Spotify on mac keeps stuttering. Auto quality does not work.

[Chad_Chad_Chad]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)

Operating System

Mac OS 12.1

I am sick of the constant stuttering/dropping out for a second all the time. 

I have searched the "community" and there is no solution that works.  It would be nice if you had actual customer service / tech support instead of just dumping it on your users, and no, the email option, that warns you it will probably never get answered, is not an option. 

This is my last try at getting this solved. I have used spotify for almost 10 years... but, I think Apple music is calling. I like spotify better, its suggestions and AI, but none of that matters if it doesn't work well. 

[Chad_Chad_Chad]

Hey folks,

Thanks for your patience while we looked into this.

We've heard from the right folks and after some tests, this seems to be related to Apple and the way their hardware/firmware works, hence why some of you have previously mentioned it happening with other apps as well.

If you're still experiencing this, we'd suggest reaching out to Apple's support team to see if they have any comments or resolution to the issue.

If anything else comes up, the Community will be here.

[ajax12]

My iMac 20202 running 12.6.1 has this stuttering problem with Spotify. I've tried EVERYTHING. Reset bluetooth, repair, delete bluetooth preferences, disable hardware acceleration, turn off airplay, turn off handoff, reboot, reinstall, delete cache. I've done it all and I still get dropouts in the audio every few minutes or so... it's unpredictable exactly when it will drop out, but it does. I'm sitting right in from of my Mac, 2 feet away, and this audio issue is infuriating. If I'm listening to music trying to concentrate on a task, nothing is more distracting than the music temporarily dropping out. Reading through all the replies, it's crazy that this has on for so so so long. Isn't this company supposed to have an app that plays music? Get it right, guys. This is garbage.

[goozleface]

Got an M1 Mac Mini running Monterey 12.3.1. Lots of skipping on the Spotify app when I am doing anything else that is even slightly resource intensive (e.g., switching tabs in Chrome). Very unpleasant. Works fine on my phone, but y'all don't have the social component and other features on mobile. 
EDIT just updated and turned off the hardware acceleration, doesn't seem to be happening anymore! 🙂

[sz6vgh]

One thing I have tried on mine is going to System Preferences and turning off Airplay Receiver.  Worked immediately for me.

[framioco]

Turning off Airplay Receiver immediately fixed it for me on my Mac (intel based). Thanks!

I can also confirm this was not only happening in Spotify but other apps as well. Mini stutters every once in a while, very noticeable with music.Thanks again sz6vgh!

[adrian112]

M1 MBP with macOS 13.2

I tried the following suggestions without any success:
- disable chrome hardware acceleration

- disable airplay receiver

- disable handoff

While its true that is happening too for example with youtube in chrome, this does not happen with apple music.

This is truly the most annoying and distracting bug - it drives me crazy. 

[nunoz]

After more than 80 messages, you still haven't resolved the issue. What are your developers doing? It's unacceptable not to be able to reproduce and fix the problem! I have a stable and very fast connection with a very low ping, and my iMac is the latest generation. This even happens when I don't have any other energy-intensive programs running. Maybe you've implemented an additional anti-copy security measure that could be causing the fluidity problem. In any case, please fix the issue. We're paying full price for an approximate service, and that's not acceptable, especially since I'm a Premium subscriber.

[quixalicious]

I would really, really really love an answer here. I remember fighting with support over this issue years ago, and being ultimately told my options were to run the web player and suffer lower streaming audio quality, or suck it up and enjoy the skips.

I've experienced this after turning off hardware acceleration, after disabling airplay receiver, after reinstalling, on downloaded songs, high quality, low quality, you name it. I've experienced it across two separate MacBook pros over the last three years in fact. Only on those MacBook pros though, never on a phone, in my car, on either of my PCs, not once.

So you've got a bug, something that's dropping quality when running on a Mac. Please fix it, I'm begging you. Previously I literally had audio at my workspace running through a second PC laptop so I could listen to music without being driven crazy. That's not a reasonable workaround to ask of your customers.

[mhohman]

Whelp after years of putting it off this is what's going to cause me to dump Spotify and switch to Apple Music. A shame because I'm walking away from all of my play lists and I hate the Apple Music interface but I can't continue with the audio dropping out constantly. 

