Spotify prevents external display to reactivate after sleep

[MarianTheisen]

Plan

Premium

Country

DE

Device

MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro

Operating System

macos sonoma (but occured on ventura as well)

My Question or Issue

For some months now I have been having issues with getting my external display to reactivate after my lunchbreak etc. Usually the macbook has gone to sleep, sometimes disconnected, sometimes not. The issue however is pretty much everytime the same: External display would not "activate". 

(Note: it's connected via USB-C and also connects my external trackpad, keyboard and ethernet to the macbook - both work fine - just the screen stays blank).

For months my routine now consisted of rebooting my macbook after my lunchbreak and in the morning. 
This morning, though, I initiated a reboot and some application prevented the reboot with a dialog. Because I was doomscrolling on my phone, I did not notice it at first, but suddenly my external screen went on - without further interaction from me. 
Weird. I tried everything to get that screen reactivating the last few weeks. Power off/on, re-plugging, turning the USB-C around, different port... nothing. And now something happened after I initiated the reboot, but BEFORE the actual reboot which solved the problem.

That's when I thought, maybe some application has sth to do with it, and when it got closed prior to rebooting, the display could turn on. So after my lunchbreak today, when the problem appeared again, instead of rebooting, I just closed all applications one after another, while waiting a few seconds in between. When I closed Spotify, boom, display turned on immediately.

Seriously, how? wth? 😄 That's a whole another level to the old "prevent sleep" problems.

[MarianTheisen]

Addendum: Does not occur if I just open Spotify but never play anything

[MihailY]

Hey @MarianTheisen,

Thanks for reaching out and describing your issue in such detail.

Do you notice this behavior when using the web player or the desktop app (or both)? If it's only with the desktop app, can you try running a clean reinstall as described here?

If the issue persists, please share your exact Spotify version or browser version so we can check on our end.

Keep us posted.

[MarianTheisen]

Hi,

just tested, the issue only occurs using the desktop app. web player in chrome and safari work fine. Clean reinstall did not change anything.

But I found another correlation: Usually my audio output is the external screen. The issue only seems to occur if audio is set to external screen. I switched it to MacBook speakers and tested it, and then the issue disappeared. 

So maybe there is a hiccup when the audio target/output "disappears".

Details:

macOS Sonoma 14.0

Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.22.982.g794acc0a

Chrome 118.0.5993.70

Safari Version 17.0 (19616.1.27.211.1)

Notes:

- The device is under corporate MDM

[AlejaR]

Hey @MarianTheisen,

Thanks for your reply and for all the info shared.

In this case, we'd recommend that you check the energy saver preferences of your computer in order to make sure that its configuration allows Spotify to work after it wakes up. You can check for more info about this in this article. 

On another note, it might be worth trying to check and change some of the lock screen settings to see if you notice any changes in this behavior. You can read more about those settings in this article.

Lastly, and just to confirm, did you notice if this started to happen after a specific event such as an OS update? If yes, please send us the details. 

Keep us in the loop!