How to Make Your Spotify Private on Mobile, Desktop, and Web Player

Your Spotify profile, public playlists, and real-time listening activity tells your friends, co-workers, and other random users what music you listen to, which songs you loop, and who your top artists are. That may be okay when you want to share your favorite playlists. But it’s strange when such things are open to anyone, isn’t it?  

Spotify is no exception to security scares. In 2020, a bug revealed confidential data of Spotify account registration such as emails and date of birth to business partners, and the company was forced to reset passwords. To make it even worse, other accounts, which had their passwords leaked on other websites, were used in various credential stuffing campaigns to crack hundreds of thousands of Spotify accounts, which required additional resets.

In this article, we will explain the good-working privacy settings on mobile, desktop, and Spotify Web Player, show how to use private sessions, fix playlist privacy, and then explain how VeePN can protect what Spotify and your network still see.

Why your Spotify is not as private as you think

Before changing anything, it helps to know where things leak. Spotify’s default style is “share first, lock down later.”

• All new playlists are public by default, which means they can show up under “public playlists” on your Spotify profile and appear in search. 
• On the desktop app, the Friend Activity panel shows your current listening activity to anyone who follows you, unless you change the feature or use private sessions.  
• Many people sign up with Facebook, reuse a weak password, and leave that connected app untouched for years, even if they stop using Facebook itself.

Spotify is also quietly getting more social. A new Messages feature lets users send tracks, podcasts, or playlists directly in the app, as long as they are in the same plan or have interacted through Jams or collaborative playlists. New York Post Combined with already-visible public playlists and Friend Activity, it becomes even easier for strangers to reach you through music.

Quick steps to connect VeePN VPN before you listen on Spotify

Getting that extra layer is simple and takes under a minute once set up.

1. Install VeePN on your devices. Download the VPN app for Android, iPhone, Windows, macOS, or browser extensions, depending on how you usually stream. Follow the instructions to sign in with your VeePN account.
2. Choose a nearby server. Open the app, pick a server close to you for better speed, or choose another country if you want a different regional experience.
3. Connect and then open Spotify. Hit the big toggle button to connect, wait for confirmation, then open the Spotify app, Spotify desktop app, or Spotify Web Player in your browser. 

From here on, everything Spotify sees goes through an encrypted tunnel first to protect your privacy.

How to make your Spotify private in the Spotify app on mobile

Most people stream from their phone, so it makes sense to start with the Spotify app on iPhone and Android:

Open privacy and social settings on mobile

1. Open the Spotify app on your mobile device (iPhone or Android).
2. Tap your profile picture in the top right corner (on some builds you will see it in the upper right corner).
3. Tap settings or “Settings and privacy.”
4. Scroll to Privacy and social.

Here is what to change there:

• Hide your listening activity. Turn off the listening activity option and the toggle that shows your recently played artists. That way your late-night focus songs or white-noise loops do not show up in your friends’ panels or under “top artists” on desktop. It also makes it harder for casual followers to guess your mood from what you listen to every hour. If you ever want to share again, you can flip this feature back on in a second.
• Stop publishing new playlists by default. In the same area, turn off the setting that publishes new playlists to your profile. That way every time you create or make a playlist, it starts as private, and you decide later which ones become visible. It is much easier to change one playlist’s playlist privacy than to clean up dozens of auto-shared mixes after a year of use. 
• Limit what people see on your profile. Go to your Spotify profile and make changes. Take all the personal details out of your bio, choose an unobtrusive profile photo, and think about using a nickname, as opposed to a name in the real world. That complicates it when strangers in some random community or Facebook group associate your profile with your real identity. You have a choice of hiding public playlists on your profile as well and leaving just some selected playlists.

These changes already make your experience feel more secret, but sometimes you just want to hide a listening session without touching every settings toggle.

Turn on private sessions for private listening

Spotify’s private sessions are like incognito mode for audio. If you turn private sessions on, your listening activity will not appear in Friend Activity for a while, and it will not influence some recommendation feature.

• How to enable it in the app. From the same settings page on mobile, go to Privacy and social and find private sessions or “Private session.” Tap the toggle to start private listening. From now on, what you play on this device will not show in friends’ feeds until the session ends. 
• When to use it. Private sessions are great when your kid grabs your phone, when you use background noise for sleep, or when you are going through a very specific mood that you do not want dominating your Wrapped. Spotify now even lets you exclude individual tracks from your Taste Profile.

