403 User not approved for app

[Breysn]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Desktop / Firefox / Chrome

Operating System

Windows

My Question or Issue

I am currently considering to develop a Spotify-enabled webapp using the Web API in conjunction with the Web Playback SDK.

I established the basic functionality to play specific songs in the browser pretty quickly, but any other spotify-premium-user than myself (app-creator) get a 403: "User not approved for app" during the PUT call to https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/player/play?device_id=[web device id here].

I find it strange that i cannot find any helpful references to this error in google or this forum, is this something new?

The webplayer however is established and the user is able to manually switch playback to this device using the official clients / Spotify connect.

I could not find any restrictions to only use the API or the SDK for private applications, any help would be appreciated.

Additional info:
SPA using Angular and the Authorization Code With PKCE flow.

Requested scopes:

'user-read-private', 'user-read-email', 'user-read-playback-state', 'user-modify-playback-state', 'user-read-currently-playing', 'streaming'

[ohej · Accepted solution]

It sounds like your app is in "Development Mode". Last week we announced new changes to the platform so new apps are placed in "development mode" where you can onboard up to 25 users. Once your app is ready to grow beyond that you can request a review which lifts the restrictions. 

When you log in to the developer dashboard you can manage your users - you'll need to add their name and email then they can access your app.

You can read all about the changes here: https://developer.spotify.com/community/news/2021/05/27/improving-the-developer-and-user-experience-...

[Breysn]

Yes I did not know about this. This must be it, thank you.
However there's a good reason I didn't: It simply was not displayed in the dashboard until now. I followed your link and saw the screenshot of the new settings, but they weren't there on my dashboard, no app-status, no "users and access" button. Only after I cleared my browsers cache they appeared.

[fredthekid]

I don't have the option to do this, is there someone that I need to enable for this to happen?

[NielsKersic]

These options are not showing up in my Developer Dashboard either, even after clearing my cache in Chrome, even on a different device. I finally got access with Firefox.

I like that the article mentions "improving the developer experience" when in fact it's only making it more difficult and annoying for developers to create Spotify apps. 

[ohej]

We do apologise for the inconvenience this is causing. Rest assured the team is working on a fix. Meanwhile, if your app is in development mode and you do not see the "USERS & ACCESS" button the best advice is to clear cache/cookies and/or try a different browser. I will update the thread once we have a fix ready.

[jaydip_sapariya]

Hello, can you please guide me how to add email and user name in user & access section because i tried to add the email but still those user are not able to authenticate to my application, before this changes every thing is working fine, so i think there is problem in adding email. i'm getting email from spotify web player -> setting -> account section And i don't know about name so i think it's just for naming the entry so i'm entering actual full name of that user.(means any random string).

And how much time or day it takes to apply those email list? maybe im not waiting enough for those setting to get applied.