Desktop app closing immediately

[xmike15]

Plan

Premium

Country

United Kingdom

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

The Spotify desktop app is closing immediately after login on Windows 10. This occurs when opening the application after installation and login with the window showing as blank with the 3 dots in the top left before closing.

This has not been fixed with a reinstall or by removing all of the application files from \AppData\Roaming\Spotify.

This has started happening after a clean install of Windows 10, Spotify worked perfectly before this.

[Ivelina]

Hi there @xmike15,

Welcome to the Community!

To start, do you see any error messages before the app closes itself on your PC and did this behavior start after an update to Spotify after you reinstalled Windows? To get a better understanding, let us know if this happens after you've entered your credentials upon login on our website and after you click "Continue to the app" it just closes itself.

I recommend deleting Spotify and taking a look at the steps for a clean reinstall here to get rid of any leftover files which may be causing issues and after that downloading the app again either from our website or from the Microsoft Store (whichever version you weren't using so far). Let us know if the same behavior continues. 

Lastly, as a more advanced step if the above doesn't do the trick is to clear the host files. For this, you can follow the steps under Windows in this help article.

We really appreciate your cooperation and hope to hear from you soon 🙂

[xmike15]

Hi Ivelina,

Thanks for coming back on this issue.

To confirm, I don't see any error messages before it closes and there were no updates after Spotify was installed, it has just been failing to run since reinstalling Windows. It does occur after logging in via the web and continuing to the app, before I have logged in the application doesn't crash at all.

I have tried all of the solutions provided and sadly these have not had an effect. There were also no entries related to spotify in 'C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts'. I have also tried both versions of Spotify (installation file and Windows Store).

Please let me know if there's anything else I can try.

Thanks,

Mike

[Yordan]

Hey @xmike15,

Thanks for the reply!

In order to get a better look at this, could you create a log file and share it here by following these steps:

1. Close Spotify and make sure it's not running in the background.
2. Press the Windows key + R to launch the Run program.
3. Enter the following command in the text field: "%APPDATA%\Spotify\Spotify.exe" --log-file="C:\Users\%username%\Desktop\Spotify.log" (make sure to include the " " in the beginning as well as in the end).

The above will create a log file on your desktop, which you can later attach to your reply.

Keep us posted on this. Cheers 🤘

[xmike15]

Hi Yordan,

Thanks for coming back to me on this.

I've created the log file as requested, please see attached.

Kind regards and thanks,

Mike

[Susan_GP]

Hi there @xmike15,

Thanks so much for your reply and for the log file.

For starters, we understand you recently reinstalled Windows, so we'd recommend making sure all the drivers are up-to-date. You can also try installing/running the Spotify in a clean boot state or safe mode to check if a program is interfering.  Check out this article from the Microsoft support page to run your computer in clean boot state, and this one for Safe mode.

Let us know how that goes.

[xmike15]

Hi @Susan_GP,

Did the log file yield any helpful results?

I have now tried launching Spotify in both a clean boot state and in Safe mode and neither change has caused Spotify to boot correctly.

Kind regards,

Mike

[Dessi]

Hey @xmike15,

Thanks for the reply!

We checked the log file, but it's still not really clear why this is happening. There were some mentions of firewall so can you check if Spotify is allowed via your firewall and antivirus program?

It would also be really useful if you can make a screen recording of the app's behavior and attach it to your next response, so that we can have a closer look. If the file is too large to attach, you can upload it to Google Drive (make sure to allow general access to the file) or as an unlisted YouTube video.

Let us know how it goes.

[xmike15]

Hi @Dessi,

I've checked my firewall and anti-virus settings and don't see any reason this would be causing the issue. I also tried running Spotify in Compatibility Mode and as admin, both of which have not fixed the issue but the application does seem to load for slightly longer now before closing.

I have attached a screen recording as requested. Please let me know your thoughts.

Kind regards,

Mike

[Yordan]

Thanks for the assistance @xmike15.

Another user had what seems to be a similar issue and was able to solve it in this thread. Could you try their method to see if it works for you?

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[xmike15]

Hi @Yordan,

I've been wanting to give this solution a go for a while but the application is not open long enough for me to get to the preferences menu. It is often barely open long enough for me to click the 3 dots in the corner.

Is there a way to edit the preferences to make these changes without going through the Spotify UI? I can see that the prefs file can be edited in C:\Users\Stretch\AppData\Roaming\Spotify but I'm having trouble finding the settings for the linked solution.

Kind regards,

Mike

[Dessi]

Hey @xmike15,

Thanks for the reply!

What you can try is deleting the local-files.bnk file to see if that helps. It's located in C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Users\[your Spotify username]. Something else that's worth checking is if the issue would persist on another account - you can ask someone to log in to their account on your PC to test this.

I can also see on the screen recording that there are some pending system updates, so can you install them just in case?

Let us know how it goes.

[xmike15]

Hi @Dessi,

I've tried deleting the 'local-files.bnk' file which has again not been a solution.

I've also tried a seperate account and to my surprise found that the app is no longer crashing! With this in mind, what would you recommend to prevent the crashing on my account? As the app isn't crashing I can now edit settings but I can't see any that I would expect to fix the issue. Any advice would be appreciated.

The updates pending at the time of the screen recording have been installed and were not a cause of the issue.

Kind regards,

Michael

[OscarDC]

Hey @xmike15,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared. 

Keeping in mind that the app works properly with a different account, would you mind (if possible) checking on a different computer using your own account? If you don't have another one available, you can borrow one from a friend or family member to test it out. 

Also, could you confirm if the Web Player works fine on your computer with both accounts?

We appreciate all the troubleshooting you've done so far, it's really helpful!

We'll be on the lookout. 

[xmike15]

Hi @OscarDC,

I've not checked on another computer at this time but will try to do so in the next few days. I can confirm that my account is working as normal on a number of other devices such as an Android phone.

I can confirm that the Web Player is also working as normal.

Kind regards,

Mike

[xmike15]

Hi @OscarDC,

As this is still an ongoing issue, I checked on another desktop device to see if the application crashes with my account, which I can confirm it does not. I have however tried a different Windows profile on the same PC that is having issues and have found that the same Spotify account is crashing on that profile too.

I'm unsure of what to do with this going forward, as I'm unsure if the issue is related to my Windows 10 install itself but don't have a way to verify or fix this.

Kind regards,

Michael

[xmike15 · Accepted solution]

Hi @OscarDC,

I can confirm that I've finally fixed the issue. This was by applying the fix found in this Reddit comment.

Basically if you add the line ui.experience_override="classic" to the prefs file found in AppData\Roaming\Spotify, the application no longer crashes for me. I hope this helps others who have the same issue.

Kind regards,

Michael

[OscarDC]

Hey @xmike15,

Thank you for keeping in contact and sorry for the static noise, the previous message seems to have slided in a crack.

We're really glad to know that everything is working fine now, it was a long trip. We appreciate the time you took following all of the processes and sharing what works for you. Hopefully, this tip will help other users with similar issues too 🙂

If anything else comes up, the Community is just a post away!