My Desktop version only comes up as a black window

[rustofish]

I'm not sure what is going on, but when I open my desktop version of Spotify, all that opens is a black window with only three white dots in the top left corner that are clickable, and then the minimize, maximize and close icons in the top right. That's it. 

I'm not sure why this is happening. Any ideas?

[Sebasty]

Hey @rustofish

That looks weird!

I recommend reinstalling Spotify like this:

1. Close Spotify and uninstall it.
2. Go to %AppData% in Windows Explorer, and delete any Spotify folders you find in Local and Roaming folders.
3. Restart your computer.
4. Install Spotify.

I see that you're on Windows 10. I suggest looking into your Windows Updates, maybe there's something that should be installed, a driver for something related to graphics for example. It does look like it's related to some graphic driver error.

Let me know how it goes 🙂

[David_WB]

click on 3 dots
click "view"
uncheck hardware acceleration
restart Spotify

[jdtoo]

Plan

Free

Operating System

Windows 10

My Solution:

There is a lot of false and erroneous information in this forum and elsewhere on the Internet regarding the solution to the problem of getting a black screen with no login when you launch Spotify.exe.  This is NOT a video driver or video setting problem.  It is a permissions problem.  Here is the real solution:

Run Spotify.exe with the "--no-sandbox" command-line switch, i.e.

Spotify.exe --no-sandbox

That is all you have to do.  For those that are concerned about security, yes, disabling the sandbox is generally not a good idea in a Chromium-based web browser, but the Spotify app is not a general purpose web browser so the risk is minimized.  Plus, this is the only solution I could find that would actually work after much research and trial-and-error.  There are plenty of other Electron-based apps which use --no-sandbox by default.

By the way if anyone from Spotify reads this, in a future version of the Spotify desktop app, please include an option in the preferences to manually disable the sandbox without having to use a command-line switch.  That option is needed for apps which integrate with or launch Spotify because none of the apps I have tried allow using custom command-line switches to launch Spotify.exe.

[Petya]

Hey there @jdtoo,

Thanks for getting in touch with us and welcome to the Community 🙂

The troubleshooting steps you've provided are very good.

We'll make sure to pass your feedback to the right team. If you want this idea to reach to more users you can follow these steps and submit it. Rest assured that the higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for the idea to be implemented.    

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.

Stay safe!