Spotify Desktop App Slow? Here’s How To Fix It For Mac And Windows

Spotify is my favorite and most used service I have, even more than TV and streaming services. Everyday I use Spotify whether I am in the car, working in the office, cooking, chores, and anytime I want tunes Spotify is on. No software or service is without its flaws and nuances but one issue got to a point I needed to address it. That issue was with the desktop app from Spotify.

Over time the desktop app became slower and slower, less responsive to the point of taking minutes to load one playlist. Uninstalling completely and reinstalling worked for a short time but eventually the app would degrade to that level of poor performance. That told me it wasn’t my machine but something with the app.

I searched for solutions and if others had the same problem and found may posts that did but no good solutions that worked. Until I came across a lone post with complicated steps. I went through those and those worked well.

The problem comes down to the cache management of the Spotify app. Overtime the cache files grow to a size that passed efficiency to the point of being very large and therefore more difficult the computer to use them without expending more memory and processing which becomes counter-productive. The solution is to clear out the cache files and then set a configuration setting in the Spotify setup files to cap the cache size to not bloat.

This post is to simplify those steps for both MacOS and Windows.

MacOS

1. Close Spotify if running. Open Finder.
2. Under the Go menu option select Go To Folder. (Shift–Command-G)
3. Type in or paste this ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/
4. Click Go or hit Enter on the keyboard.
5. In this folder you should see a Browser folder, Data, fsCachedData and other files. Delete all the contents. Command-A to select all, move to trash.
6. Go back to the Finder. Same as Step 2 and 3 go to folder ~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/
7. In this folder, look for a file called prefs.
8. Open prefs in a text editor.
9. Add the text in bold at the end of the file. This will limit the cache to 1024MN or 1GB. You can set this to whatever you want but this will cap the cache and not let it grow to an unlimited size. storage.size=1024
10. Save the file.
11. Delete the PersistentCache folder.

Windows

1. Note <your username> is your windows login. Go to the folder C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Spotify.
2. Delete these folders – Browser, Storage and Data.
3. Go to the C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\ folder.
4. In this folder, look for a file called prefs
5. Open prefs in Notepad or other text editor.
6. Add the text in bold at the end of the file. This will limit the cache to 1024MN or 1GB. You can set this to whatever you want but this will cap the cache and not let it grow to an unlimited size. storage.size=1024
7. Save the file.

Those steps for Mac and Windows should resolve the Spotify desktop performance degradation you are experiencing. It has for me and I wouldn’t waste my time writing this out if it didn’t.

For fun here are my top personal playlists if you are so inclined –

• Everything Good
• Techno Likes
• Rock Likes
• Country Likes
• Lyric-Less
• Baseball Hype Music – Played music for my son’s youth baseball team before and in between innings. This is the playlist.

End of line.

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Binary Blogger

Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.

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