16in m1 mbp 13.3.1

[speelurker]

Well, at the risk of jinxing myself, the most recent Spotify update (Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon) 1.2.13.661.ga588f749) running on macOS Ventura is no longer stuttering. I've had two days now of reliable playback so far direct from the macOS App. It still doesn't support direct connect to Airplay the way iOS does but doing it from Control Center seems to be working reliably now.

[DSM808]

SOLVED For iMac Pro desktop! ... 6 Steps to Repairing Spotify's Stuttering Issue.

1. On Spotify app - Both 'Auto adjust quality' & 'Normalize volume' set to OFF.
2. Storage > 'Cache" > Clear cache.
3. Spotify top Menu > UN-check Hardware Acceleration.
4. On Mac - open any folder > On Side menu, Select Home or Library > Scroll down to 'Preferences' Folder > Scroll down to "Spotify Plist' file > Delete to trash.
5. Plist file's - often get corrupted across thousands of Mac app's. It's usually the 1st fix I always go to.
6. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP - 'Re-setting PRAM', by selecting "Re-start" on Mac. As soon as the screen changes, immediately use the Key combinations on your keyboard below. Be Patient, KEEP holding the Key Combination's as the Mac re-cycles anywhere between 2 and 15 times, until it starts Loading Up on the screen; then, release the keys, and allow it to load until the Sign-In Screen appears.

Key combinations for an Intel-based Mac - Option - Command - P + R : To Reset NVRAM or PRAM.

One other thing to mention is that there is a 3rd-aprty app that renders Spotify, perhaps without this issue.

You can find me on Quora, if you have any other question's - https://www.quora.com/profile/David-St-Michael-1/

DSM

.

[iNDIGOarts]

Im on a brand new 2023 16GB Mac Mini running Ventura 13.5 with the latest Spotify (1.2.19.941.gbf202593) as a Premium member on a 50MB line and I'm having the same issues as others here with all efforts having no results - clear cache, disabled Hardware Acceleration, reinstalled the app, turned off Airplay Receiver...

Why can't Spotify develop the app to run properly with how Apple have set up their system? Surely Spotify must understand how Apple have configured things to develop a functional app? It shouldn't be the users issue to try fix something where the Spotify developers have fallen short.

[pshirvalkar]

This helped. lot for me also. Basically do the opposite of what Spotify officially recommends. 

[Splotifly1234]

How has this still not been resolved in 2024? Apple Music is looking far more attractive to Apple Users like me - I think it's time to make the move and abandon Spotify. The fault can't be placed with Apple as Spotify is the third party system integrator and Apple is the OS. Now that Apple have made it easy to move over all saved music and playlists from Spotify there is pretty much no reason for Apple users to use Spotify. 

[ttscoff]

I didn't start having this issue until macOS Ventura, but now it makes it all but impossible to listen to music from my Mac Studio. If I play songs through my phone or my Alexa and pipe it to the computer audio, it's fine, only happens on Spotify for Mac and the Web Player on my Mac. Fine on older OSs and other devices. But it pauses every 10 seconds or so.

[ttscoff]

Sorry, I mean Sonoma, not Ventura.

[whoareyou]

Just take peace knowing that Spotify doesn't give two shts about problems.  Because they have so many.  Lol...they're numb to complaints.  And they know people aren't going to leave the app anyways.  So no point in fixing core software issues.  LOL

[ttscoff]

Seems to be the case.

[charles8xu]

I recently encountered a similar issue on macOS Ventura, which seems to have occurred after updating to 13.6.8

In my case, the MacBook Pro (M1) is connected to an external speaker, and the speakers of the MacBook are combined with the external speaker to create a multi-output device to output together. At this time, and it stutters from time to time.

The stuttering disappears when I assign the output to the external speaker only, so I'm not sure if it's a problem with macOS's multi-output device feature.

[GOLLOP]

How is this still a problem in late 2024? Spotify you're got to sort it out FFS.

[theboyl35]

hi

I know that this is like 2 years late but has there been an update to fixing this because i've got this problem which isn't great while i'm studying