Issue with storage option switching from SD Card to internal

[haydnrb7]

Plan

Premium

Country

US 

Device

Moto X4

Operating System

Android Pie

My Question or Issue

 This happened with my last phone, Samsung S7 running Oreo (or whatever the most recent OS is) but it was fixed when I got the Moto X4. I like to keep a lot of songs downloaded offline because my service is terrible and I also spend a lot of time in the mountains. Before I I update my phone to the new Android Pie OS there was no problems. Now everytime I reset my phone I think spotify cannot see my SD card at first and tries to download all the music to its internal storage and I have to go back in and tell it to store it in the SD card. That is extremely annyoing but not the end of the world. What is really frustrating is that I think all of the downloaded songs are still on the SD card and just keep redownloading and taking up space. Eventually this will cause me to reformat the card which will be a major pain for me since I store a large amount of photos on there also. Is anyone else have this problem? I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the application so any other suggestions or help?

[miozet]

Plan

Premium/Duo

Country

Turkey

Device

(Samsung A50)

My Question or Issue

After I changed my storage to SD Card, Spotify always changes to internal storage, like after a day. Previous same issues solves with deleting offline devices, but I can no longer see my offline devices on spotify website. 

Please sort this out and stop messing about. 

[dgs2-q_s9hk3h]

There's no fix, the work arounds are; 1 use the developer options to force
allow apps on external move Spotify to external (re download library) you
must shut off auto updates and not update Spotify or it will switch back to
internal. 2 set Spotify's battery usage to restricted before each restart.
That will prevent it from loading at boot but also prevents it from running
in the background so you need to switch it back 3 don't restart 4 get a
phone with a large internal storage....

[PerryWerneck]

Or...

5. Give up on spotify and use other service (it was my solution). 😁

[kurosawsa]

I gave up on them too! I got a refund! And I switched to Amazon Music (prime) Unlimited! 4 months for free!!!

[greenster]

I use Spotify on a Samsung Galaxy A 54 5G phone with Android 13.

I set a week ago that the downloads are stored on the SD card. Had all my 9900 favorite songs downloaded.

This worked fine.

But today all downloads are gone and Spotify changed the storage to internal storage without my doing.

This gross and very annoying error has happened to me twice on the Samsung phone and several times on my previous phone.

To the Spotify team, fix this bug with an update.

[dgs2-q_s9hk3h]

You need to turn off automatic updates and not update Spotify. Android will
not update to the SD card. Instead it removes it from the sdcard and
reinstalls it on the internal. 1000songs is only 5gb snd you could just
switch them every month or so...

[WillianWRM]

When installing a new SD card android will prompt if you want to use it as internal or external storage.
As internal storage the SD card can not be removed and all data is encrypted, apps can be installed in there.
As external storage the SD card can be removed and no encryption is done, apps can't be installed in there.

The issue happens when using the SD card as external.
Unfortunately not all phones support SD card as internal; not all cards works good as internal either, they are much slower than internal memory and not really suitable for application, they are suitable only for user data (music, video, picture).

Disabling auto updates could work only as internal storage (since Spotify can be installed there); but as internal storage the Spotify doesn't even show SD Card as an option since it's system transparent, the app itself doesn't even know it's stored in the SD card.

The only way that worked for me was to restrict Spotify's battery usage; but this is just a work around and not a fix, Spotify does not work properly in background with this restriction.

[dgs2-q_s9hk3h]

You can force allow apps on external with the developer options. There is
no fix because to fix the issue android would need to allow Spotify to
access there proprietary code. To utilize cron or something similar to
assign a trigger event besides phone startup. That's what restricting the
battery does so you can do that and it should work.

[WillianWRM]

Already did set the allow apps on external at the developer options, did not fix the problem.

There are solutions for that problem, I already did post here some options I could think of in about 5 minutes. But they need to get their hands on the code.

[v-wy318_9wqbh]

Edit 2: GUYS! I think I found a legit workaround. Just restarted my phone and all my downloads are where they should be.

A lot of y'all said it has to do with spotify loading before the SD card loads. So I posited that if Spotify were on the SD card you wouldn't have that issue. And I believe this to be true.

Step 0: Maybe see my first edit at the bottom of this post just in case this doesn't work for you. That's a silly way to back up your files, but it worked for me. It's a jic thing.

Step 1: Put your phone into developer mode so you can put your apps on your SD card. Here's a YT video I followed that got me there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_mQAQ47ug

Step 2: I would exit Spotify, then go to settings > apps > Spotify > storage and click "change" and make it external storage. Wait for the process to complete.

Step 3: I restarted my phone. I backed up my files just in case through my first edit at the bottom of this post (though again I've not tested it in this instance, but I did test it when I had another issue and it worked pretty well). After a restart once the SD card loaded completely and I could click Spotify I did, and saw to my delight that none of my downloads deleted.

I can't say for sure that this will work with an update as I've not gotten one. Again I wouldn't necessarily call this a fix, rather a workaround, but you know it's better than Spotify not doing anything. I'll also say that if you move Spotify to your SD card the Widget options go away, but don't fret just look up spotify widget on play store and there are so free options that are arguably better than the Spotify version.

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So it's 2023 and nothing has been done on this issue. SURPRISE! Over 4 years the same issue. Congrats.

It seems you guys understand more about phones than I do, but I will say it seems to also stem at least partly from a phone update. My old shitty phone (Samsung A01) never had this happen, now on a newer Samsung A50 it happens as you guys said when an update comes in, or when the phone restarts, etc.) I noticed that on my old phone while I couldn't move many apps to the SD, one that I could do that for was Spotify. On this better phone I can move the entire Snapchat app to the SD card and that works fine and doesn't ever run into these type issues.

So yeah, still no fix, not even a proper workaround. Just downloading 3 GB of music every few days for no reason. Hope those servers are run on solar power (they're not) because downloading GB of music every few days is surely not helping global warming. Do it for the planet Spotify. Fix your app so we don't plunge further into the hellscape of global climate catastrophe.

Edit: Also, this isn't a fix, it may not even be a workaround (as I've not tested it to confirm anything) but I ran into an issue years ago that involved Spotify deleting all my downloads. I figured out something that helped me out (taking all the downloaded songs I had that were on my phone and putting them on my computer, deleting my data from spotify and then re-adding those downloaded songs manually back onto my phone - it's cool the workarounds we invent instead of bug fixes by the billion dollar corporation). I'm just going to link it here and when/if this happens to me again I'll try it and let the thread know if it at least works.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/can-t-log-in-because-it-says-i-m-offline/m-p/4966594