How to delete Spotify listening history?

05-Feb-2024

Have you realized that Spotify automatically exposes your most recently played artists and songs to the public? This can be unwanted if you don’t want others to see what you listen to.

While it is impossible to remove your Spotify history altogether, you can take simple steps to conceal your activity from others. If you don’t want people to know what you’re listening to, you can quickly turn off Spotify’s social features and remove your most recently added artists from your profile. To avoid having music or podcasts appear in your public or private history, enable Private Session before listening.

Let’s explain how you can conceal your Spotify listening habits across different platforms.

Key things you should know

• Although you cannot delete your Spotify listening history, you can stop sharing your activities with others.
• You can hide recently played artists from your profile using the Spotify app on your Android, iPhone, iPad, or computer.
• When you don’t want songs, artists, or podcasts to appear in your history, you can enable Private Session.
  

Wait, I can’t delete my Spotify history?

Unfortunately, you cannot delete your Spotify history without first deactivating your Spotify account. Although it was previously possible to delete tracks from your recently played list, Spotify discontinued this option in early 2022. However, while you cannot remove your history, there are two simple ways to keep it private:

1. Keep your activity hidden from others. Friends that use Spotify on their computers will see what you’re listening to in their Friend Activity tabs by default. They’ll also see the artists you’ve lately played on your profile. We will show you how to turn off these social features.
2. To clear your history, enable Private Session. When you enable Private Session, music and podcasts will not appear in your history, be shared with your followers, or displayed on your public or private profile. This can be switched on in your Settings; a step-by-step guide to finding this will be provided below.
   

How to find listening history on Spotify?

Tap your profile picture at the top of Spotify and select “Listening history” to access your listening history on a phone or tablet.

If you don’t see your profile picture, go to the Spotify app’s bottom-left corner and hit the Home icon. This shows you the most recently played music, podcasts, and playlists.

How to view Spotify history on Desktop

If you open the Spotify app on your computer, you can scroll down to see your “Recently played.” It will show the last five things you listened to. You can hit “Show all” on the right to see all your listening history.

How to clear history on Spotify

If you don’t want someone else accessing your account and listening to your music, or you don’t want your friends to see what you listen to, you may need to erase your recently played list. Here’s how to remove or keep your recently played tracks off your Spotify public profile. 

Keep in mind that this feature is only available to Spotify subscribers who use the Windows desktop app. Unfortunately, cleaning your Recently Played list via the MAC app, mobile app, or Spotify web player is not possible; however, clearing the entries using the desktop app will also remove them from any linked apps (including mobile).

Clearing Recently Played on Windows

Spotify’s Recently Played feature is now hidden behind the song queue. However, on Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can see the last few things you played by right-clicking the Spotify icon in your taskbar.

To remove a song from the recently played list in the taskbar:

1. Right-click the Spotify icon, then right-click a song.
2. Click “Remove From This List.”
   

That is the only way to delete a portion of your recently played history. (Unless you wish to deactivate your Spotify account.) If you want to keep your listening habits private, here are some extra steps you can take.

Hiding your Listening Activity on Windows

To keep your Spotify listening activity private from your friends, follow these steps:

1. Click your profile picture in the upper right corner of the Spotify window and select “Settings.”
2. Scroll down to the section under “Social.” 
3. Toggle “Publish my new playlists on my profile,” “Share my listening activity on Spotify,” and “Show my recently played artists on my public profile” off. 

Turning off those three settings will prevent your Spotify friends from seeing what you’re listening to.

Clearing Recently Played on Mac

Unfortunately, removing songs, albums, or podcasts from Recently Played is impossible with the latest desktop version for Mac.

What you can do is hide your activity. Following the same steps above, you can toggle off your social settings to prevent friends and followers from seeing what you’re listening to.

Additionally, you can enable a Private Session. With a Private Session, you can temporarily hide your activity from your followers. Private Sessions will end automatically after 6 hours, so you must re-enable this feature to keep hiding your activity. 

You can enable a Private Session straight by clicking on your profile picture in the top right corner of the Spotify desktop app. Hit “Private Session,” and you will enter a Private Session.

