How to open Spotify Private Session

Spotify Private Session provides a safe bubble for listening to all those guilty pleasure songs. It means that your recent listens won’t appear in Friend Activity. So, you can jump into any song or podcast, regardless of whether it is unusual or weird.

However, Spotify Private Session is not a permanent solution for listening to music without friends’ judgment. For instance, Spotify will automatically disable Private Sessions after you close the app. Luckily, you can adjust Spotify Social settings for more long-term privacy results.

What is Spotify Private Session?

Spotify Private Session excludes your listening activity from being shown to your followers. More specifically, the Friend Activity section will display no activity coming from your account.

Furthermore, all the tunes you listen to while in Private Session won’t influence personalized playlists. So, it could also be a way to preserve the Made for You or Discover Weekly playlists.

So, Spotify Private Session is a handy feature in two scenarios:

• When your next music streams are outside your usual repertoire. You might wish that these music titles won’t play a part in future song recommendations. It also means more privacy from Spotify, which has been questioned before.
• When you do not want friends and followers to see your listening activity. Feeling gloomy or in the mood for some 80s hits? Keep such listens to yourself.

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What does a Private Session on Spotify look like to others? 

After you enable Private Session on Spotify, others won’t be able to see your listening activities. Instead, they are likely to notice the last song you played publicly. It will not indicate that you are currently in a private session. 

How long does Spotify Private Session last? 

You can turn off Spotify Private Session anytime manually. However, if you forget to do so, the session will end after 6 hours automatically. Remember this duration if you want to keep all your listening sessions private. The private experience will also end if you restart Spotify. 

Does Spotify Private Session affect Wrapped? 

The content you listen to while in a Spotify Private Session won’t influence personalized recommendations. Furthermore, it also won’t affect Wrapped playlists. The only thing is that Spotify Private Session does affect the minutes listened.

Spotify Private Session for more than guilty pleasures

Spotify has slowly fused into a social media lookalike. While it does not support traditional networking, it allows users to share their music tastes with friends and followers.

However, Spotify is not exactly prepared to handle things like harassment, which is not something you expect from a music app. Sadly, vicious people find ways to spread hateful messages. So, enabling Spotify Private Session is one way to evade the darker side of audio streaming.

It is also possible to block certain users on Spotify that might be ruining the fun. After that, the blocked account won’t have access to your playlists and activities.

Other options for more private Spotify streaming

Spotify Private Session is ideal for those brief audio streams you wish to keep secret from friends and followers. However, it gets disabled when you close the app or stay inactive for a long time.

Luckily, Spotify offers several features for boosting audio streaming privacy:

• Listening Activity. It is a more long-term solution than Spotify Private Session. Turning off the Listening Activity setting means you no longer share your audio streaming habits with others.
• Make Private. This option is for hiding specific playlists you wish to keep to yourself. You need to set this manually for the collection you want.

Please remember that Listening Activity and Make Private does not stop Spotify from making recommendations based on your listening. Spotify Private Session is the only option for excluding your habits from influencing future mixes.

Enjoy private listening on Spotify

If you want to keep your listening habits from Spotify’s algorithm and Friend Activity, enable Spotify Private Session. Follow these steps, and do not forget to turn it on whenever necessary or each time you open Spotify.

On desktop:

Enable Spotify Private Session

1. Open Spotify.
2. Click on your profile in the top right corner.

3. Mark the Private Session setting.

4. You will notice a blue padlock once Spotify Private Session is active.

Disable Listening Activity

1. Open Spotify.
2. Click on your profile in the top right corner.

3. Open Settings.

4. Under Social settings, find Listening Activity.

5. Ensure that the setting is off.

Note: If you have never changed the Listening Activity setting, it might be active by default.

Make playlists private

1. Open Spotify and the playlist you want to make private.
2. Click on the three-dot menu.
3. Pick Make Private.

On mobile:

Turn on Spotify Private Session

1. Open Spotify.
2. Open Settings.

3. Find Social settings.

4. Toggle the button to enable Spotify Private Session.

Turn off Listening Activity

1. Open Spotify.
2. Navigate to Settings and open Social.

3. Scroll down to find Listening Activity and toggle the button.

Note: If you have never changed the Listening Activity setting, it might be active by default.

Make playlists private

1. Open Spotify.
2. Navigate to your library.
3. Find the playlist you want to make private and open it.
4. Click the three-dot menu.
5. Tap Make Private.

6. Confirm your selection.

More options for private listening

Spotify Private Session and other options for private listening might not be enough for you. Since audio streaming relies on your habits to make recommendations, some tracking is inevitable.

If you wish for even more privacy, it might be time to switch to another service. For instance, Apple Music, Tidal, Bandcamp, or Deezer could be possible options.

However, if you wish to make any streaming account less associated with your online identity, follow these tips:

• You can use a Spotify gift card to pay for a premium subscription more anonymously.
• Use a separate or anonymous email address for streaming services.
• Use a Virtual Private Network to mask your location. Some audio streaming services do recommend or adjust content according to your whereabouts.