[Android] Spotify crashes on SCREEN_ON broadcast due to progressive heap exhaustion (memory leak)
Summary
Spotify for Android crashes intermittently during active playback. The only workaround is clearing app data/cache, which temporarily resets the issue. I captured ADB logcat during a crash and identified the root cause: a memory leak that drives heap usage to 100%, after which the app is killed by ActivityManager when handling the SCREEN_ON broadcast.
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Device & environment
- Device: OnePlus 15
- OS: OxygenOS 16.0.3.503 (Android 15)
- Spotify version: 9.1.34.2060
- Account type: Premium
- Connection: Wi-Fi
- Offline downloads: enabled
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Steps to reproduce
1. Open Spotify and start playback.
2. Use the app normally (browse, skip tracks) for 15–30 minutes.
3. Lock the screen or switch to another app; leave Spotify playing in the background.
4. Turn the screen on again.
5. Observe: Spotify crashes silently (disappears from recents).
Clearing app data temporarily fixes the issue, but it recurs after ~15–30 minutes of use.
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Root cause analysis (from ADB logcat)
I collected logcat during a crash. The log shows a classic heap exhaustion pattern:
The Java GC runs continuously in the background, but each cycle frees progressively less memory while total heap usage climbs:
19:46:54 — GC freed 119 MB, heap 392/472 MB (16% free)
19:46:55 — GC freed 116 MB, heap 396/472 MB (16% free)
19:46:55 — GC freed 33 MB, heap 511/511 MB ( 0% free) ← heap fully exhausted
19:46:56 — GC freed 107 MB, heap 405/497 MB (18% free)
...
19:47:05 — GC freed 70 MB, heap 441/512 MB (13% free)
19:47:05 — KILL
The runtime repeatedly expanded the heap limit (472 → 497 → 510 → 512 MB) trying to accommodate growing allocations. Multiple threads were blocked on "Waiting for a blocking GC Alloc" simultaneously — a strong indicator of a memory leak, not just high memory usage.
The crash itself was triggered by a SCREEN_ON broadcast:
ActivityManager: Killing 31575:com.spotify.music/u0a463 (adj 0):
user request after error: Broadcast of Intent
{ act=android.intent.action.SCREEN_ON cmp=com.spotify.music/p.se7 }
SCREEN_ON was the trigger, not the cause. The process was already in a terminal state when the broadcast arrived.
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Additional observations
- The issue is reproducible and progressive — the app degrades over a session, not instantly.
- Video canvas is enabled. I had previously disabled it (album art only), which reduced crash frequency but did not eliminate the issue. Re-enabling video canvas ~3–4 days ago appears to have increased memory pressure further, suggesting the canvas feature may be a contributing factor to the leak.
- Clearing cache and data resets the heap and temporarily resolves the problem, which confirms the leak originates in app-managed state (not OS-level).
- No FATAL EXCEPTION or ANR was recorded — the process was killed externally by the OS due to memory pressure.
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Expected behavior
Spotify should manage memory across a playback session without progressively accumulating unreleased heap allocations.
Actual behavior
Heap usage grows continuously until it reaches the system-imposed limit (~512 MB), at which point the process is terminated.
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I'm attaching the logcat file and I hope that would help the engineering team investigate further. Feel free to contact me for any details.
