Remove spotify from system tray windows

[skunt]

Plan

Premium

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

 How can we disable spotify from running in the bottom right hand corner, the notification area (system tray) in windows. If the software is running it cannot be removed.

[jsannn]

Hi @skunt

While Spotify does not allow you to remove that icon you can hide it through windows itself. Right click on the taskbar then "Taskbar settings". Under "Notification area" click on "Select which icons appear on the taskbar" and turn off Spotify.

Hope this helps.

[skunt]

Why not just make it check box option. If you want to get rid of a shirt
does hiding it under the bed work? That's not what I'm looking for.

[Eqnesto]

Spotify team should work on this option.

[Novy]

Hey @Eqnesto, 

Thanks for reaching out about this. 

At the moment, this feature is not available within the app's settings. In this case, we'd recommend following @jsannn's suggestions. 

We appreciate you taking the time to share with us and will make sure to pass it onto the right team. 

You can also have a look in our Idea Exchange to see if someone else has already made a similar suggestion. If there isn't one, you can give these steps a go and submit your idea so that other users can also support it. The higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.

We'll be here if anything else comes up. 

Cheers!

[ricabenhossi]

Unfortunately @jsannn's solution is not a real solution because these settings does not disable the tray icon, it just hides it inside the arrow.

[TrickyB]

2022 loves your response. The little pest still lives in the systray

[Switch123456789]

I can see that some people might like to have a tray icon for quickly starting/stopping music on demand while having no window occupying the taskbar.

However, I am not one of those people and it can be pretty annoying to have the tray-area cluttered whenever Spotify is running, especially when the Spotify-window is in the taskbar already (It should disappear from the tray in that case anyway). Stuff like that is what encourage people to illegitimate modify Spotify or create alternative clients and I don't think this is in the interest of Spotify for obvious reasons.

So what is the reason to NOT make it optional? Can we have some feedback Spotify? I would appreciate it.

[walp]

While something is being done (or not), always use File > Exit for quitting Spotify.

Or if the icon appears in your systray : right click > Exit.

That way it is really closed, not minimized to systray.

[Axer128]

Thing is, it doesn't even do that switch. It's entirely worthless as it does nothing except the exact same function as clicking on your normal taskbar, except less options.

Lclick on normal taskbar: restore. Rclick lets you exit. Mouse over gives options for play/pause next/back.

Systray: Same except no way to play/pause/next/back.

And yea i can't hide it because I run "always show all icons", and no I can't change that option because I'm a sysadmin and need to keep track on whats in my systray at all times for security. (Latest windows hide new icons by default if you use hte default hidable icons option, which is really bad security)

Just bad programming spotify, any other decent music app has option to hide hte systray icon, and/or useful functions on it.

[philipmførr]

Completely agree. I would love to see this change from spotify. A cluttered systray is annoying.

[dehhloki]

Any news on this?

[rbrands]

More than TWO. YEARS. LATER. and you haven't done a thing about it - oh sure, you 'appreciate' us, and 'will pass it on to the right team' - lies, lies, lies from corporate trash.

[cmld]

How to remove this icon from the system tray? The system tray is not intended to show whether an application is running, that's what the taskbar is for.

[Pete50]

This is not the intended purpose of the system tray.

Thank you @Novy for you suggestion, but I don't see how disrespect and disregard of the consumer is related to a "feature request" system. I will sooner cancel my subsription than play this little game.

[virgiliu]

Now it's 2024 and this is still an issue. When will we be able to disable the systray icon. And I mean disable, not hide. I don't want that icon polluting my systray in any way, hidden or visible. Why does it take more than 6 years to implement such a trivial option in the preferences panel? Unless your codebase is a huge spaghetti mess, this shouldn't take more than a few days for a senior dev ffs

[Combatter]

Spotify is becoming a joke when it comes to how many 'pending' requests there are for popular requested features that I feel could honestly be implemented by a single developer in the time it would take them to drink a cup of coffee, and I used to be a developer!  I can only assume that their release process is too bloated / non-agile so that decisions to add features like this involve pointlessly lengthy planning meetings.  You used to be the cool kids on the block, Spotify!  Sort it out or people will start jumping ship to other music streaming services (and tbh they probably already are)!

[virgiliu]

Why the **bleep** does it take 4 years or more to do something as trivial as adding an option to remove the systray icon? What the **bleep** are you paying your devs for? And what the **bleep** are you doing with the subscription fees if not implementing suggestions from customers?

[JayTheXXVII]

Still no fix as of April 2025?