High CPU usage on Desktop Windows client when "Now playing view" is visible

[Intelli32]

I have noticed high CPU usage when the "Now playing view" sidebar is visible, even when no music is actively playing. It is 100% reproducible. Closing the "Now playing view" makes CPU usage go down to 0% while idle.

It uses 10% of my CPU (Intel i7-9850H). This is my client version info:

Spotify for Windows (64 bit)
1.2.32.997.g4c6498b6

[OscarDC]

Hey @Autrii,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

That's an odd behavior as the scrolling name shouldn't be elevating the temperature of your PC. So first, to make sure we start covering all the basics, we'd recommend performing a clean reinstall of the app by following the steps in this article. This is often an overlooked step, but it’s more thorough than a quick one and can be helpful in getting rid of any cache that might be causing trouble. 

If the issue persists, would you mind checking with different songs and let us know the URI/link of the tracks that seems to be affecting to test it on our end?

Lastly, include in your next response the make, model, and OS version of your PC, along with the Spotify version you're currently running to continue investigating the case.

We'll be waiting for your response. 

[Autrii]

A clean reinstall did not work.

As for the song it's any song that activates the scrolling of the songs names if it's too long. If the song name is short and doesn't have a scroll to show the whole song name my temps are fine.

I'm on Windows 11 Version 10.0.22631 Build 22631

My Spotify version is; Spotify for Windows (64 bit)
1.2.59.514.g834e17d4. I have found a temporary fix which is setting my zoom to 90%.

[Ivelina]

Appreciate the details @Autrii.

Could you let us know if you noticed when this behavior started happening for the first time and if it was after an update of the app for example?

It's great to hear that you've found a workaround by setting the zoom to 90%, but something else that comes to mind is to disable both hardware acceleration and Canvas within Spotify's settings to test if these would make any difference.

On Windows it's possible to download the app both from our website and from the Microsoft Store and it's possible that they have different behavior sometimes. To test if Spotify would work better, it's worth deleting the current version that you're using (you can follow the clean reinstall steps to get rid of any leftover files) and get the app version you weren't using until now.

Keep us posted.

[Tumpo]

I have noticed about 10% CPU usage when Spotify is idling (song paused). It causes my CPU fans to ramp up. I have tried reinstalling Spotify and disabling HW acceleration, but still happening.

Spotify for Windows (64 bit)
1.2.59.514.g834e17d4

[Autrii]

I've tried both versions from the Microsoft store and directly from Spotify and they both seem to keep doing the same thing. I also tried your recommendations and they didn't work either.

[Autrii]

I should also mention that it's on a vertical monitor when this is happening. No idea if that'll help figure out the issue.

[slickx]

Having this exact same problem. If the song name is too long and has to scroll left to right my cpu usage is at 10%. If the song name is short and static the cpu usage drops below 1% like normal. Please fix this.

[Vasil]

Hey folks,

Thank you for all the reports 🙂 
We're keeping tabs on this!

[Autrii]

If you need anymore information do let us know! The higher temp issue seems to be fixed on this latest update at least for me. 

[e-clect-eddy]

Plan

Free

Country

Netherlands

Device

None

Operating System

Windows 10 H

My Question or Issue

I have Spotify via MS Store latest update 1.2.60.564.gcc6305cb.

For since early February internal navigation is extremely slow, but even more when opening the settings page. I've been throttling all kinds of option on/off to see if that helps but it does not seem to help much. Because Windows and Spotify released an update on the same day it's difficult to say which one made Spotiy slow down to a crawl. Other things on my PC work fine and at normal speed. So seems to be Spotify bugs. Earlier updates cause my processor to peak above acceptable limits.

Normally Spotify uses just 400 Mb, today memory-usage for Spotify hit 4,5 Gb on my 8 Gb system with 3th gen intel processor. So hitting near 90% used memory. Totally unworkable and unacceptable. Even opening my profile page in the app takes 10-20 seconds and the settings page as long as 20-40 seconds.

I hope your tech-guys can find the problem and fix it.

[pun10tial]

Plan

Premium

Country

United Kingdom

Device

HP Envy 13 Laptop w/ Core i5-1135G7 and 8GB of RAM

Operating System

Windows 11

My Question or Issue

Spotify uses a lot of RAM and CPU - to play a video it uses over a GB of memory and roughly 30-40% of my CPU at times, which makes animations slow and stuttery and makes my laptop heat up very quickly.

[RMRMRM]

This is a very weird issue. I'm running the linux version of Spotify App (Spotify version 1.2.59.514.g834e17d4). Recently (last 2 months?) I've noticed the app is having high CPU usage for no real reason ~ around 5 to 10% of CPU. Some steps taken:

• Updating the app did nothing
• Clearing the cache did nothing.
• Closing the "now playing" tab halved the CPU usage
• Minimising the window reduced the CPU usage by 99.9% (!!!)

Seems to be some kind of display bug. Weird... 

[Casvt]

I have a similar issue. Windows 11 Home 24H2 26100.3775 with Spotify for Windows (64-bits) 1.2.62.580.gb27ad23e.

With hardware acceleration enabled, the song progress bar at the bottom leads to Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) consuming around 28-30% of my RTX 3050 Laptop GPU:

 

The moment I cover up specifically the progress bar with another application's window, the usage drops to 4-5%:

Turning off hardware acceleration fixed the problem:

Seeing that both the progress bar and the scrolling text are animations, it seems like there is some serious optimisation problem going on with the animations (either by Spotify or Electron).

[e-clect-eddy]

This issue persist or rather comes back after I found other caches for Spotify in my Windows user profile using a tool like TreeSizeFree. This not the normal cache that can be emptied via the button in Spotify settings, that does nothing for this issue nor to enable / disable the hardware acceleration option.

These cache are situated in a place where users with average IT skills normally don't go, cause of the risk to break the app. So in ...windows-username / AppData / Local / Packages / SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic....xyz etc. There are some cache folders there and I emptied out a few and that did improve performance... but just for a while... gradually things start to slow down again, week by week. Be careful or you'll need to remove and re-install Spotify (via MS Store in my case).