Spotify is crashing for many when playing podcasts, fix in the works

Update 18/11/25 – 03:25 pm (IST): The Spotify thread we highlighted below now has an official acknowledgment, and the status has been set to “Under investigation”.

Original article published on November 18, 2025, follows:

If you’re a big podcast listener on Spotify, today has probably been a rough one. Tons of users woke up or got through their morning fine with music, but the second they tapped play on a podcast episode, the whole app just shut down.

It happens on iPhones and Android phones alike, whether the episode is downloaded or streaming. Music keeps playing without a hitch, and weirdly, video podcasts sometimes work okay. But regular audio ones? Instant crash for a lot of people.

On Spotify’s own community forums, one thread blew up with multiple of people saying the same thing – they tried everything from restarting their phone to deleting and reinstalling the app, clearing cache, even logging out everywhere. Nothing helped.

Over on Reddit in r/truespotify, it’s the same story: posts from folks on Pixels, Galaxies, iPhones, all saying podcasts crash the app right away. One user lost 40GB of downloads after clearing cache and was not happy. Another found a temporary trick with airplane mode, but it’s clunky at best.

On X, people are tagging @SpotifyCares left and right, asking why the app dies the moment a podcast starts. One user even shared a screen recording that you can check out below:

Good news is Spotify knows about it. Their support account confirmed the team’s already digging in and working on a patch.

They say keep auto-updates on so it hits your phone as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, the web player at play.spotify.com lets you keep listening to podcasts without the crashes, or you can cast from desktop to your phone.

We’ll keep an eye out for any further developments and will post an update if and when there’s something to share.