Offline music cannot be played if I am not connected to WiFi/4g

[gillouche]

Device

iPhone 11

Operating System

Spotify version: 8.7.62.409

iOS version: 15.6.1

My Question or Issue

Hello,

I have Spotify premium (Belgium) and for the last 2 days, I can't play my music offline without being connected to the internet (WiFi or 4G). I use Spotify on my iPhone and in my car via Car Play (and the iPhone) but nothing plays unless I allow the Spotify app to access the internet.

I can see that my playlists are downloaded locally, I can still press next/previous from Car Play or the iPhone itself but the tracks never start, they stay at 0:00. If I enable mobile network access, everything works fine.

What should I do to fix that?

Thanks

[Dian · Accepted solution]

Hey @gillouche,

Thanks for posting in the Community.

Let's start with a clean reinstall of the app, so we can be sure, that you're running a fresh installation. Here is how to do one. 

If this doesn't resolve the issue, could you try a different account on your phone? Also make sure, that you have enough free storage on the phone and that you're not using any battery/memory optimization apps.

Let us know how that went,

Cheers!

[gillouche]

Hi,

I reinstalled the application and configured everything like it was before. It seems that the track starts even when the app doesn't have access to mobile data. I'll check and confirm in my car tonight.

I have another question, is it normal that in offline mode, the playlists that I want to be available offline are not downloaded?

I need to go to settings -> "playback" (not sure about the translation, I have the app in French) and I have to uncheck "offline mode" (same, I expect the translation to be that, not sure) for my playlists to be downloaded.

It is not a big problem in itself but basically, if there is WiFi, I want Spotify to do whatever it wants (download stuff and all) and if there is only a mobile data connection, I want spotify to just read what has been downloaded locally.

Is that even possible in the settings?

Thanks.

[Dian]

Hey @gillouche,

Thanks for the reply. We're eager to hear how the car test went.

About the offline toggle, yes, you'll have to activate offline mode every time you don't want Spotify to be using the internet connection of your phone, whatever the connection is. There is currently no automatic switching of the offline mode when a change in the connection type is detected. But there is a way to tell the app to never download content while your phone is connected through a mobile data connection. Somewhere in the app settings is a toggle "Download using cellular data".

So you'll have to turn the offline mode manually on whenever you don't want Spotify to connect to the internet.

Hope this clears things a bit,

Cheers!

[gillouche]

Hi,

everything works after a reinstall even in the car. I'll keep Spotify online now, I'll just disable the mobile data access from the iPhone settings.

That should help.

Thanks for your help.