Desktop client becomes very slow after using Search filter within a huge playlist

[randombastard]

Plan

Premium

Country

Sweden

Device

Windows 10 PC

Operating System

Windows 10 Home 64-bit, latest update (2004)

My Question or Issue

Hi,

Lately, in the Windows desktop client, I have had massive issues with the performance after using the search Filter within one of my huge playlists.

As an example, I have one playlist with 7200+ tracks in it. If I press Ctrl+F to do a general search in it. and enter some keyword to search on, it takes many seconds for it to even perform the keyword search in the playlist. This wasn't the case some time back; every search I did in my huge playlists yielded immediate results.

Even worse, after I am hit with the slow search here, it affects the rest of my desktop client usage until I close down Spotify. It takes ages adding new tracks to this playlist, every click in the menus (right-click menu) is laggy, and even the playback of my songs becomes slower. I can usually skip within a song without any delay whatsoever, but after hitting this "bug", it can take 3-4 seconds before the song resumes playing.

These issues to me feels like there's a bad memory leak in the Windows desktop client nowadays after performing the search. Anyone else have experienced the same? Any kind of official response would be great.

[Maekas]

I am facing the exact same problem for a while now. It makes managing these large playlists very painful.

[EvenChiu]

Facing same problem.

[Elena]

Hey there @randombastard, @Maekas and @EvenChiu,

Thank you for your posts and for letting us know about this. We're happy to help you.

Would you mind trying with another internet connection?

Also - we suggest that you perform a clean reinstall of the app and make sure that you redownload it from the Microsoft app store.

Can you let us know if you're able to use search at all or if this just occurs when you're using Ctrl+F?

Keep us posted. We'll have an eye open for your replies 🙂

Cheers!

[TravJack]

Been going on for months...

Thread:
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Desktop-Spotify-becomes-unresponsive-when-using-Sear...

[Mihail]

Hey @TravJack

Thank you for posting in the Community.

Have you tried the steps that @Elena posted to see if they resolve the issue? If after that and the steps in this ongoing issue the issue persists you can leave a +Vote and subscribe to the thread for any updates.

Let us know how you get on, we're always one reply away 🙂

Cheers!

[randombastard]

Hi,

I have followed @Elena instructions:

I uninstalled the Windows 10 desktop client, cleaned all files, and finally reinstalled the MS Store version. Please note that I originally had the desktop client installed from the setup file (.EXE) you can download from the official site.

I then tried another internet connection (mobile tethering for the PC), and it behaves the same way. There's a noticeable lag when using CTRL+F searching INSIDE playlists compared to how it was months back (instantaneous), and after using CTRL+F, the entire client becomes slightly unresponsive in general (i.e. reminiscent of a memory leak). Though it seems SLIGHTLY better than when I posted the original topic. For example, when force-quitting Spotify, you can keep hearing music playing for some seconds before the client actually shuts down in Windows 10.

Regular searching seemingly works fine as always; this behavior only starts happening when I use CTRL+F inside a very large playlist (7000+, 9000+ track playlists).

[Alex]

Hey there @randombastard,

Thanks for sharing your troubleshooting with the Community!

Experiencing delayed performance when searching/ making alterations to very large playlists (over a thousand songs) is expected, since the system is constantly trying to update information in real time. Our developer team is aware of this and they're working on improving the experience. We cannot say when or if this will be solved, but we recommend keeping your app up to date, as software improvements come with every update. 

As a workaround we recommend splitting your large playlists into smaller ones and regularly clearing the cache of the app and your PC in general.

Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have more questions.

Have a great day!

[randombastard]

Hi Alex,

Thanks, I hope they will find a fix for this soon. Especially considering that this is a big regression from how it performed before (e.g. ~1+ year ago) where it was instantaneous and without issues. I have many 10,000 track playlists since several years back and never had to resort to workarounds such as splitting them up, and the current performance/memory issues do not go along well with the recent removal of the playlist cap.

