How can I install spotify on a different drive?

[Meditrina]

I do not want spotify on my C drive, I would like it to install on my E drive.  When I install spotify it automatically goes to C drive and does not even give me an option to change this.  Is there a way to change it?

[Peter__]

Just install it on C and then copy the whole Spotify folder (in appdata) to where ever you would like to store it. You will need to manually update the desktop shortcut, or make a new shortcut to the .exe in the folder. 

Peter

[Meditrina]

I will try that, thank you for the suggestion

[Meditrina]

I can move the whole folder, I do not see the spotify icon anywhere though. 

[Peter__]

In that case just make a new shortcut to the spotify.exe file in the directory and you should be sweet to go!

Peter

[DaveBG]

This option should have been option in the installer. which actually provides no options...

[Paul_Sandford]

I installed onto C. Then I copied the contents of the folder including the software onto a different drive.  Spotify does not now work!  What do you get for free?  In my case, nothing!

[Paul_Sandford]

It did not work for me

[Paul_Sandford]

This worked at the third attempt.

[francispmc]

I was fortunate enough to have this solution work first time out. Unfortunately, it achieves precisely zero.

You install the program to C drive (because it doesn't give any option, which is daft in this world of tablets with tiny C drives and 128 Gb SD cards) then you navigate to C drive users appdata and locate the spotify folder, move it to the D drive, then start spotify and it says "whoops, there's no spotify folder in the C drive users appdata folder - I'll just create one". So, you have a snapshot of the spotify folder on your D drive which stays as it was on installation, and your spotify folder on the C drive gets bigger and bigger.

I just uninstalled and reinstalled because my spotify folder was taking 6.1Gb of my C drive, which is barmy.

I love the spotify service - great concept and implementation, but the software they put out there is definitely not in the same league as the service - no options on where to install and place temporary files, no skins to get away from the dark gray scroll bars on a black background, it's just not very well executed unfortunately.

[glitter34]

worked perfectly for me on the first try, i did move both the spotify folders from the local and roaming folders! thanks! Don't forget to change the settings in spotify as well to redirect the storgae folder.

[simonkochsiek]

Thanks Worked for me!

[ariloum]

Nothing worked for me (when I copied spotify Local and Roaming files to another location and modify it`s config files everywhere to change disk C: to 😧 spotify app just runs with blank interface and nothing is working)

THE ONLY THING WORKS for me was to create symlinks to spotify folders on disk C from another drive and now my system ssd do have more free space.

I dont know why did spotify folders increases its size heavily even if my data folder is on another drive. When your system ssd disk`s free space is like 3-5 gb and spotify folders gets bigger I had to clear it`s cache manually like every 1-2 weeks... It`s kind of noncense.

And I don`t know either why the slack there is no folder choosing on spotify installation process.

It`s great service but this application needs some tweaking.

[-cobs · Accepted solution]

Use this command in an administrative command prompt:

mklink /D %appdata%\Spotify E:\Spotify

[user-removed · Accepted solution]

You can only move the data which the app uses, so the appdata. The software itself has to stay on the C: drive (this has to do with standard system settings, which aren't recommended to change).

[Lord_Percy]

Nice one Peter!

[vivawariors]

Don't think anything works. I moved all the Spotify folders from C: to D:, there are actually two: one in AppData>Roaming and one in AppData>Local. Changed the cache storage location as well from C to D. Everytime I bring up Spotify by clicking on the .exe file (from the new 😧 location), both folders in C reappear. I've also verified that it is utilizing the files in C coz I can't delete them when Spotify is running. Actually you still can't after you close Spotify coz there's a SpotifyWebHelper process that will run in the background. I had to manually terminate that using Task Manager. It seems like Spotify runs much like an installer, which explains why it isn't in program files. Everytime you click on the .exe it'll sort of re-install itself, hardcoded to be in C drive. No matter what you do, it's still going to run from C. The cache location is probably the only thing we can change. Gosh, Spotify, please just have this simple functionality in your upcoming releases. And please tidy up those background processes. It isn't really a problem for me previously but after the reports on Spotify continuously writing GBs of data while idling, I am really concerned coz I use a SSD for C drive and I don't want to risk shortening my drive's life for Spotify. 

[crisgordo90]

I'm still expecting spotify to let me select the drive where I want to install, and let me download the music into my local computer (don't care the format or if it needs to spotify app to play, I just want to pick the drive for that too), if not why to bother installing the app.

[Montificus · Accepted solution]

You can run this powershell script I wrote to fix it. By default it will install to C:\ProgramData\Spotify but if you run the cmdlet with the -Destination parameter you can specify where you want it (Example: Fix-Spotify -Destination 'E:\Spotify').

I recommend uninstalling Spotify first, running the script from the user account you are going to be installing spotify for (if you want to get around the annoying execution policy run it in the PowerShell ISE), then reinstalling Spotify and it will be fixed. The reason I wrote the script was because executables are blocked from the %APPDATA% folders on my work computer, so everytime spotify updated it broke. Also because my coworker said it couldn't be done (mostly this reason). 

function Fix-Spotify {
    Param (
        # AppData directory for the Spotify installs local to the profile
        [Parameter()] 
        $AppDataPath = "$env:USERPROFILE\AppData",

        # Destination for symbolic link
        [Parameter()]
        $Destination = "$env:ProgramData\Spotify"
    )

    $strAppDataLocalSpotify = "$AppDataPath\Local\Spotify"
    $strAppDataRoamingSpotify = "$AppDataPath\Roaming\Spotify"

    $strLocalDestination = "$Destination\Local\Spotify"
    $strRoamingDestination = "$Destination\Roaming\Spotify"

    if (!(Test-Path -Path $strLocalDestination)) {
        New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $strLocalDestination -Force
    }
    
    if (!(Test-Path -Path $strRoamingDestination)) {
        New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $strRoamingDestination -Force
    }

    if (Test-Path -Path $strAppDataLocalSpotify) {
        Copy-Item -Recurse -Path $strAppDataLocalSpotify -Destination "$Destination\Local" -Force
        Remove-Item -Recurse -Path $strAppDataLocalSpotify -Force
    }

    if (Test-Path -Path $strAppDataRoamingSpotify) {
        Copy-Item -Recurse -Path $strAppDataRoamingSpotify -Destination "$Destination\Roaming" -Force
        Remove-Item -Recurse -Path $strAppDataRoamingSpotify -Force
    }

    cmd /c MKLINK /J $strAppDataLocalSpotify $strLocalDestination
    cmd /c MKLINK /J $strAppDataRoamingSpotify $strRoamingDestination

}
# Run the cmdlet created by the function above
Fix-Spotify -AppDataPath "$env:USERPROFILE\AppData" -Destination "$env:ProgramData\Spotify"

[crisgordo90]

Well I don't like this workaround, I'm asking the spotify team, to create a ticket to develop a simple option to let me specify the installation location, I'm a developer and I know that is not that hard to do.