Slow loading and performance issues

[Yordan]

We've received reports about increased load times when performing actions like opening a playlist/menu or playing content. This affects primarily (but may not be limited to) mobile devices running Android and iOS.

[Yordan]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the replies.

@A6L, @raincapsule, I've reached out to you via private message with some follow-up questions on this which can speed up the investigation.

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If anyone else is interested in aiding us further, feel free to reach out to me via private message. This article goes in-depth on how to enable private messages on the Community.

[Bowie1947]

Super cool idea here! Maybe cool it with the unwanted features for a bit and fix your actual app! ❤️

Spotify has become so insanely slow and laggy and glitchy it’s genuinely becoming unusable. Ive seen THOUSANDS of people mention this exact same issue, why do yall just ignore it? Stop adding random bulky stuff nobody wants, it just makes the quality of the rest of the app worse. Simply opening the app takes on average (at least for me and many others) 10 seconds to load, it used to be like MAYBE three seconds. Adding songs to queue or playlists either doesn’t work, or when it does its super laggy and again, takes like 10 seconds to actually register. It wasn’t like this a year ago. Even just skipping songs, the screen often freezes for at least five seconds till it actually skips, and then that song takes another five seconds to load and start playing. Dont even get me started on SEARCHING. Oh god. Like three minutes on a loading screen just for it to stop and say “try again” and do it all over again, yes, even with a cleared cache, fully updated app and fast internet. This is excessive. Stop focusing on random stuff and just fix your main app 😭 please. I and thousands of other users are begging you. This much inconvenience for a PAID SERVICE is absolutely insane. Just fix. The main. App. Leave the unnecessary features and ai stuff to the side for a bit. I quite literally beg you, i have spent so much time and money on this app, i dont want to lose all this because it’s becoming genuinely unusable just bc yall are ignoring this issue. ALL IM ASKING IS BARE MINIMUM MAINTENANCE OF THE APP BC IT SHOULD NOT BE TAKING 5 MIN OF LOADING TO SEARCH UP ONE SONG 🙂 thanks.

[Bowie1947]

This was more of a vent than idea post (i know they’ll never fix it anyways) but i needed to say it somewhere💀

[Bowie1947]

BRO OH MY GOD PLEASE i just want to listen to a song and it took three minutes to load, ten clicks on the song and three more minutes of waiting for it to register those clicks and load JUST the name of that song at the bottom of my screen, and still only shows a grey background and a loading thing at the bottom. I cant do this bruh seriously what is going on? WHAT THE GENUINE F***

[Bowie1947]

IM LOSING MY MIND

FIX

THIS

[A6L]

I think it might have been caused by turning on the "Larger video in now playing bar" setting on podcast videos. It took 10-20 seconds to load a page or for the home screen to load. Hopefully turning it off will resolve this but you should definitely get it fixed. 

-Edit, it seemed like it made it faster at first (still slower than normal) but it's just as bad again. 

Details: 

- OnePlus 9 5g, OxygenOS 14.0

- Spotify Version: 9.1.68.1888

- Unknown 

- Battery power mode doesn't make a difference 

- Tried clearing cache and allowing background activity.

Example screen recording 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NzMkobSNc_cZWymTNfadDSgrqleVr3P5/view?usp=drivesdk

Edit 2: Here is another example when the app wasn't already open in the background. It took 30 seconds to load. Loading playlists or podcast pages take the longest. Switching tabs at the bottom is slow but not as bad. It's nothing to do with internet speed. Happens with 130-300mbps on WiFi. 

Skipping or pausing dynamic ads is generally unresponsive even though the player responded normally before the ads start playing. That's convenient.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dXCBXC_Cg3JXictUJ3PyKCGtGPMqOq9m/view?usp=drivesdk

[Yordan]

Hey there,

If you're experiencing this issue, make sure to add your vote and share the following info (if you haven't already):

• Your device's make, model and OS version;
• The version of Spotify you're running;
• The troubleshooting you've tried so far.

We'll keep you posted here as soon as we have any updates.

Cheers 🤘

[rovaste]

I also got this issue!

• Samsung Galaxy S24, Android 16, One UI 8.5
• Version 9.1.68.1888
• Not sure
• No
• I tried setting the app to unrestricted, lower the quality of videos/songs etc. 

[scmamcs]

Same for me to the point where I have things happening like a spotify connect device keeps playing even though i switched playback back to my smartphone. Unresponsive as **bleep** and a pain to navigate...

And track transitions basically do not work since playing the next track most of the time takes to long.

• Your device's make, model and OS version:
  Google, Pixel 9a, Android 17
• The exact version of Spotify you're running:
  9.1.68.1888
• Does the behavior persist when logged in on another device (a friend's or a relative's would do)?
  No way to check this
• Does disabling Low Power Mode (iOS) / Battery Saver (Android) improve the app's performance?
  No
• Any other troubleshooting you've tried so far
  Force closed app, Cleared cache, Cleared app data at whole, setting streaming quality to normal
  
• A short screen recording which captures the app's behavior in action. If you're unable to attach the file in your reply, you can instead upload it to Google Drive (just make sure it's available to anyone with the link) or YouTube as an unlisted video.
  Currently not possible
  

[raincapsule]

• Pixel 9 Pro (A17, CP2A.260705.006), Mi 9T (Custom PixelOS 17 ROM), Lenovo Idea Tab Pro (A16)
• 9.1.74.389, although this has been happening for months if not years. Got a lot worse recently
• Persists on other devices, seems somewhat tied to library size and its sheer volume of items. Significantly worse with content downloaded for offline mode
• Low power mode absolutely does not help, pretty much the opposite
• Canvas always disabled. Tried clearing cache, data, redownloading in lower bitrates, removing downloads altogether.. Only "working" fix was to use a relatively empty account with low if any downloaded library items. Some basic `logcat` reading seems to indicate general slowness, most likely tied to a DB of some sort. Tried debugging a bit further on my old modded Mi 9T which showed extremely high CPU usage for prolonged period of times exclusively because of Spotify, I/O saturated with high load average, no time to dig deeper.
• Can't share a video for now. Will try to make this reproduce properly on one of my devices

It's fair to say I do have a very extensive library - I save a lot of albums and playlists, including public playlists. Have a couple of Glenn McDonald "The sound of" with 10000+ songs saved in a folder. Also have the Spotify "Recents" one which supposedly constantly updates. Very useful but I could see it being a bottleneck somewhere in the application logic.

My offline library consists of ~55GB "Normal" quality (96kbps I believe?) files, ~20000 songs total. I know this is a lot, but older versions of the app were fine with this (didn't have any issues ~2-3 years ago, but my phone was also slow by itself). Apple Music also works fine with almost identical offline library. This is purely a Spotify issue.

Would be open to some deeper troubleshooting if necessary. I'm on the beta channel, and am comfortable with very low level Android stuff. Would be very glad to help fix this 🙂

[Mama_Ferocia]

This problem has been going on for far to long!! Tried all of Spotify’s ”troubble shooting ” but nothing helps. Please fix this.