How to fix Spotify not downloading songs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Unable to download Spotify songs or podcasts? Learn how to fix this issue and get back to saving your favorite music or shows for offline listening.

While the solutions here are for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, they should also work if you can’t download tracks inside the Spotify app on Android phones or Windows PC.

Spotify’s download problem

• You don’t get the option to download songs or playlists.
• Sometimes, when you hit the download button in Spotify, it does nothing. Or, it changes to a two-curved-arrow icon but does not save the songs offline.
• It auto-deletes your downloaded songs.

If you face the above problems or something related and can’t get Spotify to save songs on the local storage, I’ve listed every possible solution to address this issue.

1. Get Spotify Premium

Spotify has a free, ad-supported version, but to download songs for offline playback, it’s compulsory to have a paid premium subscription or a free trial of the premium subscription. So, make sure you’ve purchased its premium or signed up for its free trial. Spotify usually offers new users 30 days to 3 months as a free trial.

Note:

• You don’t need Spotify Premium to download podcasts.
• You can’t download songs for offline playback on Spotify web accessed at open.spotify.com in a computer browser.

2. Add songs to a playlist in order to download

You are not allowed to download individual songs on Spotify! You can only download a song by adding it to a playlist and then downloading that playlist.

Here’s how to download a song on Spotify:

1. Tap the three dots icon next to a song’s name.
2. Choose Add to playlist.
3. Select Liked Songs, one of your existing playlists, or create a new downloads playlist. Tap Done to add this song to the selected playlist.
4. Now, go inside the playlist page in your library and tap the download arrow button to save all songs of that playlist locally to your phone or computer.

Tip: You can also swipe left on a song to add it to a playlist.

Important: You may not see the download button in Spotify’s Liked Songs section if the Smart Shuffle recommendations feature is switched on. Tap the shuffle icon to turn off Smart Shuffle and get back the downloads button.

3. Keep Spotify’s songs & device limit in mind

Once you’ve subscribed to Spotify Premium, you can:

• Download up to 10,000 songs each on up to 5 devices (phones, tablets, computers).
• To keep your downloaded songs, you must connect your device to Wi-Fi or cellular data and open the Spotify app at least once every 30 days. Spotify says you need to do this so that they can collect play data to compensate the artists fairly.

So, if you find that your downloaded songs are missing on your spare phone or lesser-used laptop, you can be sure that it was because you didn’t connect it to the internet in the last 30 days.

4. Close the Spotify app and reopen it

Sometimes, the biggest issues are fixed by exiting the app and going inside it again.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to see all open apps in App Switcher.
2. From here, drag the Spotify card all the way up to close it.

On Mac

1. Click the Apple icon from the top left and choose Force Quit.
2. Select Spotify and hit Force Quit.

After closing the app, reopen it, and now you should be able to download Spotify songs for offline listening.

5. Check your internet connection

You need a stable internet connection to fetch songs from Spotify’s servers. If needed, get help from these tutorials:

• How to fix slow Wi-Fi on iPhone and iPad
• How to fix cellular data not working on iPhone or iPad
• Internet not working on your Mac? Here’s how to fix it

6. Turn off VPN

Spotify may refuse to download songs if you’re using a VPN. So, turn it off, force close and reopen Spotify, and then it should work as intended.

7. Allow Spotify downloads over cellular data

Do the following if you can’t download Spotify songs using mobile data on your iPhone or cellular iPad:

1. Open Spotify and tap the gear icon from the Home tab.
2. Tap Audio Quality.
3. From the bottom, enable Download Using Cellular.

If you still can’t:

1. Open iPhone or iPad Settings and tap Cellular or Mobile Data.
2. Scroll down the list of apps and make sure the switch next to Spotify is enabled so that it can use your device’s cellular data.

8. Restart your phone or computer

Sometimes, Spotify’s glitches can be fixed by turning off your device and turning it back on. Make sure you do this before moving to other solutions listed below.