Anyway, glad it has some attention now!

[Maekas]

---

Experiencing delayed performance when searching/ making alterations to very large playlists (over a thousand songs) is expected, since the system is constantly trying to update information in real time.

---

I would like to point out a couple of things here: 

• Like @randombastard said, this was not an issue a year ago. For me, I think it started 3-4 months ago. Before that time, filtering was near instantaneous.
• Writing a search term into the filter box in a playlist of 6,500 songs  just took me 7 seconds to complete. This is not an expected behaviour, this is a bug.
• Doing the same search in the same playlist on mobile yields near instantaneous results.
• Once you do these searches, they become gradually more and more worse, meaning they take longer time to complete.
• Once these search issues manifest themselves, the whole app performance degrades. For example doing a delete song in a playlist takes about the same time as the search, about 7 seconds in my latest case. And again, this issue does not reproduce on mobile. 
• Putting all of these behaviours together, they should not be considered as "expected performance" but as a bug, and a bad one at that.

If you would like, I could record a video about this behaviour in the Windows desktop client to highlight how bad it can get. Please let me know.

[Ver]

Hey @Maekas,

Thanks for reaching out to us 🙂

It sound like you might be experiencing this issue. It's a good idea to try the steps mentioned there. We'd suggest you also add your +Vote and Subscribe to the thread. That way you can keep an eye out for updates and can check if there are changes in the performance of the app.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be happy to help.

[randombastard]

I have been attempting that "workaround" of disabling local files several times but it makes absolutely no difference to how the in-playlist search behaves. Once again, the bug/regression being discussed here is for using CTRL+F searches inside large playlists, not the regular Search bar at the top (if it makes any difference?). The topic you linked to seems to relate to the general search bar.

[Ver]

Hey @randombastard,

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

If the troubleshooting steps mentioned here don't change the performance of the app, we'd suggest you give these steps a go and check the hosts file. You can also toggle off the hardware acceleration. If that doesn't help, you can try with another account. Does the issue persist? 

Keep us posted! If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[randombastard]

Hi,

I checked the HOSTS file but there are no entries pertaining to Spotify (or anything, really). I also disabled the hardware acceleration, but it didn't do anything at all.

I have no other Spotify account to test this with.

[Ver]

Hey @randombastard,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop 🙂

No worries. You can go ahead and click here to create a new account. Are there any changes? That way we can check if it's an account-related issue.

Let us know how it goes. If you have questions, we are here for you.
 
 

[randombastard]

As mentioned earlier, the in-list search on a mobile device (in my case, and iPhone Xs Max) is instantaneous and works perfectly, so I doubt it's an account-related issue.

I also tried logging into the SAME account on my work computer (a Windows 10 laptop) and the same in-filter problem occurs.

[Xenia]

Hi @randombastard,

We really appreciate you sharing this here in the Community! We'll make sure to pass your comments along to our developers.

As @Alex had mentioned earlier in the thread, there can be a delay in response time with large playlists and there are many different aspects for why this might happen, one of them being the way a computer process the cache compared to other devices.

We're continuously improving the app and optimizing it, so this can be fixed in the future by an optimization update, but we won't be able to specifically focus on this or provide an exact date for a fix.

Hope you'll find this clarification useful. We’ll be right here if you still need help 🙂

[bmcgarrity]

I agree as this is a regression from prior versions.  I too have attempted to perform a clean install, removing all files, etc.  I can confirm each of these bullet points is accurate.  It doesn't make sense to have instant results on a mobile app, yes poor performance on a windows machine.  I hate to be the pessimist, but I almost feel this issue will be skipped over because it doesn't get enough "likes", which is truly a disservice to hardcore fans of music.  I'm uploading a video of the filtering which I had hit enter after typing "Chemical".  21 seconds to filter is rather ridiculous.

[warisz00r]

I also am experiencing this issue with the client for Windows 10. Adding tracks to big playlists now also takes far longer than it should be.