IE11 with web player "browser not supported"

[robonli]

Hi,

I started having this problem last week.  I have a "favorites bar" link straight to the web player for Spotify on IE11.  It has worked from months from my home in Asia.  Now, as of last week, it will intermittently tell me "browser not supported" and offer to download the desktop application.

I say intermittently because I was in Chicago last week and it failed.  Then I was in Singapore for 24 hours and it worked again.  Now I'm in Hong Kong and it is failing all over again.

I have verified I have Flash enabled and the latest version installed.  

For the life of me I can't figure out why this has stopped working all of a sudden.  I have deleted all cookies/history/browser data/etc.  I even went so far as to uninstall and re-install IE11 from scratch.  

I tried to use the web player in Chrome but I don't have Flash enabled on that browser so I can't use it.

Your help is appreciated.

Edit: I should also note that when this happens and I try to go to www.spotify.com, the web page looks "funky" (as in it's a 1990's text web page and all the formatting has been lost).

Windows 7 (all updates installed)

IE11 11.0.9600.18449

[Dreadlord]

Hello @robonli,

Welcome to Spotify Community!

Can you go through the troubleshooting steps on this page? You can start off with step 5, to see if flash player is enabled on your browser. 

On Chrome you can enable the flash player the following way:

• Open up chrome and navigate to chrome://plugins. Make sure Adobe Flash is enabled and "Always allowed to run".

Let me know how it goes 🙂

[robonli]

Thanks.  Yes, Flash works fine in IE11.

I don't want to use Chrome so I need to fix this in IE11.  What else can I try?

Thanks.

[Swanny]

Hey @robonli, can you click the settings icon in the top right corner of Internet Explorer > navigate to Compatibility View settings. Is spotify.com listed in there? If so, remove it, reload the pages and it should be fixed 🙂

Let me know how it goes!

[robonli]

Nope, that's not it either.

Since I gutted IE11 and re-installed from scratch, that CV window is empty. Nothing is using CV.

Thanks.

[Swanny]

Hmm, that's a strange one! If you press F12 while on spotify.com or the Web Player, then click the "Emulation" tab, what shows up in the User agent string section?

[robonli]

"Default"

See below.

[Swanny]

Ah, ok. I think I know what the problem is now. Go back to the settings cog menu > select Internet Options. Click the Security tab > select "Local intranet", then click Sites. Clicked the Advanced button, and you'll probably see "spotify.com" in the Websites list.

It looks like somehow that's been added to the intranet zone, which forces all sites to display in IE7 compatibility mode by default.

Let me know how that goes!

[robonli]

Nope.  Not it 🙂

Again, IE11 was gutted.  I installed it from scratch to try and get this working.  There are no CV sites, no trusted sites, no local sites, etc.  All of those windows are empty.

Thanks again for your help.  Any other suggestions?

Maybe I can add it to the Trusted Sites and see if that helps.  I'll try when I'm back at my hotel later.

[robonli]

Trusted site makes no difference either.  And I set my Trusted site settings to the lowest level possible.

Anyone else?

[Swanny]

You should find changing the Document Mode setting to 11 should fix the issue as a workaround . Nonetheless, there's definitely something that is forcing Spotify.com to display using the intranet compatibility settings, so it's very surprising that Spotify.com wasn't in the intranet site list.

[robonli]

Nope.  Also not it.  I have Edge, 10, 9, 8, 7 and 5 as options.  7 is the default.  I've tried Edge, 10 and 9 and all of them still say "Browser Not Supported".

[Swanny · Accepted solution]

Can you double check the compatibility mode settings and ensure that "Display intranet sites in Compatibility View" is unchecked? It is generally checked by default.

[robonli]

DING DING DING.  We have a winner.  I went back through all the messages and I didn't see where someone suggested unchecking the box so I never did.  I just did it, reloaded IE and now Spotify works.

Question is why?  It's not listed as a local intranet site.  I still have it lised as a trusted site that I tried last night.

Thank you so much again for your support.  Drinks on me if we ever meet somewhere!  I can't work without music 🙂  And my iTunes library was getting old.

[Swanny]

Hooray, glad that sorted it! I don't think I did actually mention unchecking that tickbox originally, I just asked you to check if spotify.com was in there.

It's a strange issue, googling shows some other people have had that issue with other sites. Not sure what's causing it though...

Nonetheless - glad you got it sorted now 🙂