Quick Answer
Use the Private Session feature on Spotify for a private listening experience. If you’re on your desktop, click the profile icon and select Private Session. On a smartphone, tap the profile icon, select Settings and Privacy, tap Privacy and Social, and flip the Private Session toggle on.
Spotify uses your listening activity on the platform to curate tailored recommendations for you. However, this behavior isn’t ideal if you like sampling new music, as you don’t want your listening activity during such sessions to affect your recommendations.
Spotify offers a feature that helps avoid this. It’s called Private Session, and it allows you to listen to music without influencing the algorithm. Let’s dive in to check out Spotify’s Private Session feature in detail.
What is a Private Session in Spotify?
Private Session is a feature that turns on a private listening session on Spotify. Once enabled, it pauses your listening activity on the platform and hides it from your profile.
As a result, any music you listen to on the platform during a private session isn’t fed into the algorithms to personalize your recommendations, nor is it included in your Spotify Wrapped statistics. Moreover, the tracks won’t be visible to your friends and followers, either.
Spotify automatically ends a Private Session after six hours or when you quit the app.
How to Start a Private Session on Spotify?
Using the Private Session feature on Spotify is easy. Depending on whether you want to start a private listening session on your desktop or smartphone, follow the steps below accordingly.
Keep in mind that you can only turn on a private listening session on Spotify’s desktop and mobile apps. Spotify doesn’t offer the Private Session feature in its web player.
Start a Private Session on a Desktop:
- Launch the Spotify app on your Mac or Windows PC.
- Click your profile icon in the top-right corner and select Private Session from the available options.
As soon as you do this, you’ll see a padlock icon in the upper-right corner—to the left of the notification icon—indicating the private listening session is active.
Start a Private Session on a Smartphone:
- Open the Spotify app on your iPhone or Android phone.
- Tap your profile icon in the top-left corner and select Settings and Privacy.
- Tap on Privacy and Social.
- Flip the Private Session toggle on.
Once active, you’ll see a Private Session label at the bottom of the screen. This will remain as long as the private session is active.
After you’ve turned on Private Session on your device, you can start listening to any music you want. Whatever tracks you listen to won’t affect your recommendations, nor will they appear on your profile for your friends or followers to see.
When you’re done listening music private, you can turn off the Private Session. Doing so will allow Spotify to use your listening activity again for curating your recommendations.
To do this, go to the Spotify app on your desktop or smartphone, follow the steps like you did previously and, this time, turn off the Private Session option. Alternatively, you can quit the Spotify app on your device and launch it again, and it’ll turn off the Private Session.
Spotify Private Session Can Serve You in Multiple Scenarios
Private Session isn’t just a handy feature for those who like sampling new music. It’s also useful for people using a shared account who don’t want their or someone else’s listening sessions to affect the algorithm. Similarly, you can also benefit from a private listening session if you often need to hand your device to friends or family to have them play music.
While Private Session hides your listening activity from friends and family, too, it does so temporarily. If you want your activity hidden permanently, you’ll need to disable listening activity. You can do it under the Privacy and Social settings on your smartphone and under the Social settings on your desktop.
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