Local File Cover Arts not showing on iPhone

[jordanb_11]

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

iPhone 16

Operating System

iOS 18.6

My Question or Issue

I have over 400 local files on my iPhone and out of those, 17 cover arts do not show while all the others do. The size of the images does not seem to be an issue as the hundreds of cover arts that do work are a range of sizes, most of which are bigger than 300x300 and they work fine. For some reason 17 of the cover arts just don't work for no reason whatsoever. Does anyone have a solution?

[Yordan]

Hi there, @jordanb_11,

Thanks for reaching out!

Are the affected songs all from the same album/artist? It's also possible that the issue comes from the images themselves. Have you tried editing the files' metadata and replacing them? You can test different image formats (such as .jpg, .png, etc.) to see which one works best.

Something else that's worth checking is using another file format for the local files: if they're currently .flacs, try converting them to .mp3s instead.

Lastly, I'd recommend testing with another software for metadata editing.

Let us know how it goes 👍

[jordanb_11]

Hi Yordan,

The files are MP3s that I have downloaded online so they are not directly attached to any artist or album on Spotify. 

I have tried using both jpeg and pngs and neither work. I have also tried deleting them and redownloading them to my iPhone, however when I completely delete them from my phone, they still show up on my local files folder in Spotify so I can’t fully delete them from Spotify to retry. 

Thanks.

[Yordan]

Thanks for the reply, @jordanb_11!

What I meant was if the affected files share the same album/artist metadata, but I guess they don't. If possible, try downloading them from another source or converting them to see if that does the trick.

---

@jordanb_11 wrote:

... when I completely delete them from my phone, they still show up on my local files folder in Spotify so I can’t fully delete them from Spotify to retry. 

---

Perhaps there's a caching issue causing this - performing a clean reinstall of the app could help in this case, just note that you'll need to reupload your files + redownload any other content you had saved for offline listening. If you also use iTunes / Apple Music and you have the files in your library there, try removing them from there as well.

In case your local files are still missing album covers, another user was able to resolve this by organizing them in folders along with the exact file used for the album cover. Granted, it was on Windows, but still worth a try, if you haven't already.

Cheers 🤘

[jordanb_11]

Hi Yordan,

Sorry I misunderstood your previous question, the files all share the same artist metadata, and some share the same album while other songs share a different album.