Spotify flickering with Nvidia G-Sync enabled

[k0zmik]

Recently (maybe in the past two weeks or so), Spotify has begun to flicker/strobe erratically with my G-Sync monitor.  The effect is very disorienting and the result is that I've developed a displeasure to go and change songs and try to open Spotify as little as possible.

I'm not sure who the burden of fixing this is on, Spotify or Nvidia, but I'm mentioning it here also, and to see if anyone else has had the issue.  If I disable hardware acceleration in Spotify, it's resolved.  However, then there is no acceleration, so the interface does not animate as nicely and, as I read, the acceleration setting also governs hardware sound processing. 

I can also resolve the issue by disabling GSync globally in the Nvidia control panel (which is no solution).  I then tried to add Spotify's .exe to the CP and make some application-specific settings...  I can disable Gsync there, for Spotify only, and it seems to work but also has the effect of causing my monitor to fail to reliably activate Gsync in any other program while Spotify is running.  

Oddly enough, after all of this swapping back and forth and ultimately changing the settings back to where they started (hardware acceleration in Spotify on, Gsync on globally, and leaving the Spotify .exe settings as global settings), it is behaving for the moment.  The only difference is that I now have the executable listed in the appliction-specific settings list.  

I don't expect it to continue to function correctly.  It seemed that this problem began intermittently like this, with it only flickering seldomly, until arriving at the point it was before I came here, where it was always present.  Has anyone else had this issue?  I believe that both Spotify and Nvidia's drivers were updated within this timeframe, so it's not clear which caused it.

[cobykoby]

Same with my AOC monitor with G-sync, I haven't tried disabling G-sync when in windowed mode yet

[theracingchins]

I'm having the same problem with my Acer Z271 monitor. With G-Sync on, the app itself is flickering both the spotify windows version and the one from windows store. Also when moving the window app, it's also not smooth when draging the window. But when the G-Sync is off, the flicking is gone but still stutters when draging the window.

[k0zmik]

I should also add that I am only using one monitor currently.  I am aware of the issue that Windows has with flickering and maintaining a stable, full high refresh rate when using multiple monitors where one is a much lower refresh rate than the other and there is animation on the slower monitor. This effect that Spotify is having is the same. It's also worth nothing that this same thing has been seen in other places, such as the Windows lock screen. I'm just verrrrrrry curious what changed to make it occur with Spotify. 

[mikejh]

SOLUTION: Try disabling hardware acceleration from the Spotify app, worked for me.

[user-removed]

Thanks! This seems to fix the problem for me. Click the arrow at the top right of the app right next to your name, click settings, scroll all the way down, show advanced settings, and disable "Enable Hardware Acceleration" under "Compatibility".

[k0zmik]

As I stated in the original post, I'm aware of this, but that is not a fix as it disables the smooth interface animation and (as I read somewhere, without researching it further), it's also said to disable hardware sound processing. This being a music application, that's somewhat important. 

[fourtwo]

i have this problem too. is there a way to see what framerate the spotify window is running at? maybe it's some odd or rapidly fluctuating number that gives trouble to adaptive refresh