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?

[Kamiri]

Okay so I have 50gigs of music that randomly gets downloaded back to my phone multiple times a week. I hope you liked your phone being full as **bleep** for no reason, and then inoperable! Cause that's Spotify is doing with this bug still! It's wasting my data on my cell plan or at my house, not to mention solid state drives like the one in my phone die faster after repeatedly writing to them.... Spotify will redownload and fill my entire phone with files, without asking to move file locations or anything. So when I go to use my phone, it's full and slow as can be. Then I get to go redelete the files, and if id like to listen again at decent quality. Erase the app and start downloading them all over again to the ad card. So Spotify can either wreck my data plans and slowly my phone by just randomly making me write tons of data onto my internal SSD for the 20th; Or I can listen on lower quality and pretend like the radio transmission quality audio is acceptable for 10 bucks a month. It's been more than 3 years of this, I'm convinced it will not be fixed. Don't @ me but why is it an option to use an SD card at this rate?

[Andre427r1]

Hey, just found another workaround? It isn't the best but is useful, more now that I wanted to try the new widget, since I had forced the app on the SD card.

I noticed when I changed to a new phone, that inserting the SD with music already on it, with a fresh installation, Spotify launched with the SD as default storage, with the music on it saved as Cache; so it would seem the app detects there aren't files on internal and switches to the SD thats already mounted. Now the only thing left is change the download quality to the same as the music is cached and press the download button and the app will start scanning recovering all your music. 

So for the solution; any time the phone reboots, it will always change to the internal storage. So you do the following:

1) Unmount the SD card, manually or virtually. 

2) Delete all data from the phone (haven't tried uninstalling, but should work)

3) Mount again the SD card

4) Start the app and log in

5) The app will set the SD as default, and see your cached music in it. 

6) Change the download quality to what you had your music on 

7) Press the download button on the playlists you had offline and wait a little. 

🙂

[Andre427r1]

It isn't the best but is useful, more now that I wanted to try the new widget, since I had forced the app on the SD card.

I noticed when I changed to a new phone, that inserting the SD with music already on it, with a fresh installation, Spotify launched with the SD as default storage, with the music on it saved as Cache; so it would seem the app detects there aren't files on internal and switches to the SD thats already mounted. Now the only thing left is change the download quality to the same as the music is cached and press the download button and the app will start scanning recovering all your music. 

So for the solution; any time the phone reboots, it will always change to the internal storage. So you do the following:

1) Unmount the SD card, manually or virtually. 

2) Delete all data from the phone (haven't tried uninstalling, but should work)

3) Mount again the SD card

4) Start the app and log in

5) The app will set the SD as default, and see your cached music in it. 

6) Change the download quality to what you had your music on 

7) Press the download button on the playlists you had offline and wait a little. 

I've yust explained this, wanted it to reach you.  Hope this helps! 🙂

[Andre427r1]

Hey, just found another workaround? It isn't the best but is useful, more now that I wanted to try the new widget, since I had forced the app on the SD card.

I noticed when I changed to a new phone, that inserting the SD with music already on it, with a fresh installation, Spotify launched with the SD as default storage, with the music on it saved as Cache; so it would seem the app detects there aren't files on internal and switches to the SD thats already mounted. Now the only thing left is change the download quality to the same as the music is cached and press the download button and the app will start scanning recovering all your music. 

So for the solution; any time the phone reboots, it will always change to the internal storage. So you do the following:

1) Unmount the SD card, manually or virtually. 

2) Delete all data from the phone (haven't tried uninstalling, but should work)

3) Mount again the SD card

4) Start the app and log in

5) The app will set the SD as default, and see your cached music in it. 

6) Change the download quality to what you had your music on 

7) Press the download button on the playlists you had offline and wait a little. 

🙂

[ziul123]

Plan

Premium

Country

Brazil

Device

Samsung Galaxy A31

Operating System

Android 11

My Question or Issue

After setting the download location to be my micro SD card, Spotify changes back to internal storage if I ever turn my phone off and then on again. If I change storage back to the micro SD card, Spotify does not recognize any of the downloaded content, and begins downloading everything again. This had happened once before, and, following suggestions I saw here, I performed a clean reinstall of Spotify and formatted my micro SD card. However, the issue persisted.

[1174950709]

4 years later (probably more), the problem persists and we get nothing from the devs.

I don't know man, the subscription plan keeps increasing, now at 18€/mth and the app is still filled with bugs

[Camlrae]

I have tried most of these fixes and the issue continues to reoccur, data is moved from my sd to internal storage, where there is not enough space. I work at sea and have my music downloaded, With this problem and most of my music only playing offline for 2 or 3 days before it becomes unplayable this app is a costly waste of time. I'm going to dump Spotify for any other app that works. 

[xarkin]

still the same problem in 2023

[greenster]

I have found a solution: Go to the settings of your Android phone and tap 7 times on the build number to activate the developer options.

Then go into the developer settings and look for the menu item: "Unlock external storage for all apps" and enable this feature.

Finally, go to the Android setting for Spotify and move Spotify to the external storage.

This works very reliably. Now you can enable your downloads again. And the downloads will stay on the external storage card.

This works very reliably for me since two weeks.

[WillianWRM]

At least here that is not enough to solve this problem.
I had to disable Spotify background (app info > battery usage >
restricted) and force-close it before every phone reboot.