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Spotify lagging/stuttering PC when on the Home screen

Spotify lagging/stuttering PC when on the Home screen

I had no issues with the desktop app for years, then suddenly about a month or so ago the issue started. When I launch Spotify, it lags the entire computer for several seconds, and the same thing can happen when tabbing back into the app after a while.

 

Eventually I noticed it only happened on the Home screen view - if i clicked fast into a playlist view during the app startup, it stuttered for a shorter moment, and the stutter occurs every time if I click into the Home screen on my own. The same thing happens with the web browser version.

 

I tried the troubleshooting tips and nothing helped. My computer is up to date, I did a clean reinstall of Spotify, and the system installation itself is pretty new too (and the Spotify issue didn't appear until some time later). Other threads on this topic seem to go back even to 2017 which is pretty discouraging. What do I do with this. There's not even a way to disable the Home screen itself, so every time I start Spotify I have to click fast into a random playlist.

 

Plan

Premium

Country

Poland

Device/System

PC with Win10

Reply
56 Replies

I have an RX 6800, Ryzen 9 9950X (upgraded from Ryzen 7 3700X), and 64GB of RAM, and this app still drops frames when I scroll. My computer is fairly close to being as top-end as you can get, besides the GPU, which is still very powerful. I think whatever React-based UI they're using is doing something horribly wrong in terms of optimization, and Chromium is unoptimized in this area. Since this is a Chromium-based app (which pretty much means it's just a browser), the same happens in Chrome on the web app unsurprisingly. Interestingly, I have noticed that opening the web app in Firefox is buttery smooth, easily reaching 165 FPS (my monitor's refresh rate), but in Chrome, it's back to 80 FPS on my old CPU and 30 FPS on my new one (a faster CPU seemingly made it worse????).

 

But weirdly, the problem seems to display itself differently on other operating systems: On Fedora 41 via Flatpak, it seems fairly smooth, making me think the issue was finally fixed or my new CPU made it better. On Arch Linux via AUR, the issue is back and somehow even worse on my new CPU. On Windows, it's the same as on Arch Linux. I have tried setting the process priority to high, setting core affinity to use only a few cores, ensuring hardware acceleration was on, and using Chromium flags to set the renderer to Vulkan and use Wayland. None of these helped much, with the small exception of using Vulkan, but only mildly.

How is a PC able to play the newest modern AAA games at 1080p with high settings at least 60 FPS and still struggle to render the Spotify UI? What went wrong?! Software is too unoptimized now, everything has become a glorified web browser.

 

And the only reason I even use the desktop app instead of Firefox is that the web app is artificially limited to not support higher-quality audio. There is absolutely zero valid reason I can think of for this, other than to get you to download the desktop app meaning they can collect more data presumably. Modern browsers can play high-quality audio just fine, even FLAC.

 

Overall, is it the biggest deal in the world? Likely not, but I think this should still be fixed and likely a easy fix. If it's so bad on my system, I can't imagine others are fairing well, but the fact a faster CPU made it worse... Maybe I should downgrade my computer?! Everything else is faster now, so idk

Same issue.  Been like this for at least 2 months for me.  The website works fine but the app, freshly downloaded and installed from the site, retains the issue.  Seems to start lagging any and all network instances including other webpages, discord voice chat, etc.

hey everyone, here is a solution that worked for me:

https://youtu.be/YNVdA2XbaJ0

Thanks a lot! I installed it as a spicetify plugin and it worked, its buttery smooth now!!

glad that helped, happy listening 🎵 !

So from what I  am gathering from this thread. Its an issue for those of us who use more than 1 monitor. Well that's **bleep**ed. 

This started for me last weekend Sunday January 12 2025.
I do not have this issue on my laptop nor do I have it when I use the browse version, just when I use the app through the Microsoft store OR the installer from the website itself. Not going to post my PC specs because as stated I do not think that is the issue here. 


 

 

 

 

In my case, I only use one monitor, but I have the same problem on both my laptop (intel) and my pc (amd). And it happens both in the app through the ms store and from the website itself, as well as in any chromium-based browser. The only exception where it works well is in firefox (web player). With azizk1's patch however it works very smooth.

bump. this is still an issue

Still an issue, are they even testing before releasing software?

lol, I have this problem for MONTHS. Windows 10 with RTX3070. Looks like Spotify is more demanding than some games. And it's funny because outdated Spotify app on Windows 7 and much slower notebook works perfect 😄

Looks like that's another thing that Spotify will fix maybe in 10 years.

My fix works fine. You can test that.

There is no improvement after the last update. The problem persists. Your solution is irrelevant, the app needs to fix the problem.

I know spotify needs to fix the problem but they didn't.

what do you mean my solution is irrelevant ? You can wait and suffer or you can fix. it's your choice.


@azizk1 wrote:

My fix works fine. You can test that.


 

I won't waste my time and fixing problems by myself if I pay every month for Spotify.

Reporting back that the lags are gone for me. Have been for the past month or so. Maybe they took azizk1's code and implented it in the client. Ha, that'd be funny.

Hey folks!

 

Kudos to @azizk1 for the provided fix while we were looking into this!

We're happy to announce that an update is in the works that should greatly improve the experience of scrolling on Windows 🙂
The update is rolling out gradually and should be available to you with app version 1.2.57.
Thanks for the patience!

VasilModerator
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Plan

Premium

Country

United States 

Device

Custom Gaming PC 

Operating System

Windows 11 (24H2 Build 26100.3194)

CPU:**bleep**

GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1080

RAM: 16GB

 

My Question or Issue

Hi, the home page on the Windows desktop client is extremely laggy and unresponsive. All other pages in the client are responsive and run around 144hz, which is what my monitor is set to. I have the latest version of Spotify, the latest update of Windows, and the latest graphics drivers installed. I've tried rebooting my PC, clearing cache, disabling hardware acceleration, completely uninstalling and reinstalling Spotify and still the problem has persisted. I also have Spotify installed on my iPhone (iOS 18.3.1) and my MacBook Pro (M1, macOS 15.3.1), and they run perfectly fine on those devices. All other apps on my PC also run really well and are responsive. I've also recorded a screen capture of the issue, but this message won't let me post files greater than 5MB. If you'd like me to email you a copy, let me know. Please provide a fix in a future update, thanks! 

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