Private Session: How to Make Your Spotify Account More Private

It’s no big deal that you’re a fan of Ed Sheeran. Sometimes you may want to share your favorite artists, and sometimes you don’t. There’re times you just listen to songs you love without the eyes of others. However, on Spotify, your listening habits and history will be posted to Facebook, Spotify Social and Last.fm by default.

Spotify also provides the option to shut down all your listening behaviors to the public which is Private Session. In this passage, we’ll tell you how you can enable Private Session on Spotify and a way to listen to Spotify songs privately forever.

Part 1. What You Want to Know about Private Session on Spotify

You may choose to start the private Session mode on Spotify for reasons. There’re some things you may want to know before you access this feature.

#1. What Is Private Session on Spotify?

Unlike other social medias such as Facebook or Twitter, Spotify offer social features for users to choose either share or hide their music tastes or listening activities. If you have Spotify friends from Facebook or other places, your listening history, followers and curated playlists are open to them.

There are many reasons why you wouldn't want your Spotify activity broadcast on Spotify. Fortunately, Spotify's "Private Session" feature is a way to keep your Spotify activities private, so you don't have to stop Spotify from sharing your music tastes with your Facebook friends by disconnecting your Facebook or disabling "Friend Activity" on Spotify.

#2. What Does Private Session on Spotify Look Like to Others?

In our experience, the "Friend Activity" panel will display the last played song that you listened when Private Session is turned off. Your listening activities won't update in the "Friend Activity" panel as long as you are on the Private mode.

#3. Can I Turn on Private Session on Spotify by Default?

Spotify Session is not supposed to act as a so-called "forever private" mode because it's also a social feature on Spotify, which tends to ensure a user's privacy. If you want to achieve the similar experiences, please scroll down to Part 4 to have some alternatives.

According to Spotify, the Private Session mode will be automatically turned off when users are inactive for 6 hours, no matter on desktop or mobile. For desktop app users, you’ll have to turn Private Session manually every time you open Spotify. For mobile app users, you'll have to turn it back on every 6 hours since you enabled it. What's more, this Private Session mode on computer and phone is not synced, you have to activate it separately if you want to use this feature.

Part 2. How to Turn On/Off Private Session on Desktop

On Windows or Mac devices, you can choose to start Private Session as long as you access it in the desktop app.

To Turn on Private Session on Windows/Mac:

Option 1. Use the Private session button

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for desktop.

Step 2. Click Your Profile icon > Private session.

Option 2. Set the Social settings

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for desktop.

Step 2. Click Your Profile icon > Settings. Or you can open the app menu in the More button (3 dots) > Edit > Preferences to access Settings.

Step 3. Scroll to Social > "Start a private session to listen anonymously".

Step 4. Switch the toggle on to the right of the option.

Private Session will take effect on your Spotify app for desktop immediately. An padlock icon will appear next to Your Profile icon, saying "You're listening anonymously in a private session". This mode continues to take effect on your Spotify listening activities until you exit, close or restart Spotify. You'll need to turn it on again after you reopen the application

To Turn off Private Session on Windows/Mac:

Option 1. Use the Private session button

Step 1. When Private session is turned on, click Your Profile icon > Private session (the "Private session" option should be selected at this time).

Step 2. When the padlock icon disappears, you have turned off Private Session successfully.

Option 2. Set the Social settings

Step 1. When Private session is turned on, click Your Profile icon > Settings > Social > "Start a private session to listen anonymously".

Step 2. Switch the toggle off to the right of the option.

Part 3. How to Turn On/Off Private Session on Mobile

On Android or iOS device, you can choose to start Private Session as long as you access it in the mobile app.

To Turn off Private Session on Android/iOS:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for mobile.

Step 2. Click the Gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen to go to Settings.

Step 3. Scroll to Privacy & Social > Private session.

Step 4. Turn on "Private session" option.

Private Session will take effect on your Spotify app for mobile immediately. At the bottom of the screen, "Private Session" will appear under Search. Unlike on desktop, Private Session continues to take effect even after you restart the Spotify app for mobile - it's enabled by default. You can choose to turn it off manually.

To Turn off Private Session on Android/iOS:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for mobile.

