Spotify on Mac is shockingly slow and freezes

[fluff164]

Ive seen a few similar topics from a while back and wondered if Spotify actually ever reads these!!  Is anyone else having same issue?

Basically:

Spotify freezes alot

Ive cleared my cache several times to rectify but am bored with having to do this.  I dont have to on my windows PC or apple phone - ipad......

Is there any other thing I can do?

[yasp2]

- disabling hardware acceleration causes it to not respond

- click on an artist, plays track and freezes, no buttons work. cannot play new music

- need to force quit twice to display working screen, first time shows black screen. same problem repeats

- have uninstalled and reinstalled app

Please assist

[fluff164]

Its pretty evident Spotify arent listening.  Its really frustrating as I like the service on my Iphone - Windows laptop and Ipad, but on my Mac its just not fit for purpose.

Its a pretty poor business model in honesty as if it was me I wouldnt want any unhappy customers.  My mac is almost brand new and I shouldnt have to disable anything, reinstall or delete caches just to get something to work.  Not in this day and age anyway.

[echosilver]

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@Ogen wrote:

Disabling hardware acceleration (Click on Spotify in the top left of your screen then untick the option) fixed the problem for me.

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Thanks! All the freezing was killing me.

[echosilver]

It seemed to work for awhile, but now Spotify is freezing again.

If anyone finds the cause, please let me know. I can't continure to use it on my Mac with all the crashing. Thanks

[goldy44]

Yep. Same here. 

[superwuju]

Same here.

Won't renew my subscription for sure if it works like this.

[gravesande]

Horribly slow for me too.

Tried cache reset, reinstall, disabling hw acceleration.

Apparently Spotify is not interested, because this has been going on for a long time. 

Gotta check out Youtube Music.

[AlaskaJaxx]

A few folks mentioned specific builds, but if you’re having issues, be cool to list your build (computer specs) and OS build (whether you’re using public beta, older builds or current system/current OS updates) 

im using 2014 & 2015 MacBook Pros without issue, a 2017 27” iMac - no problems. And it’s a base build w/8GB RAM. I just got it and will add more soon but I’m floored how well it’s running on a fusion drive iMac. As well, no issues with using third party apps (dJay Pro) and Spotify libraries ‘on the fly’. 

I’m certainly not questioning the validity of your challenges but macOS and iOS versions of the app have been essentially flawless for our playback needs (10-14 hours straight). 

[Doulton]

I am getting very tired of this.  I have Spotify Premium.  Every day I spend a long time tying to listen to music.   I have signed in and out; I have uninstalled and reinstalled.  I only use Spotify on my desktop iMac so there are no conflicting platforms.  

Why does it have to be so difficult?   Why has this problem become a daily one when it used to be only intermittent?

[Rayn0rrr]

Same here and still having this issue as well.

My MacBook isn't the slow one. Spotify is the culprit. I can't even use it on my mac anymore.

[King_Snakey]

Still **bleep** btw

If I don't just keep it open I may as well book meeting time to accomodate using the app. I think right now it's the slowest I've ever seen it. I've done pretty much everything suggested above at one time or the other; it always returns to horrible form. It's really just laziness stopping me from dumping it altogether

One bright spot? It closes instantly

[Peter0202]

I hear ya. I've tried all the suggestions. The hardware acceleration thing
worked for a couple of days. I only use it on my phone now. Even that's not
exactly spritely. I don't feel like starting all over again with another
app though. Big drag.

[GeoFernando]

Mac are total trash, i never seen so bad computers in all my life...I have a Pc with windows 10 in home.. Everything works Great, i have a Mac in the work and never seen in my life a system with more problems and bugs and crashes and the worst multitasking ever.... i basically cannot run spotify in the work because everything gets slow...

[Handyjr]

Adding to this thread. I experience the same slowness with the Mac desktop app on my 2015 Mac Mini, but not so much my 2017 Macbook Pro. It appears to be a very RAM hungry app. In any case, agree with everyone that in this day and age, Spotify can and should fix this problem. Please help, Spotify.

[calebsam]

 Hi guys, i've been struggling with horrendous load times on my Macbook with Spotify for months and months. It drove me absolutely crazy and all the potential fixes posted on these forums didn't work for me. Came across this blog though which fixed it for me. I'm no tech expert, but I turned hardware acceleration off and followed these steps and it fixed it for me. wanted to share it and i hope it helps you too!!

https://alexlitel.tumblr.com/post/53154780770/what-to-do-if-spotify-is-running-slow-on-your

[notmebut]

This is pure genius. Thank you so much, it work like charm now

[tdag]

Dismissing "Hardware acceleration" (hahaha!) just works at the moment you do it - and perhaps the next 2-3 times. Then it comes back again to its pathetic unbearable slowness. Not only te Spotify app is slow. The whole computer is frozen. Spotify clearly does nothing to fix it. This is so huge and so reproductible that it should be easy for a developper to understand and fix the problem. If I would not be annoyed to loose my playlists, I would have quit this UX-offendering service

[musicInCanad1]

worked for me for 5 minutes 😞

[calebsam]

hey, just to be clear, the steps below permanently fix any sluggishness (at least they did for me) turning off hardware acceleration is just a temporary fix it seems. i hope this solves all your problems 🙂

1. Using Finder, under the Go menu at the top of the screen, select the Go to Folderoption (you can also press Shift-Apple Key-G to access). Inside the “Go to the folder” field that pops up, type or paste ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ and then click “Go” or press Enter.

2. Delete everything inside the com.spotify.client folder. You can select all of the items by pressing Command + A.

3. Using the Go to Finder option from Step 1, go to ~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/.

4. Inside the Spotify folder, look for a file called prefs. Open this file in Notepad and add storage.size=1024 on a new line at the end of the file. Save this file. This should limit the size of Spotify’s cache to 1024MB or 1GB; you can change the “1024” value if you would like the cache to be smaller or larger.

5. Delete the PersistentCache folder inside the Spotify folder.

[King_Snakey]

I mean, it's good that that works I guess, but it seems kind of absurd to have to go to such lengths for such a basic thing