Desktop app stops playing on external speaker every 2 hours

[Searnold56]

Plan

Duo

Country

USA

Device

Macbook Pro 2021

Google Home mini (external speaker)

Operating System

Sequoia 15.3.2

My Issue

I listen to a white noise podcast during my workday and every 2 hours, it either pauses or it pauses and disconnects my external speaker. This occurs every two hours, almost to the second. 

Every morning I connect to my external speaker through the desktop app and play a white noise podcast. Two hours later, it pauses and I restart it. 2 hours later, it pauses and the speaker disconnects. I reconnect and restart it, and this cycle begins again. 

I have tried:

- Different podcasts and podcast episodes. Generally these are 8+ hours long.

- Clean desktop app install

- Disconnecting and reconnecting to the speaker

- Using a different external speaker

Because it's always almost exactly 2 hours, it seems like a setting somewhere, but I can't find one. 

[Eni]

Hey there @Searnold56, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this and welcome to the Community. 

Kudos for the troubleshooting you've tried so far! Just to confirm, does this only happens on your PC or you can replicate this behavior if you connect your phone or any other device to the speaker? 

If this only happens on your PC, we suggest that you try checking the energy saver settings by heading to System Settings > Battery > Options and make sure to disable Optimize video streaming while on battery, turn off Power Nap and make sure Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off is on. 

Additionally, we'd like to know if this has always happened or if it started happening after a specific event such as an update. 

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[Searnold56]

Thanks for the reply!

- This behavior only occurs on my PC. I will attempt to stream from my phone tomorrow to determine if the behavior is different.

- I investigated my battery settings and enabled 'Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off'. 'Optimize Video Streaming while on battery' was already off and Power Nap is a feature of Intel Macs - mine is Apple M1 - so no changes there. 

I have never successfully streamed a podcast without this behavior on this computer which I received in January, so it's certainly not a result of a recent update. 

This occurs like clockwork, so I'll note the resolution if fixed today. Otherwise, I'll test from my phone tomorrow.

Thanks again!

[Searnold56]

I adjusted my power settings as suggested yesterday and have been streaming from my phone today. Neither have made any impact. The problem is exactly the same. 

Edit to add: I just did another search to see if I could find any other examples, and here is another documented occurrence of the problem: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/Nest-mini-pauses-2-hours-after-playing-...

[AlejaR]

Hey there @Searnold56,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

Just to confirm, does this happen while using Connect? Or does it happen while your Google Nest is connected through Bluetooth to your device? If you're not sure, it'd help us a lot if you could check both Bluetooth and our Connect feature to see if it happens on both.

Additionally, we'd like to check:

• Does this happen if you open a different account on the affected device? You can ask for the account of a relative or a friend to open their account on your computer, connect it to the speaker and check.
• Does this happen while using the web player?
• Send us the exact Spotify version you're running on you're computer.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply. 

[Searnold56]

Hello - thanks for working with me here. 

Just to be clear, it's a Google Home mini and I only connect to it through the Spotify desktop or mobile app, so I have never streamed with this speaker over a bluetooth connection. I have a separate bluetooth speaker that does not experience this issue. 

The value of utilizing Spotify with the external Google Home mini is keeping it entirely segregated from computer audio. I'm on calls all day and can't bounce my computer audio back and forth between my computer speakers, headset, and external speakers. 

It sounds like there are two additional things you'd like me try, both of which I can do tomorrow:

• Stream with the web player
• Stream from a different Spotify account

Here's my version:

Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.63.394.g126b0d89

[Searnold56]

As a follow-up, I tested both using a different account to login (my wife's) as well as using the web player instead of phone or desktop, and neither fixed the issue. 

[Vasil]

Hey @Searnold56,

Thanks for the additional info! We've forwarded it to the tech folks backstage and we'll keep you posted as soon as there's anything new to share 🙂
Keep your app up to date in the meantime 🙌🏼 Cheers!

[AlejaR]

Hey there @Searnold56,

Thanks for all your replies here and for the info shared.

There's quite a bit of troubleshooting/testing we've been through, and our tech team couldn't replicate this behavior. We're usually able to solve most common issues that the Spotify app might stumble with, but this is turning out to be beyond our scope.

In that sense, it'd need help from Google instead, so we'd recommend you reach out to them. We really appreciate all the time you took to let us know about this.

If anything else comes up, the Community will always be here for you.