Why your Spotify app keeps crashing, and 7 ways to fix it

• If your Spotify app keeps crashing, there are several simple troubleshooting steps you can try to resolve the problem. 
• Start by forcing the app to close and restart it; you can also restart the entire device.
• Other things to try include resetting network settings and disabling hardware acceleration if the problem is happening on a Mac or PC. 
• Visit Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

If you rely on Spotify as your day-to-day source of music, you no doubt appreciate having access to a library of over 70 million tracks — it's like having access to virtually every song ever made on your phone. But all that can come to a halt if Spotify keeps crashing when you start the app or when you try to play a track. 

As within any problematic app, it can be hard to know exactly what the root cause of your problem is. So here are seven ways to troubleshoot and hopefully solve your issue with Spotify.

Force-close and then restart Spotify

Often, an app that displays an error message or crashes can be fixed with a simple remedy: Just force it to close and restart the app.  Start by closing the app on Android or closing Spotify on iOS. Then start the app again in the usual way. It only takes a moment, and might solve your problem.

Restart your device

If restarting Spotify didn't do the trick, it's a good idea to restart your device. That will flush out any corrupt data that might be causing a conflict and let you start fresh after just a minute or two. Restarting every kind of device is a bit different, but here is how to restart an iPhone.

Check for a Spotify outage

Before you try more complex or time-consuming troubleshooting steps, it's a good idea to determine if the problem is with the Spotify service, in which case you simply need to wait for service to be restored. The easiest way to check on Spotify is to visit Spotify's status page at DownDetector, or just search for "Is Spotify down" in a Google search and look for Downdetector in the search results. If the site is down, wait a while and try again later.

Log out of Spotify and log back in

Especially if Spotify crashes no matter what you try to play, it might be time to log out of Spotify and then log back in again. On the mobile app (for either Android or iPhone), tap the Settings icon at the top right (shaped like a gear) and scroll to the bottom. Tap Log out. Then, on the sign-in page, log back into your account. 

Uninstall and reinstall Spotify

If you still can't use Spotify without the app displaying error messages or crashing, try to reinstall the app. If the app has become corrupted or there's an incompatibility with some other software on the device, reinstalling a fresh copy might solve the problem, especially if there's a newer version. If you need a reminder, here's how to uninstall the Spotify app from your Android or iOS device. Afterward, install a fresh version from Google Play or the App Store.

Reset your network settings

Less commonly, your phone's network settings might need to be reset to allow certain online services like Spotify to work properly. Save this as a last resort, though, because resetting your network will wipe out all your saved network configurations, including Bluetooth devices and WiFi network names and passwords, so you'll need to log back into those networks manually. If you want to try, though, you can reset your network settings on iPhone or reset your network settings on Android and see if that solves the problem. 

Disable hardware acceleration in Mac or Windows

Most of the troubleshooting tips apply to your computer as well as mobile devices, but if Spotify is crashing on your computer there's one other trick you can try — disabling hardware acceleration. This desktop-only feature lets Spotify use the graphics card for better performance, but it can sometimes cause Spotify to misbehave. To disable hardware acceleration, click the three-dot menu at the top-left corner of the desktop app, then click the View menu, then Hardware Acceleration.