Turn of auto play FOR REAL

[aprentic]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

iPhone 8, PC

Operating System

iOS 10, Windows 11

My Question or Issue

How do I disable autoplay? I mean actually disable autoplay.
The advice of "settings->autoplay(off)" does NOT work.

Spotify still insists on taking whatever song I pick and then playing "next from" when it's done with a playlist.

How can I get Spotify to play only the songs I ask it to and then STOP.

By STOP I mean that it does not play any songs without explicit instructions to do so. It should NOT start playing songs and force me to explicitly tell it to stop.

This seems like very basic functionality. If I play a record, a tape, or CD, my devices don't decide they know better than me and start playing random songs from my collection. Why does Spotify think that's a good idea?

PS I moved this because it seems to have gotten attached to some other thread by accident.

[Yordan]

Hey there, @aprentic,

Welcome to the Spotify Community!

When you play an album/playlist, the rest of the tracks will be queued in the Next from section of the queue. What Autoplay does is it generates a new queue of similar content when the previous one ends so that the playback doesn't stop. The content from Autoplay appears in the Next up section instead.

If you want the app to play a single song then stop, you can play it from Search. Alternatively, you can start a playlist/album/podcast episode and remove the rest of the tracks/episodes you don't want to listen to from the queue.

💡Tip: In the desktop app, you can set a filter in the playlist that only plays content that matches your query. You can access it by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the top right, or with Ctrl + F. Screenshots below:

Spoiler

With filter
Without filter

Hope this clears things up. In case you meant something else, feel free to elaborate further 👍

[aprentic]

I've seen similar advice elsewhere. Unfortunately, it doesn't fix the problem.

The problem isn't that I can't turn off a song. I'm not looking for a way to temporarily override autoplay.

I want a setting that tells Spotify NEVER to play unsolicited music.

I get that it's sometimes a useful feature. It would even be OK to have autoplay be an opt-out feature. But forcing it on people just sucks.

Please let me turn it off.

[Yordan]

Thanks for the reply, @aprentic.

Appreciate the feedback on this. You can toggle off Autoplay in the app's settings like you mentioned in your original post, but in order to confirm we're on the same page, feel free to share a short screen recording which captures the exact behavior in action so we can get a direct view of what's happening on your end and investigate further. Make sure the queue is clearly visible on the screen recording as well 👍

If you notice that the app's playing songs that you haven't personally added, you might have Smart Shuffle toggled on. You'll find more info on how to turn it off here.

Cheers 🤘

[aprentic]

Here's a screen shot.

When I click "clear queue" it will only get rid of the "Next in Queue".

It will go on to play "Awarakadawara" over and over unless I explicitly tell it to stop each time. It won't even remember my preference through a single session. If I want to add multiple songs, I need to tell it NOT to keep playing random stuff every time I add a song.

What I'm looking for is a single button or setting that tells Spotify, "NEVER play a song unless I've explicitly told you to."

I have both "smart shuffle" and "autoplay" turned off.

[Novy]

Hi @aprentic,

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Have you, by any chance, put this song on repeat from a different device? If so, this could be the reason why only this song keeps being repeated outside of your queue, even if the aforementioned settings are off.

If you haven't already, try signing out from all devices, then restart the device you're currently using and log back in. 

Keep us posted on how it goes!

[aprentic]

Sort of.

The problem started on my phone. It just "volunteered" to start autoplaying stuff.

When I switched to my desktop the problem was still there.

I tried to log out of all my other devices and the problem is still there.

When I search for a song, find it in a list  and click on it, Spotify often (but not always) adds a bunch of stuff to the queue that I didn't ask for.

I'm not looking for a way to remove them. I can do that already and it's annoying.

I'm also not looking for a lot of different multi-click methods to disable some autoplay under some circumstances.

I'm looking for some setting that tells Spotify to NEVER play a song I didn't explicitly ask it to play.

Every time I ask Spotify to play a single song, or try to add a song to a queue, Spotify insists on

[Novy]

Hey again @aprentic,

We understand where you're coming from and appreciate all your feedback, which has been passed on to the relevant teams. 

We'd recommend having a look in our Idea Exchange to see if someone else has already made a similar suggestion. If there isn't one, you can submit your own idea so that other users can also support it. The higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.

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

[Ndovu]

I faced the same problem, I've switched off autoplay, but even when I play songs in my 'liked' folder, Spotify still plays some other random song that is not in my liked songs folder. Guys you need to fix this, if its not fixed I'd like a refund!!

[aprentic]

As Novy suggested, I opened an Idea for this:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Ability-to-turn-off-Autoplay/idi-p/6801391

Give it an upvote so they see it's something customers care about.

[dingdingwikki]

Yes, people, please upvote the Idea.

Although it's insane that this is considered some sort of new "idea". It's just basic functionality that's currently broken.

[dingdingwikki]

It's even worse than I thought. The Spotify suggested workaround is to clear the queue. But you can't.
* Literally, in the desktop app at least, there is no "Clear Queue" button, even though google seems to think there is.
* You can remove individual tracks (or select a group and then remove them as a group), but to no avail. Every time I remove tracks, it adds more. I literally needed to go through this entire Artist's discography, it added all of the tracks for each of the albums, one album at a time, before I could finally clear out the queue.
* But even then, it's not complete. There's still the single "Now playing" track that's left, and there's no way to remove it.
* As a further workaround, I tried fast forwarding the "Now playing" track until almost the end, resuming it, and letting it finish. Hoping that then I would finally have turned off auto play. Nope, as soon as it was done that, it picked another track and replaced it in "Now playing" and started playing that. So even though I don't technically have a queue now, effectively I do, b/c as soon as it should stop, it won't, and will just start playing something else.

This really is truly insane. This is basic playback functionality, and you can't even get that right.

[dingdingwikki]

re: no way to clear the queue

see also https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/Mobile-Multi-Select-Add-Remove-Songs-from-Music-Q...

[EjohnFR]

Same here for podcasts, Spotify keep playing stuff after an episode end despite all options turned off. It's f annoying as soon as I find another podcast reader I'm out of**bleep**.