One of the many thoughtful features Spotify offers is the ability to share musical preferences with friends, but just in case a user is not in the mood to have others track their listening activity, there’s a nifty option to keep sessions on the app private. This setting lets users enjoy whichever musical genre they want to dive into, without fear of judgment. Conveniently, it’s a feature that’s available on both the desktop and mobile apps.
By default, Spotify remembers every single song a person accesses on the platform. Each time a track is played, it has the ability to affect the app’s algorithm for music recommendations. By enabling Spotify’s Private Session feature, songs that are played during the listening session won’t be recorded as an activity. Tracks will not affect or be included in certain Spotify-generated playlists that are specially curated for the user.
There are two ways to start a Private Session on Spotify. To start anonymously listening to songs on a mobile device, launch the Spotify app and hit the ‘Home’ icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Go to ‘Settings’ (gear icon) and select ‘Social.’ Switch on the toggle next to ‘Private Session.’ To enable the feature on Spotify Desktop, launch the app and click on the dropdown arrow next to the username in the top-right corner of the page and go to ‘Private Session.’ This should produce a padlock icon next to the username to indicate that a private session is in progress. To stop private listening, simply repeat the steps for the chosen method and tap or click ‘Private Session' again to switch it off. Additionally, a Spotify Private Session will also end by default when the app is closed and relaunched, or after a significant length of inactivity on the platform.
When To Use Spotify's Private Session Feature
There are quite a few instances where an option to listen to music incognito can be useful. Users who have what other people may deem questionable taste in music can freely enjoy their guilty pleasure tracks without bearing the brunt of teasing they may receive from their friends and followers on Spotify. If a user wants to fudge the numbers and not have their favorite musicians be too glaringly obvious in the end-of-the-year Spotify Wrapped, they can frequently use private sessions to listen to their go-to anthems on repeat. Finally, users who let their partners or children play songs using their Spotify account can enable this feature to prevent binge-listening of Disney songs from ruining their listening history on the app or affecting new music recommendations.
There are a few things to take note of when using Spotify’s Private Session feature. If Spotify is currently playing on a computer, for instance, a Private Session cannot be started on any other mobile device. The ‘Social’ menu under Spotify’s settings will also be grayed out and inaccessible, so make sure other ongoing listening sessions are exited properly before enabling the function.
Source: Spotify