Disable updates completely

[matzel]

Hey guys,

TLDR: Is it possible to completely disable updates in Spotify?

Dear developers, please try to put yourself in the position of an average user. What do you think (s)he wants to do when opening spotify?

A) Listening to music or podcasts

B) updating spotify

The answer is A! I don't want to install updates everytime I open spotify! In fact I don't want to update spotify anytime at all!

It takes decades for the totally unnecessary updates to finish every time I open Spotify and I have new problems with your buggy nightly builds every week (like a black window or Spotify forgets where I stopped playing last time or audio driver issues and so on).

I don't get the stupid update rage of developers that built up over the last years. I use a lot of programs and at least one of them updates and keeps me away from working every day, because it takes a long time or crashes something. Just stop it. It's stupid. Give back control to the user, (s)he's the chief of her/his computer. Hobbyless nerds can have daily, hourly or even minutely builds if they need it to survive, but I don't want them.

Best regards,

Matthias

P.S. I got this error message when trying to post this without being logged in:

"An Unexpected Error has occurred. Your request failed. Please contact your system administrator and provide the date and time you received the error and this Exception ID: 37FF74E2."

[Alex]

Hey @matzel,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

Regarding the updates - It's currently not possible to disable automatic updates. You'll keep getting the prompt to update and restart the Desktop app if there is a newer version available.

There are some users in the Community who've found a workaround to this. You can check out their guide in disabling updates here.

Regarding the error message - We've passed this on to the right team at Spotify. Since your community account is linked to your actual Spotify account (Note that your Spotify profile is anonymous) you need to be signed in to post on the forums, this could be the reason for receiving the error message.

Hope you find this info helpful. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[Xenia]

Hey there @matzel, 

Just wanted to check back with you if you still get that Unexpected Error when you try posting here on the Community?

If you do, it'd be great if you could let us know whether you have any special characters (Non-ASCII) in either your Spotify username or display name and try if changing the display name makes a difference.

Thanks - Keep us posted.

[matzel]

Thank you Alex for the workaround (a bit interesting, but better than nothing^^ Hope spotify changes this soon...)

Xenia: no I don't have any non-ASCII characters in my username - if this post shows up then it seems that everything works and it was a temporary thing.

P.S.: Ok cool, I had to do about 4 captchas - what a waste of time... By the time of ending to write this post, the captcha timed out and the check box is red - now I can't check it anymore (no images popping up)... Looks like I need to sign in before posting - a bit weird that this is not proposed in the first place but ok.

P.P.S. Yeah, ok no it doesn't work. You need to be signed in to post - posting as a guest doesn't seem to work? I am using Vivaldi 3.6 on WIndows 7 Professional 64 bit. Probably it's because I block all cookies by default?

[CarlosE]

Hi again @matzel,

Thanks for keeping in touch and for that info.

That's right - you need to be signed on to post on the forums of the Community, but not necessarily to navigate through it. Having the cookies blocked can have an impact on this.

We appreciate you taking the time to test it. We'll pass the info on the right teams.

We'll be right here in case you need a hand with anything else.

[Veps]

I am also looking for a sollution for this problem. I have to redownload my entire playlist every other day because spotify decided on its own to update to the latest "broken" version that doesn't work with my car system. Then I have to uninstall spotify, reinstall from a APK to have spotify working for another few days. This is getting frustrating!

For developers: If you don't want to repair your broken app, atleast turn off auto update or make update optional! 

[Novy]

Hey @Veps,

Thanks for your reply in this thread 🙂
 

As @Alex mentioned above, it's not possible to disable auto updates in the desktop app.

However, this is possible on mobile:

For Android: go to Play Store> Settings> Network Preferences> Auto- update apps.

For iOS: go to Settings> App Store tab> In the Automatic Downloads section, turn off the toggle for App Updates.

This way you can control which app you want to maintain up to date. 

Nevertheless, we don't recommend downloading old versions of the app. To ensure using Spotify safely, always download from our official sources: the website, and the relevant app stores.

If you're having an issue with the mobile app, we suggest posting on the relevant Help board so we can give you a hand.

Hope this clears things up. If you have any questions or need anything else, the Community is here for you.