Step 2. Click the Gear icon > Settings > Privacy & Social > Private session.

Step 3. Turn off "Private session" option.

Part 4. Alternatives to Keep Your Spotify Account Private

But even Spotify lets you turn on Private Session each time you use the app, many users will forget it and go straight to listen. And that’s when embarrassment happens.

No worries. We've set out to find out more alternatives to this "Private session" setting that can keep your Spotify account more private.

Method 1. Make Spotify Playlist Private

You can choose to make your Spotify playlist private.

To Make Spotify Playlist Private on Desktop:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for mobile.

Step 2. Right-click on the playlist you want to set as private.

Step 3. Select Make private.

To Make Spotify Playlist Private on Mobile:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for mobile.

Step 2. Go to Your Library and go into the playlist you want to set as private.

Step 3. Click the More button > Make private.

Method 2. Turn off Listening Activity

You can also choose to make your listening activity private.

To Make Listening Activity Private on Desktop:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for desktop.

Step 2. Click Your Profile icon > Settings.

Step 3. Scroll to Social > "Share my listening activity on Spotify".

Step 4. Make sure this option is turned off in the toggle to the right of it.

To Make Listening Activity Private on Mobile:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for mobile.

Step 2. Click the Gear icon > Settings > Privacy & Social > Listening activity.

Step 3. Turn off "Listening activity" option.

Method 3. Turn off Recently Played Artists

You can also choose to make your recently played artist private.

To Make Recently Played Artist Private on Desktop:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for desktop.

Step 2. Click Your Profile icon > Settings.

Step 3. Scroll to Social > "Show my recently played artists on my public profile".

Step 4. Make sure this option is turned off in the toggle to the right of it.

To Make Recently Played Artist Private on Mobile:

Step 1. Open the Spotify app for mobile.

Step 2. Click the Gear icon > Settings > Privacy & Social > Recently played artists.

Step 3. Turn off "Recently played artists" option.

Part 5. How to Keep Your Spotify Activities Private Forever

When it comes to this social music app, privacy is not a convenient bonus feature, it's a critical necessity. Currently, the only way to listen to songs privately on Spotify, is to go to the settings and activate a private session. This is not only annoying, since I constantly have to navigate through settings to activate privacy on my phone, it's stressful because you have to worry about whether or not certain people can see what you're listening too. My primary music app should not cause anxiety about what I share publically. - - Jakenfinn from Spotify Community

When it comes to user privacy, it’s not an exception that people don’t want to share anything they listen to on Spotify at all. And Private Session is far from enough to completely keep users’ listening behaviors private. And sometimes this kind of exposure could lead to terrible harassment and intimidation.

Since Spotify doesn’t have an option to let users turn on Private Session mode permanently, the best way to keep your privacy is to download all songs that you want to listen to and don’t want to share as well. Thanks to the ViWizard Spotify Music Converter, you’ll be able to download Spotify songs directly to your local file folder and listen to them privately.

ViWizard Spotify Music Converter is designed to convert Spotify audio files into 6 different formats such as MP3, AAC, M4A, M4B, WAV and FLAC. Almost 100% of the original song quality will be kept after converting process. With 5X faster speed, this tool can download Spotify songs within a few minutes. All the downloaded songs can be play on local media player, so no privacy will be exposed to the internet.

 

1Launch ViWizard and Import Songs from Spotify

Open ViWizard software and the Spotify will be launched simultaneously. Then drag and drop tracks from Spotify into the ViWizard interface.

2 Set Up Output Parameters

After adding music tracks from Spotify to ViWizard, you can choose the output audio format. There're six options including MP3, M4A, M4B, AAC, WAV and FLAC. And then you can adjust the audio quality by selecting the output channel, bit rate, and sample rate.

3 Start the Convertion

Once all the setting is finished, click the "Convert" button to start loading Spotify music tracks. After the conversion, all the files will be saved to your specified folder. You could browse all the converted songs by clicking "Converted" and navigate to the output folder.

4Play Spotify Songs Offline Completely Private

After downloaded these audio files, you can apply them to anywhere available for you to stream these songs. And all your listening activities will not be posted online anymore.