Some users have the problem that the Spotify app pauses for no apparent reason. Find out what you can do about this annoying problem here.
Spotify app pauses or stops playback
Troubleshooting Spotify on Android
If you have a problem with Spotify on your Android smartphone, the first thing you should do is clear the cache. The cache contains temporarily stored files – and it is precisely these that can sometimes cause problems.
If clearing the cache doesn’t help, you can also remove all the app data.
As a last step, you can try uninstalling and re-downloading the Spotify app. However, when deleting the app data and reinstalling it, you will have to log in to the app again.
- To do this, go to the settings on your Android smartphone and click on “Apps & notifications“.
- Search for the Spotify app here.
- Now click on “Storage and cache“. Here you can clear the cache, but also all files of the app on the phone.
- You can also delete the Spotify app in “Apps & notifications”.
Spotify troubles on iPhone
On your iPhone, the first thing you should do is clear the cache.
- First, open the Spotify app.
- Then click on the gear wheel in the upper right corner of the home page to open the settings.
- Scroll down until you find the menu item “Storage“.
- Click on “Clear cache” here.
If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to reinstall the app.
- To do so, find the Spotify app in the home screen and long-press on it.
- Then click on “Remove App” and confirm that you really want to delete the app.
- After that, you should restart your iPhone. After this, you need to download the app from the app store again.
Spotify is acting up on the PC
If you’re having trouble with Spotify on your Windows machine, the troubleshooting steps are basically similar.
First, it is recommended to delete the local cached data.
- Close the Spotify app on your computer first.
- Then, open File Explorer and navigate to the following path: C:\Users[username]\AppData\Local\Spotify. Replace [username] with your Windows user.
- Navigate to the folder “Data“, mark all entries with [Ctrl] + [A] and delete all contents.
- Then open the folder “Storage” and again delete the whole folder content like in the last step.
If that doesn’t fix the problem, you’ll need to reinstall Spotify. Make sure to reboot your PC after you uninstalled Spotify.
Spotify Connect may pause playback
If deleting data and reinstalling did not work, Spotify Connect might be the culprit.
With Spotify Connect, it is possible to listen to music and control playback across devices. The problem might not be on your smartphone, but a computer that constantly tries to pause playback.
You can find out if this is the case relatively easily by logging out of your Spotify account from all devices and gradually logging back in everywhere.
- Log in to spotify.com/account with your Spotify account.
- Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Sign out everywhere” here. This will immediately log you out of all devices.
- If this fixed your playback issues, it’s probably on a different device. When you log back in to your devices, watch to see if the problems reappear.
For example, one known issue is Discord’s “auto-pause” feature. If you have Discord connected to Spotify on your PC, and Discord automatically pauses Spotify when somebody talks, that can be transmitted to other devices via Spotify Connect. But finding this problem in the first place takes time and nerves.
