Why Spotify Windows desktop app is accessing my device camera?

[mdnshkumar]

Plan

Premium

Country 

India

Device

Windows 10 Laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

When I open Spotify desktop app it is accessing my laptop camera without asking for any permission? Why does a music app needs background access to my laptop camera? I am not feeling safe to use this app anymore. Please clarify. 

[OneByBoo]

Hi there @mdnshkumar,

thanks for reaching out about this !

I can confirm that the Spotify app doesn't need or use access to the Webcam.

Could you point out where exactly you've started noticing this issue ?

Please make sure that there aren't any other programs running in the background that might be trying to get access the your camera.

Eliminating programs through your Task Manager might help figuring out if there are any such software running.

Another indication is to understand which source or website was used to download the Spotify app. Microsoft version use or the official Spotify website.

Last but not least, i do recommend performing a clean reinstall.

Hope this shed some light.

Keep me posted 🙂

[Dreamindawn]

I am having this exact issue with my Android.  Everything I use Spotify it turns the green light that indicates my camera is in use on. I know it's not other apps running because I triple checked. I also went to my permissions and confirmed that Spotify did not have camera permissions.  My whole family uses this but not if I can't get a strait answer out of Spotify.  

[Kiril]

Hey @Dreamindawn,

Thanks for your post in the Community!

We'd like you to know that Spotify only accesses the camera of your devices to scan QR/Spotify codes and this happens only when directly requested to from your side by tapping on the camera icon in the search box. We can confirm also, that Spotify cannot override Android permissions.

What we assume could be happening here, is that there's another app on your device that is related to music playback (like an assistant, fitness app, another music app or similar) that gets launched as soon as it detects that Spotify is accessing the audio playback capabilities of the phone and for some reason is activating the camera as well.

One such is Samsung's intelligence assistant app called Bixby for instance, which comes preinstalled in certain Samsung mobile devices. So you can check that one and also your Android permissions for any other app in general, that might want camera permissions. You can then start disabling those one by one to point out where exactly this is coming from.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[MasonBlack]

Downloaded and started using the Windows Spotify app from MS Store.

The above response doesn't really help anyone - the camera light turns up as soon as the Spotify app is started, and is put out the instance the app is killed/terminated.

This doesn't happen with other music players - real player, classic winamp, vlc - clearly this is a Spotify issue.

Anyway, I have switched back to the web player and deleted the app to avoid any breach.