Spotify connect devices don't show up reliably in iOS App

[smawuascht]

Hi girls and guys,

I keep on having problems with Spotify connect devices not showing up reliably on my iOS devices. Some speakers don't show up at all under iOS, some show up sporadically.

I tested this with 4 iOS devices all on the latest iOS and Spotify version. I couldn't find any pattern. Under MacOS all speakers show up.

I tried uninstalling the Spotify app and reinstalled it. No change 😞

Does anyone have an idea?

I can't figure out if this is a Spotify problem, or an iOS problem, or a network problem on my side (which I kinda doubt because on MacOS all speakers show up).

Looking forward for help.

Thanks a lot
Michael

Plan

Premium

Country

Austria

Device

iPhone XR, iPad Pro 

Operating System

iOS 14.4

[Mihail]

Hey @smawuascht,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community with this one.

Please keep in mind that the devices that support Spotify Connect are subject to change. You can find all currently supported ones here. Can you confirm that yours are on the list?

If that's the case it's indeed a good idea to connect all of them to a different internet network and see if that makes a difference.  A mobile hotspot can be a convenient way to test this.

If that doesn't fix things, we recommend that you run a clean reinstall of the Spotify app on your iOS devices. This tends to resolve connectivity issues like the ones you're experiencing.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on how it goes. 

[smawuascht]

Hi,

I'm not sure if my post war read entirely 😉
As I mentioned - all speakers show up in the Spotify app on MacOS.
Thus I don't think that the speaker support is in question.

Regardless after another recent Spotify update it was back to normal.
Stuff like this is just extremely frustrating as a user. Because it's impossible to troubleshoot.

What I just don't understand and Like if a matter is described in great detail and then some generic answers come back.

If my post would have been read entirely - you would have noticed that everything worked fine with MacOS devices. So the speakers themselves could not possibly be the problem.

 

[Eni]

Hi @smawuascht, 

Thanks for getting back in touch. 

We're sorry that you feel this way. We asked you those questions to help us narrow down the possible cause of the issue.

We're glad to hear that it's fixed now. If you ever need anything else, we're just a post away. 

Have a great day!

[cbschuld]

Just to layer in on this problem.  I am seeing this with multiple iOS devices.  One device will show the speakers and one will not.  The next day the device that did NOT show the devices will then show them again.  It does not seem to be related to installing the app cleanly or restarting the app.  It is incredibly frustrating but the feature to select the remote speakers appears inconsistent (software developer nightmare).

I have several iOS devices and the inconsistency is across them all (iPad and iPhone).

The network is unchanged, the devices are all DHCPed with a common broadcast.

[Alex]

Hey @cbschuld,

Thanks for the post.

Could you let us know when did you first notice this started happening and if you can see your devices as expected if you connect all to another network, like a mobile hotspot?

It would be helpful if you can give us the following info for some of the affected devices:

• Device model, OS version and Spotify version

We'd like to look into this further.

Cheers.

[cbschuld]

Hi Alex:

Thanks, candidly the spotify feature for remote speakers has always been hit/miss.  My wife's phone and son's phone does the same thing.  You asked about mobile hot spot (i.e. get out of my current subnet onto another one) - I have not done this.  Seems like there is some technical question there that I am not understanding; does it have to do w/ the broadcast or some type of packet filtering?  Setting that up would be tricky as my speaker device is a hifiberry and is connected just via LAN cable.  I have a lot of devices on the LAN too and they will typically not show up or all show up.  Example attached, right now that "busy" spinner just spins and no speakers show up.

Spotify Version: 8.7.10.1611

OS Version: 15.3.1 (iOS)

iPhone 12 Pro

[Alex]

Hey @cbschuld,

Thanks for the reply and the info you've provided.

The issue here might be that the speaker is connected only via Lan Cable and not the WiFi. We've received reports that some speakers and sound systems don't appear in the Connect picker if they're connected only via cable.

The reason I recommended trying using a mobile hotspot network and connecting your devices to it, is to check if the issue is related to your home network at all, or it comes from some settings on the devices themselves. It would be great if you can try this, so we know how to proceed with troubleshooting. 

Can you also let us know the model of your Speaker?

Keep us posted.

[Frenchie5]

Make sure you allow your Spotify app to use network and Bluetooth to discover other services.  I bet some devices are blocked and others not.