Spotify ‘Now Playing’ not showing? Here’s why your controls might have disappeared and how to fix the problem.
Spotify’s Now Playing bar is one of the service’s most essential features for controlling your music, and many users have reported that these controls have disappeared.
The Now Playing bar appears at the bottom of the Spotify app when you’re listening to a track. The bar includes a play/pause button, shows the name and artist of the song, and a thumbnail of the album artwork. If this bar disappears, force closing Spotify and reopening it may bring back the bar, but this has been a temporary fix. Other users report needing to restart their device before the Now Playing bar shows up again.
The Now Playing bar’s disappearance was heavily reported and discussed on the Spotify Community forum, prompting the company to release a patch for the issue quickly.
Among the reports, user Paul731 asked, “Why does my ‘Now Playing’ bar at the bottom of the application keep disappearing? I need to shut Spotify down and restart it for it to reappear.”
User ddinstel lamented, “I’ve cleared the cache and done a clean reinstall with no luck. If I close out the app and then open it again, the now playing bar returns, but only until the next time the app is minimized, so I have to keep doing this 10+ times per day. At this point I’m considering switching to a different streaming service.”
“Closing Spotify doesn’t help,” added user Doohoo. “Only restarting the phone helps.”
Fortunately for iOS users, this issue has only affected the Android app, and a previous version update was the likely culprit. Spotify was quickly made aware of the problem, and they reported that a fix has rolled out.
“A number of Spotify users on Android devices may have experienced issues with the Now Playing View and music playback,” Spotify said of the problem. “A fix has now been implemented and is rolling out to all users.”
If you have an Android device and are still encountering the issue, start by enabling automatic updates in the Play Store.
To enable automatic updates:
- Open the Play Store on your phone
- Tap your profile icon in the top right
- Then Tap Settings.
- Now Tap Network preferences.
- Finally, Tap Auto-update apps.
As long as your settings include ‘Over any network’ or ‘Over Wi-Fi only,’ apps will update automatically as new versions become available.