Spotify lagging and making games lag, only when playing games!

[Sakenna]

My old crappy computer used to play spotify fine when playing full-screen online games. Upgraded my rig last week and now a few days ago I noticed it starts stuttering when I start playing a game and now it not only stutters but also makes the game lag. Even in offline mode! I've tried to disable hardware acceleration, disabled high-quality streaming. Reinstalled Spotify. Nothing helps.

As soon as I start the game, Spotify slows down and starts skipping (remember old cassette tapes when they got stretched, that's what's happening). As soon as I close the game, Spotify goes back to normal.

Any suggestions?

[ThatVixie]

Imagine this issue still happening 6 years later😂 My spotify does the exact same and it has often lost me important matches. I can't find any solution online for some reason, even when my search is super specific its still not enough to find a fix. My spotify starts skipping like a scratched cd and i have to alt+tab back to spotify every single time it happens to fix it. Its not very fun to be in a comp match and suddenly have your game lag like youre playing on an old library computer, when you have one of the best pcs you can get atm. Crazy how the issue still hasnt been fixed yet. 

[Alex]

Hi there @ThatVixie,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

Sorry to hear that this is happening with your app while gaming. Here is what you can try:

• Perform a clean reinstall of the app, following this guide.
• Go into the Spotify app settings and try switching Hardware Acceleration off.
• Check if there are any available sound driver updates. You can also check for video card driver updates, as sometimes outdated drivers can cause similar issues.
• Check if the web player is behaving the same way as the Desktop app.

Hope this helps.

[ThatVixie]

Ive already tried all of this and it didnt work. web player is fine but i dont want my browser open while playing. it happens everytime i play a fullscreen or fullscreen windowed game, it even happens with roblox😭

[AlejaR]

Hey @ThatVixie,

Thanks for your reply and for the info shared.

In this case, we'd like to gather some additional info. In this case, would you mind sharing with us the make/model and OS of your computer, along with the Spotify version you're currently running?

On another note, just to confirm, has the app always been behaving like this or does it start to happen after a specific event such as an OS update? Please send us the details about it.
 

Lastly, it's possible there's an inconvenience with the graphics software and Spotify. We'd also recommend making sure you have all Windows updates 

installed, particularly those that have something to do with graphics (drivers and other software).

Keep us in the loop!

[ThatVixie]

the problem started out of nowhere and never went away, i know others who has this problem as well

the spotify version im running is 1.2.9.743.g85d9593d and im running windows 11

all my software and drivers are always up to date and theres no available updates anywhere

my pc is a little over a month old. its a custom but not built by me, so i dont know much about the model and that stuff

[Jordan_Mcpheat]

Having the same problems, usually have to alt tab or press windows key to fix the issue, causes my computer to lag and my mouse barely works, all drivers are up to date, fresh installed Spotify, reinstalled graphics drivers and still having issues, also web player has stuttered aswell while playing games 

[Yordan]

Hi everyone,

Interesting. Have you linked your Spotify accounts to other apps, for example Discord or the Xbox Game Bar? If so, try revoking their access from your account page to see if that does the trick. If the issue persists, it's worth rebooting your PC in Safe Mode with Networking and running Spotify + a game to check if the issue would persist there as well.

Something else that might be causing this is high CPU/RAM consumption either by Spotify or by the game you're playing. On my end, Spotify usually uses around 1-5% CPU and 400-500 MB of RAM, so feel free to compare my stats with your own. If you haven't already, consider lowering the graphics quality in game as well as the audio quality in Spotify to see if it has any effect on the performance.

In case the issue persists, a short video / screen recording which captures this behavior would be greatly appreciated. I understand that this request might be difficult to pull off, since Alt + tab seems to fix it, but a video would give us a direct look at what's happening on your end so we can investigate further.

Cheers!

[6565010]

I was having this issue but ever since I noticed I had Proxy setting on "Automatic" and changed it to "No Proxy" it solved the issue. I haven't had any more Spotify related lag spikes. Hope it helps

[mangosonic]

Thanks. This fixed the issue for me as well.

[lilibateni]

Bro you described exactly what i’m going through too. It’ll be randomly a song will just replay the same second for like a whole minute and sometimes my game will freeze at the same time. haven’t found anyone else with the same problem it’s annoying af tho

[MR-RAGE]

i have the same problem as you and because i have a multi monitor setup my whole pc freezes, i have to shut it down to fix it. btw my pc is a pretty good pc so its not because of that. I'm surprised they haven't fixed it yet.

[_PhaZ_]

I have the same problem too!

[SpottyFyee]

This started happening to me a day or two ago, i did a clean reinstall and the issue persists. My computer is pretty beefy and yet spotify for some reason when starting (and sometimes when changing songs when I tab out of a game) just stutters the entire PC. Hardware acceleration off/on makes no difference with that either. When I reinstalled it, it seemed fine, but when I restarted the program it started doing this again.

Web player does the same thing.

[ryansillydude]

I have the same issue and I have no clue why, very annoying and freezes my whole pc at times unsure how to fix

[Bryan_Gallardo]

I tried Windows 10 and 11, no hardware acceleration and yes, no proxy and yes. And it still keeps happenning. Randomly when a song ends and next starts, or when I forward 5 songs straigth, the 5th makes a fps drop so hard. I'm talking about from 300fps to 150fps for no reason. SPOTIFY FIX YOUR **bleep**ING APP

[uunt]

I'm one of the victims of this. I followed all the instructions, NOTHING. The app freezes when I click the home button, music doesn't play normally. I thought my computer broke but no, the issue was Spotify. I'm switching to Youtube premium atp.

[zaiakusin]

I'm having this same issue, started a few weeks ago.  When using Discord and on a call, I open Spotify and the discord voice chat gets extremely laggy turning voices robotic.  If I start Spotify first then attempt to join a call, the call never connects.  Closing Spotify fixes both issues.

While either of these issues are happening, spotify barely functions.  Cant load playlists, cant start a song, and when trying to close, I sometimes have to force close it via taskmanager because it does not close cleanly.