If you’re a music lover, you must enjoy Spotify. The streaming platform enables you to listen to thousands of artists, create playlists and listen to podcasts for free. But it does have one major setback: it lets everyone know what you’re listening to by making your playlists public and even sharing your content on Facebook.
So if you have some shameful songs in your playlists (don’t we all?) and would rather not let everybody know you listen to the Macarena every morning, here’s how to hide what you’re listening to on Spotify.
Private Session on Spotify
Spotify gives you several options to hide what you’re listening to. The first thing you can do to make sure no one can mock your terrible taste (be it a random song you’re browsing or an embarrassing playlist) is to make your session private.
To do so in the desktop app, go to settings, which appear underneath the arrow-shaped button on the top-right corner:
After you’ve clicked, you will be taken to the ‘settings’ page. Scroll down until you find ‘Social’. This is what it should look like:
Click on the button to turn on the private session:
It will automatically deactivate any content sharing options Spotify normally uses: what you’re listening to will be hidden from the Friend Feed and all your activity will be muted.
To make sure it worked, look for the blue padlock near your username:
To activate the private session on the Spotify app, go to ‘My Library’:
Click on the ‘settings’ button, in the top-right corner. You will be taken to this page:
Click on ‘Social’, and you should access this menu:
Again, simply click the button to activate the private session:
The private session will last until you’ve been inactive for more than 6 hours, so don’t forget to reactivate it every time you want to listen to embarrassing songs.
Hide a playlist on Spotify
If you want your friends to see what you listen to most of the time, but still wish they wouldn’t find out about particularly embarrassing song choices, you may want to hide one specific playlist from them. Spotify lets you make your playlists secret.
To make a playlist secret on desktop, go to ‘playlists’, pick the one you want to hide and click on the circle with an ellipsis inside:
Click ‘make secret’ and no one but you will have access to the playlist or be able to see when you’re listening to it. Follow the exact same steps on mobile.
Hide all your playlists on Spotify
If you don’t want anyone to see any of your new playlists, there is a way to hide them. Follow the same process as if you wanted to turn on a private session: go to ‘settings’ and scroll down to ‘social’. This is what it looks like if you haven’t changed anything:
Click on the button to deactivate ‘Automatically make new playlists public’ and Spotify will make your new playlist private:
If you want to hide your previously created playlists, you’ll have to use the ‘make secret’ option.
Hide from social media on Spotify
Have your Facebook friends made fun of you because of your terrible taste in music? If you don’t deactivate the option, Spotify shares your content on Facebook, letting all your friends know what you’re listening to. If you want to keep this private, follow the usual process (Settings → Social) and deactivate the ‘Share my activity on Facebook’ command. On mobile, you have to do the exact same thing but it’s named ‘Show on Facebook’.
Hide your listening history on Spotify
To make sure no one has access to your listening history, deactivate ‘Publish my activity on Spotify’ which you can also find in ‘social’, both in the desktop and mobile version:
Hide every sharing option on Spotify
The best way to make sure no one will ever know what you’re listening to is to deactivate every sharing option available, after having made your playlists secret. Here’s what your social board should look like if you don’t want anyone to have access to any of your content:
