What to do if Spotify is running slow on your computer
A step-by-step guide to fixing a slow Spotify desktop app on Mac or PC.
Note: In many situations, a slow hard drive is the most likely culprit for a slow Spotify app; I strongly recommend upgrading to a solid state drive (SSD), which can greatly improve overall performance. Also, if manually deleting your cache in the method this post suggests does not work, reinstalling Spotify may help clear up issues; Spotify’s support page has a step-by-step breakdown of how to do this.
Today, while using Disk Inventory X tool on my Mac, I discovered my Spotify cache was taking up a staggering 10.5GB of space. As of late, I had also been experiencing significant slowdown in starting Spotify, and the application took at least a minute or two to boot up. I decided to clear the large cache earlier today, and the application’s performance improved dramatically thereafter. I’ve seen other people who have this issue, and so I figured I might write a step-by-step guide for dealing with it. Please close the Spotify app before following the steps below.
1. Using Finder, under the Go menu at the top of the screen, select the Go to Folder option (you can also press Shift-Apple Key-G to access). Inside the “Go to the folder” field that pops up, type or paste ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ and then click “Go” or press Enter.
2. Delete everything inside the com.spotify.client folder. You can select all of the items by pressing Command + A.
3. Using the Go to Finder option from Step 1, go to ~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/.
4. Inside the Spotify folder, look for a file called prefs. Open this file in Notepad and add storage.size=1024 on a new line at the end of the file. Save this file. This should limit the size of Spotify’s cache to 1024MB or 1GB; you can change the “1024” value if you would like the cache to be smaller or larger.
5. Delete the PersistentCache folder inside the Spotify folder.
1. Type or paste C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Spotify\ into the directory bar of Windows Explorer. Delete the Browser, Storage, and Data folders.
2. Type or paste C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\ into the directory bar of Windows Explorer. Inside this folder, look for a file called prefs. Open this file in Wordpad and add storage.size=1024 on a new line at the end of the file. Save this file. This should limit the size of Spotify’s cache to 1024MB or 1GB; feel free to change the “1024” value if you would like the decrease or increase the size of the cache.
P.S. If you would like some good Spotify playlists, I have a small, frequently changing playlist or a (nearly) endless playlist with 1400+ songs and counting. (Or check out the Spotify tag below this post.)
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