Desktop player does not play songs or show under volume mixer

[im_joe]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

Dell XPS Laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

This has been an ongoing issue with Spotify's desktop player for me. When I try to play a song nothing happens. The playback area (see bottom of attached picture) grays out and I am unable to do anything. If I play a song on my Iphone and select my desktop as the playback device then the song stops playing. Additionally, All of my playlists are showing as empty, even Spotify default playlists (see attached picture). Another potential issue I have noticed is that Spotify is not showing under my volume mixer. Also, the times the desktop player has worked in the past, only certain songs would play, the rest would have the same issue that I am having now. This was seemingly random. 

When I am installing Spotify, I have used the Spotify website for downloads as well as the windows installer through the start menu and the install app option on the web player.

When i use the web player there are no issues.

I have tried every fix I can find online, including:

Reboot device

Update device (Windows is up to date)

Clean Install of Spotify after deleting all related files

Disable/Enable high quality streaming

Disable/Enable hardware acceleration

Running the app in compatibility mode for Windows 7/8

Placing exceptions in my firewall both inbound and outbound for Spotify.exe

Running the program as an administrator

Disable Proxy under advanced settings

Disable all speakers besides desired output device

Main speaker is set as default device

Enable Exclusive mode under default speaker through Windows

[Loxer · Accepted solution]

Hi @im_joe, Welcome to the Community.

Hope you're doing great!

Could you try following the steps from this Spotify Answer?

Hope it helps 🙂

[im_joe]

Works perfectly now, thank you! I never would have thought to try that out.

[Loxer]

Really happy that it works perfectly for you now @im_joe!

That's why I'm here 😉

If you need help with anything else let me know!