Desktop app becomes unstable when scanning for local files in large Downloads folder

[jivebellywaver]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

Desktop

Operating System

Windows 10 Pro, version 2004, build 19041.329

My Question or Issue

Recently, I experienced a problem when attempting to close the Spotify Desktop app. When right clicking on it's icon in the system tray, the main window closed but the icon in the system tray remained. Waiting for it to close did not do anything. Looking in Task Manager revealed that it was still active as a background process using ~15-20% CPU. The only way to close the application and start it again was by ending the task manually.

Furthermore, when the app was simply running, it was continually using ~15-20% of CPU, even when there was no music active, and I had turned off local files.

My troubleshooting went as far as a clean install (confirming that there was no cache left in AppData) and attempting to disable hardware acceleration. Also, I had disconnected my Facebook from my account. What's more odd was that I am running the same library, same Windows version (2004), same settings, and same account as on my laptop. It has had no performance issues.

My Solution

However, after some tinkering, I realized that it's an issue with local files. I have the settings so that Spotify will scan my personal music library folder, and my downloads folder. I think the problem with that is that Spotify is overwhelmed by my admittedly awful downloads folder (17,100 files in 13GB) vs my music library, which is by comparison measly (950 files in 5GB). Using trial and error, I realized that the CPU usage and stability were not compromised when only scanning my music folder.

So, if you're having issues with Spotify using constant CPU and not shutting down correctly, look at which folders it is scanning, and try not to overload Spotify with too much to scan and filter through. Finally, I don't think that this should overload Spotify. I think it is reasonable expect that it shouldn't become this unstable when confronted with a bit more data to filter through. I had to move quite a bit of music into my library folder. While it is cleaner and keeps Spotify from eating my CPU, I didn't want to spend my Friday afternoon figuring this out.