there, still haven't found a fix for this yet. Apple support obviously couldn't help me with an app specific problem and so I'm still looking for solutions.

[Julian]

Hi folks,

Thank you for keeping us in the loop.

@leanda Could you let us know if you followed the clean reinstall steps shared by @Eni? Also, please check the following steps.

@JulianKarhof It's possible this issue is generated from the device settings. Could you check this guide and follow these steps to prevent apps from reopening by themselves? 

Let us know how it goes!

[JulianKarhof]

The issue in the link you posted clearly doesn't have anything to do with the issue I am facing. I don't have issues with Spotify reopening at system restart but whenever i close it, which has nothing to do with apple system settings.

[JulianKarhof · Accepted solution]

Hello! I have finally come back with some good news!

I have resolved the issue and know what caused it. The reason Spotify kept restarting was because I had an app running called BetterTouchTool, that accessed the local Spotify API by polling it every second, thus restarting the app whenever i closed it. I hope this helps anyone else who comes across this issue after me not having found a solution for around a year. It might not be the exact same tool causing it for you, but maybe its a different thing thats accessing the API on your side.

Thank you to all the people in this thread who tried to help!

[leanda]

Thanks so much! In my case it wasn't BetterTouchTool but the Stream Deck plugin! 

Uninstalled and the app now quits and stays closed.

Thanks again.

[kaliko]

Thank you SO much JulianKarhof for your followup to this vexing problem! Very much appreciated!

[kaliko]

This is also valuable information, Ieanda. Thanks for letting us know. I use both BetterSnapTool as well as the Stream Deck Spotify plugin, so I seem to have myself a "double whammy" ahaha. All the best to you.