You can also toggle a Private Session from your Settings:

1. Click on your profile picture in the top right-hand corner, and hit “Settings.”
2. Scroll to “Social” and toggle “Start a private session.”
   

Clearing Recently Played on the Spotify Web Player

You can listen on Spotify’s Web Player if you still need to download the Spotify app for your desktop. However, you cannot clear your listening history via the Web Player. It is not possible to change your social settings or enter a Private Session on the Web Player. You will need to download the desktop app to adjust your settings.

Clearing Recently Played on iPhone

While you can’t delete your listening history on the Spotify mobile app, if you don’t want people to see your most recently played songs or what you’ve been listening to, you may turn off some social options in the Spotify mobile app. Here’s how to hide your listening history on iPhone:

1. Tap your profile picture in the top left corner and hit “Settings and privacy.” First, ensure you are on the “Home” page by tapping the house icon in the bottom right corner.
2. Tap “Privacy & Social”.
   
3. Toggle “Listening activity” off. This setting shares what you listen to with your followers on Spotify.
4. Toggle “Recently played artists” off. This shows your recently played artists on your profile.

In addition to changing these privacy settings, you can enter a private session from here by toggling “Private session” on.

Clearing Recently Played on Android

Clearing your listening history on Android is similar to the steps for iPhone:

1. Tap your profile picture in the top left corner and hit “Settings and privacy.” First, ensure you are on the “Home” page by tapping the house icon in the bottom right corner.
2. Tap “Social”.
   
3. Toggle “Listening activity” off. This setting shares what you listen to with your followers on Spotify.
4. Toggle “Recently played artists” off. This shows your recently played artists on your profile.

Can I remove a song from my Spotify Wrapped?

The end-of-year Spotify Wrapped can be a big deal for Spotify users. With everyone sharing their Wrapped on social media, you might realize one of your top songs is the piano instrumental you put on to fall asleep, or if you have kids, your kids’ favorite songs may get played a lot more than yours. 

You can change the look of your Spotify Wrapped appearance when sharing it on social media, but you can’t edit the information. You can, however, delete songs from the associated “Your Top Songs” playlist.

However, because Spotify created the “Your Top Songs” playlist, you cannot change it directly like any of your playlists. To get around this restriction, make a clone of it.

How to copy and edit Your Top Songs playlist on desktop

Here’s how to copy and edit the “Your Top Songs” playlist on the desktop app for Windows and Mac:

1. Pull up your “Your Top Songs” playlist and click the three dots to the right of the download button. 
2. In the sub-menu, choose “Add to other playlist,” then “Create Playlist.”
   
3. In your library, Spotify will create a new playlist called “Your Top Songs 2023 (2).” 
4. Click the three-dot icon on that new playlist, then select “Edit details” to rename it to whatever title you like.
5. Drag songs to reorder them, or select multiple tracks with the Control (Windows) or Command (Mac) keys, then right-click (or Control-click on Mac) and select “Remove from this playlist” to remove any songs you don’t want to include.
   

It works the same as the desktop version for duplicating and editing the “Your Top Songs” playlist on the web-based edition of Spotify.

How to copy and edit Your Top Songs playlist on mobile

This method is the same for iPhone and Android mobile apps, with a few technical variations:

1. Load your “Your Top Songs” playlist from Spotify and click the three-dot icon. 
2. Tap “Add to other playlist” near the bottom of the resulting pop-up menu. 
3. On the following screen, tap the “New playlist” button, and you’ll be requested to “Give your playlist a name,” with “Your Top Songs 2023” set as the default.
   
4. Leave it alone or rename it, then click the “Create” button to create a new playlist.
5. You must eliminate unwanted songs individually to customize the new playlist on the mobile apps. Hit the three dots next to any song you don’t want in the playlist and select “Remove from this playlist.”

We’re Wrapped!

That’s everything you need to know about how to check Spotify history and how to clear history on Spotify.  Although you cannot delete your Spotify listening history without deleting your account, the steps above are options to make your listening habits private.