9. Check Spotify’s server status

While Spotify is a reliable service, on rare occasions, things may be fine on your end but messed up on Spotify’s side. Simply do a web search for “Is Spotify down in [your country or city name].” Sites like Downdetector and Is The Service Down should give you a clear status. Alternatively, you can also check the official @SpotifyStatus Twitter handle to learn about major outages.

10. Free space on your device

Obviously, Spotify won’t be able to download songs if not enough space is available on your local phone storage or computer drive. The music streaming service recommends having a minimum of 1 GB free, but I think it would be best to have at least 4-5 GB of free space for everything (downloaded songs and generated app cache) to work smoothly.

• 50+ tips to free space on iPhone and iPad
• 30+ tips to free local storage on Mac

11. Update the Spotify app

When was the last time you updated the Spotify app? Please do it now to have its latest version with new features and bug fixes:

• How to update apps on iPhone and iPad
• How to manually check for Spotify app updates on Mac

12. Change download quality

Out of the box, Spotify downloads music in normal quality on your phone. But if that doesn’t work, try setting it to low, high, or very high.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Tap the gear icon from the Home tab of the Spotify app.
2. Tap Audio Quality.
3. Under the Download section, select Low, High, or Very high.

On Mac

1. Click your profile picture and select Settings.
2. Scroll down to Audio quality and click the drop-down menu next to Download.
3. Now, select Automatic, Low, Normal, High, or Very high.

13. Allow explicit content

If you don’t see explicit songs or explicit versions of a song you’re looking to download, go to Spotify settings > Explicit Content and turn on Allow explicit content.

14. Clear Spotify cache

Outdated or corrupted app cache can interfere and prevent you from saving Spotify songs for offline listening. Here’s how to clear it.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Go to Spotify settings by tapping the gear icon from the top of the Home tab.
2. Tap Storage.
3. Tap Clear cache.

On Mac

1. Click your profile icon and choose Settings.
2. Scroll down to Storage and click Clear cache.

15. Turn off cache-clearing/battery-saving apps

This does not apply to iPhones and iPads, but if you’re using a cache-clearing or battery-optimizing app on your Android phone, Windows PC, or Mac, consider turning them off when you download huge Spotify playlists in the background. Alternatively, you can tweak those apps’ settings to exclude Spotify.

16. Remove all downloads and give it another try

Before moving to the remaining solutions, go to Spotify settings and remove all existing downloaded songs. After that, restart your phone or computer and retry downloading them again. This time it should be successful.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Open Spotify and tap the gear button to access its settings.
2. Scroll down and tap Storage.
3. Hit Remove all downloads and confirm by tapping Remove.

On Mac

1. Click the profile icon in Spotify and choose Settings.
2. Scroll down to Storage and click Remove all downloads.

17. Log out of Spotify and log in again

If you’re unable to download Spotify songs because of minor sign-in issues, the following steps should address this.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Tap the gear icon from the top of the Home tab.
2. Scroll to the bottom and tap Log out.
3. Restart your phone.
4. Open Spotify and sign in again with your email and password.

On Mac

1. Click your profile icon and choose Log out.
2. Restart your computer and sign in to the Spotify app again.

18. Uninstall and reinstall Spotify

If you still have not been successful, this should almost definitely help.

1. Delete the Spotify app from your iPhone, iPad, or your Mac.
2. Restart your phone or computer.
3. Download Spotify again from the iOS App Store or Spotify’s website.
4. Sign in, and now you should be able to download your songs, podcasts, and playlists.

19. Contact support and have them check your Spotify subscription

Finally, if nothing helped, contact their customer support at support.spotify.com or reach out to them on Twitter at @SpotifyCares. Ask them if something is wrong with your premium account that’s restricting you from downloading songs for offline listening.

Bonus tip: Play only your downloaded songs

Before you go, here’s a related tip.

When you’re traveling with patchy cellular coverage, roaming in a country with expensive data charges, or in another similar situation, you can go to Spotify settings > Playback and turn on the Offline switch to play only songs and podcasts you’ve downloaded to your device.

Other Spotify tips:

• How to exclude specific Spotify playlists from your taste profile
• How to see your recently played songs, top songs, and other useful stats on Spotify