Offline downloads

[cool259]

Plan

Premium

iPhone 17

Operating System

iOS 26.4.1

My Question or Issue

I am having an issue where I am in airplane mode completely offline and my songs will randomly pause and stop playing. I have all of these songs downloaded. I have cleared my cache, uninstall reinstalled the app re-downloaded songs only to still have the issue within 24 hours. I have also restarted my phone and tried all of these steps multiple times. Please help

[Koyubi]

Hi,

That’s really frustrating, especially after trying all the usual fixes. Since you’ve already reinstalled, cleared cache, and re-downloaded, this is likely not a simple app glitch.

A few things that are worth checking:

• Go to Settings → Playback and make sure “Offline mode” is enabled (not just airplane mode). Sometimes Spotify still tries to check connectivity unless Offline mode is turned on inside the app.
• Check Settings → Storage and confirm your downloads are stored locally (not being offloaded by iOS). iPhones can sometimes remove app data in the background if storage is tight.
• Turn off Data Saver / Low Data Mode and Battery Saver (Low Power Mode). These can interfere with playback even for downloaded content.
• Make sure you’ve logged into Spotify online within the last 30 days. Spotify requires a periodic online check to keep downloads active.
• Try downloading a smaller playlist or a few albums and test if the issue still happens. If only certain songs pause, they could be corrupted downloads.

If it’s still happening after all that, it could be a device-specific or iOS-related bug. At that point, I’d recommend reaching out to Spotify Support and mentioning you’ve already done a clean reinstall and re-download. They may be able to check logs or flag it as a known issue.

Hope you get it working properly again—offline playback should definitely not be doing that.

[cool259]

Thank you for your insight. I have tried most of your bullet points, except the last one. I do have a rather large Spotify library because I work long days.

[MattC566]

Just bumping this thread to say this has been an issue for me for years, exactly as described by other posters. No amount of cache-clearing, app reinstalling, logging out and  back in, or anything else fixes it. "Downloaded" podcasts do not, will not, apparently cannot be reliably played offline.

My use case is I work 50% in an office with wifi, and 50% in a steel building outside the office with no wifi or cellular signal. In the morning, I "download" 3-4 podcasts over wifi. The Spotify app shows them as "downloaded." This is a lie.

When I go out and work in the steel building, I put my phone in airplane mode because being stuck flipping between SOS mode and trying to hang on by a thread to a single bar of service all day slaughters my battery.

I play a "downloaded" podcast. About 1/3 of time, it works without issue and plays all the way through. The other 2/3 of the time, it will stop at a completely random point in the podcast. It could be 10%, midway through, or almost at the end. "We're trying to play this content, but it's taking a while" or something to that effect is the error. Best I can tell, the "downloaded" status is completely meaningless.

Steps to reproduce: "download" any podcast over wifi. Turn on airplane mode, go to a place with no wifi. Play "downloaed" podcast. 2/3 of the time, it will not play to the end.

Basically I've resigned myself to only playing podcasts when I have an internet connection, as the "downloaded" flag in the Spotify app means nothing. It's not "downloaded" if I can't play it without a connection. Lately I load up foobar2000 on my phone with audiobooks and podcasts that I'm able to get in MP3 format.