Spotify stops whenever Windows plays a notification sound

[Denis-Bowden]

G'Day from Australia,

I use Spotify on my Windows laptop and it stops playing whenever Windows gives a notification (e.g. it plays a ping and gives a message when I receive email). Has anyone else come across this problem and found a fix for it?

I have read through all similar discussions that I can find (and done google searches) and anything I found all list the standard, unhelpful steps that don't fix the problem (e.g. turn your computer off, then back on. Reinstall spotify etc.). None of those things fix this ongoing problem and I can't find any setting in the Spotify App or Windows system settings that fixes this problem.

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 11 Business

[OscarDC]

Hey @Denis-Bowden,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

We appreciate the research you made before posting this behavior. We understand that the reinstall process may be an overlooked step, but it can be helpful in getting rid of any cache that might be causing trouble. So to start investigating this issue, would you mind confirming if you've already performed a clean reinstall of the app? If not, we'd recommend following the steps mentioned in this article to see if it makes any difference. 

If the issue persists, would you mind checking if the Web Player has the same behavior?

Lastly, and if the issue persists, include in your next response the Spotify version you're currently running.

We'll be waiting for your response. 

[sc00ber1]

I can also report this issue with Spotify windows app on windows 11

[enfuego444]

I was experiencing this same issue and tried all of the standard Google suggestions and nothing worked. I can confirm that uninstalling and reinstalling resolved the issue even though I was skeptical! 

Thanks OscarDC!

[dueweke]

I have done all of the above suggestions multiple times and nothing has worked. constantly pushing play on Spotify when it pauses is infuriating. MS Office and Teams send multiple notifications an hour for meetings, messages, emails... Sometimes Spotify won't pause, most of the time it does. I wish it would just keep playing.

[OscarDC]

Hey Folks,

Thank you for your messages.

@dueweke we're glad to know that everything is working fine now, thank you for sharing your resolution.

On another note, if the previous process didn't work for you @dueweke, we'd recommend disabling hardware acceleration by clicking the 3-dot menu on the top left corner of your screen and selecting: Help > Troubleshooting > disable hardware acceleration and Restart

Keep also in mind that we don’t recommend having any active VPN while using the app as it may affect its proper behavior. If you have one activated, turn it off and restart your app to see if it makes any difference.

Lastly, if the issue persists after this, we'd also recommend clearing any entries which contain Spotify from the host files on your computer. To do so, you can follow the instructions mentioned in this post.

Hope this helps. We'll be waiting for your response. 

[IronSamVane]

I'm having the same issue on Windows 11- Teams notifications causes Spotify to stop playing, very obnoxious.

I've reinstalled the app and disabled hardware acceleration.

Is there a debug setting that will capture exactly why the player stopped?

[Dessi]

Hey @IronSamVane,

Thanks for reaching out and for the info!

Another thing we'd recommend is checking Windows' communications and notifications settings and try adjusting them to see if that makes a difference:

1. Right-click the speaker icon on your taskbar.
2. Select Sounds.
3. Go to the Communications tab.
4. Select "Do nothing" from the options.
5. Click Apply and then OK.

You can also open Notifications and Actions, under the "Notifications" section scroll down to "Get notifications from these senders" and temporarily turn off notifications from Teams and any other apps that may cause this to check if that helps.
 

There might be a way to capture the app's behavior into a log file, but it's also worth trying to troubleshooting the issue so let's give that a shot.

Let us know how it goes.