Configuring Spotify to use less disk space

Configuring Spotify to use less disk space

When my PC hard drive reached critical capacity last week, and I was figuring out where all the space had gone, I found one of the major bit-thieves was Spotify. This folder (in Windows 7 at least):

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Spotify\Data

had grown to be over 12GB. 12GB! For a streaming service where everything is online? That can’t be right. Even more odd is how this folder isn’t even the Spotify cache folder, which by default is here:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Spotify\Storage

and for me was only a gig in size. The user interface for Spotify does let you reconfigure the location of this Storage folder, so you can move it to another drive to make a bit of space, but this doesn’t help with the larger issue of the Data folder – which can’t be configured like this.

Luckily, there is still a solution. Firstly, close Spotify completely (making sure it’s not still running in the system tray), then go to this folder:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Spotify

Note that’s the Roaming folder, not the Local folder where the Data and Storage folders are. In here, there’s a file called “prefs”. Open this in a text editor – Wordpad is better than Notepad because the file contains UNIX style carriage returns and Notepad doesn’t cope well with them.

At the end of the file (although it doesn’t seem to matter where, so long as it’s on a line by itself, add this:

storage.size=1024

1024 is the maximum size, in megabytes, you want to give over to this cache. So for 1GB, use 1024. For half a gig, 512, and so on. I’m sure you can figure that bit out for yourself!

Save the file, making sure your text editor doesn’t add a rogue file extension when you do so, and then go back to the Data folder mentioned earlier and delete the contents. No, really. It’s fine. Or move them somewhere if you’re scared.

Open up Spotify again, and if it’s all working, you’re set! It isn’t clear why this folder fills up when there’s a perfectly good folder already there for caching purposes, but at least there’s a way of stopping it growing out of control.

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