Podcasts player often has incorrect timestamp

[ison]

Plan

Premium

Country

Poland

Device

iPhone XS

My Question or Issue

I'd like to report a bug with the podcasts player on iOS. The current podcast time is often not tracked correctly. Examples:

1) Listen to a podcast. Kill the app. Restart. Very often the timestamp will be like 5 minutes back of what it should be. 10 seconds would be acceptable, 5 minutes is not.

2) Listen to a podcast. Pause with airpods pro. Do something else for an hour. Play. The timestamp will be incorrect, like previously.

3) Listen to a podcast. Use airpods pro back gesture. Details below.

This is reproducible nearly all the time. Repro steps:

1. Start a podcast

2. Listen for 10 minutes

3. Triple-click airpods pro

4. Instead of going back 15 seconds, the time will go back for a random duration. Sometimes 15 seconds, sometimes 1 minute, sometimes 3 minutes.

Spotify app is up to date. This bug happens only when the app runs in background.

None of these issues happen in Apple Podcasts app.

[Alex]

Hey there @ison,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

Could you let us know your exact Spotify version, as well as if this is happening on other platforms, such as the web player too?

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[ison]

Sure,
my Spotify version is: 8.6.30.968

As far as I know it only happens in the iOS app (when it runs in
background, and with AirPods Pro or probably other wireless headphones
too). It should be easy to reproduce.

[Ivan]

Hey @ison,

Thanks for getting back to us. 

If you experience the issue on an iOS device it's a good idea to start with a clean reinstall of Spotify to make sure no leftover data from pervious installations could be causing this. 

In case this persists, make sure no power saving settings or data cleaning apps run active on the mobile device. Such features can often prevent the app from operating at full capacity. We also suggest accessing the app settings and making sure all Permissions are enabled for Spotify. 

Hope this helps. Keep us in the loop here. 

[ison]

Hi,

thank you for your reply.

Power saving mode is off, and I don't use any data cleaning apps. It's a
clean install.

It's just a little bug in how Spotify remembers the current timestamp when
the app runs in background. It doesn't happen in other apps, like Audible,
Audiobooks.com, or Apple Podcasts.

Hope this helps.

[Alex]

Hey there @ison,

Thanks for the reply.

Could you let us know if you have Background App Refresh switched on? Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

Also, try listening to a podcast episode to a certain timepoint, close the mobile app and open the Web player - check if the timestamp is at the same time.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[ison]

Background App Refresh is on.

I'll do some more tests later, but a month ago I did something similar:
listened to a podcast on iOS in background, killed the app, and in Spotify
on the computer the timestamp was different.

[RandysCookbook]

I have been plagued by this issue non stop the last several months. Very disappointed this has been reported so long ago and yet to be fixed or even properly addressed.