spotify windows app music controls randomly become unresponsive

[reidf160]

The spotify desktop decides to randomly stop working for 20+ seconds. I click play/pause/skip or try to select a new song, and nothing happens. If a song is currently playing, then it will continue playing even after I close the app; then when I try to reopen it and stop the music, windows gives me an error saying that the app is unresponsive. The exact error that windows gives says: "The Spotify application is not responding." Considering I have many far more intensive apps that work perfectly fine on the same SSD as spotify, I don't think that my drive speed is an issue. I've tried clearing the cache multiple times, enabled and disabled hardware acceleration, and reinstalled a few times

[reidf160]

I have also disabled local files. This problem persists for any song, whether downloaded or streamed, on any playlist or album.  The issue lasts for anywhere from 20 seconds to 3 minutes and will then resolve itself for an indeterminate amount of time. 

[Ivelina]

Hi @reidf160,

Thanks for reaching out and for providing the detailed info! Kudos for already testing with some troubleshooting, this helps us get to the bottom of the issue quicker.

Have you by any chance tried with a different internet connection as well and did you notice any difference? If you're using wifi and haven't done this already, you can restart the router. If it's possible, it'd be helpful if you could also test with mobile data by sharing it via hotspot from a mobile device.

Afterwards, to check if there's an issue with the app itself we recommend logging in to the Web Player and let us know if it behaves any different.

If you don't notice any issues with the Web Player and it's mostly the app that misbehaves, what you could also do is delete the current app version you're running (clear the cached files as well) and download it once again either from our website or from the MS store here (whichever version you weren't using so far). It's worth doing this as they can have different behavior.

Thanks for the cooperation and hope to hear from you soon 🙂

[reidf160]

The issue is exclusive to the app and doesn't affect the web player. I have tried both the Windows store version of the app and the one directly downloaded from the spotify website, and both have the same problem. After some testing, it appears that the app works fine when using any wifi network, and breaks when connected via ethernet (the connection method I've been using). However, the wifi is considerably slower than the ethernet at my apartment, so ethernet is very much the preferable method. Is there any other possible solution aside from using wifi? This seems like an issue with the app since I've had no other issues while using an ethernet connection on this PC.

[Ivelina · Accepted solution]

Appreciate the info, @reidf160!

Are you by any chance using a VPN or a proxy? Keep in mind that this can cause some issues with Spotify's performance and that's why we don't recommend it.

If the app is working better with Wifi, then it's also worth checking your firewall settings. You can take a look at the post from Microsoft's website here.

We'll be on the lookout 🙂

[reidf160]

Thank you so much. It wasn't a vpn, but changing the firewall access to private networks did the trick!

[Ivelina]

Happy to hear that the app's now working as it should, thanks for sharing the info 🙂

The Community's here should you need help with anything else.

Have a good one!