A private session is tied to one device. If your Spotify account is also signed in on a desktop or smart speaker, those might still show activity unless you repeat the steps there.

How to make your Spotify private on the Spotify desktop app and Web Player

In case you set up playlists using a laptop or a work computer, you are also required to fix privacy in the Spotify desktop application and in Spotify Web Player:

Hide friend activity and social sharing on desktop

1. Open the desktop app on Windows or macOS, or open Spotify Web Player in your browser.
2. Click your profile picture in the corner at the top.
3. Choose “Settings”.
4. Under “Display” and “Privacy and social,” switch off “See what your friends are playing” and any toggle that says “Share my listening activity on Spotify.”

It hides Friend Activity entirely from your screen, which can be nice if you work around other people. It stops your account from broadcasting what you stream on that desktop. And it also reduces the amount of real-time data about your habits that other people can see when they open their own Friend Activity panel.

Use desktop controls to keep each playlist private

The desktop app and Spotify Web Player give you a lot of control over every playlist’s visibility.

• On the desktop, find the playlist in the left sidebar, right click it (or click the three dots next to its title), and choose Make private.
• In Spotify Web Player, open the playlist, click the three dot menu, and choose “Make private” or “Remove from profile,” depending on what you see.

Once marked playlist private, that Spotify playlist will no longer appear on your profile, and other people cannot access it by name or search, even if they previously had a link. 

Clean up your Spotify profile, connected apps, and security

Once your playlists and listening activity are under control, take five more minutes to clean up your profile and security.

• Tidy your profile details. You can edit the fields on your Spotify profile on desktop or mobile. Use a nickname, not your real name, choose a neutral profile photo, and delete anything that is too personal on your bio. It is such a minor distinction, but people who know you at work, at school, or on Facebook networks will find it more difficult to tie your listening to your real life.
• Check connected apps and log out old sessions. Open your account page in a browser, sign in, and look for “Apps” or connected services. Revoke access for tools you no longer use. Some third-party apps can still see what you listen to or post to social community sites using your account. Then hit “Sign out everywhere” to log unknown devices out of your Spotify account, especially if you once logged in on a shared computer.
• Use a unique password and keep it updated. If you recycle the same password that you use for Apple Music or your email, a single leak could expose everything. Switch to a strong, unique password and update it regularly. This reduces the chance that someone hijacks your account, changes playlist privacy, and quietly uses your subscription for ads-free streaming on their own device.

What Spotify privacy settings cannot hide

Even after you hide your public playlists, tweak every settings toggle, and keep everything private, some information still flows.

Spotify still sees your real IP address and uses it to localize content, enforce licensing, and serve targeted ads. Your Internet provider sees that you connect to Spotify servers and can log when and where you do it. And any public Wi-Fi owner between you and Spotify can inspect unencrypted metadata to learn when you connect and how much data you use.

A good VPN can block a lot of that. As VeePN explains in its guides on what a VPN hides and how to hide your IP address, changing your IP and encrypting traffic stops apps, websites, and network owners from easily tying your streaming habits to your physical location. That is where pairing Spotify’s own tools with a VPN app like VeePN makes a real difference.

Use VeePN to make your Spotify streaming truly private

Spotify’s own menus cover who sees your Spotify playlists and listening activity inside the platform. VeePN takes care of everything that happens on the network side. Here is how:

• IP address masking for Spotify and beyond. Once you are connected to VeePN, your ISP and applications will identify the IP of the VPN server, but not yours. It implies that Spotify, ad networks, and other services do not have easy connections between your streams and where you live or neighborhood.
• Strong encryption for all your music traffic. VeePN encrypts your traffic using AES-256 encryption. Snoopers will only view scrambled data in transit between your device and the VPN server even in public Wi-Fi. They do not know what playlists you are opening and what you are streaming.
• Kill Switch to avoid accidental leaks. If the VPN ever drops, VeePN’s Kill Switch cuts your Internet so your real IP does not suddenly appear mid-track. That way, even if you are using a desktop app on a hotel computer or working in a café, there is no brief window where your session goes back to plain traffic. 
• No Logs policy for extra peace of mind. VeePN follows a strict No Logs approach, meaning it does not store your browsing history, streaming habits, or connection timestamps. Combined with encrypted tunnels, this prevents your data from becoming someone else’s product, even if requested by third parties. 
• Protection on more than one device. One VeePN subscription covers up to 10 devices, so you can protect your Spotify app on Android, iPhone, Windows laptops, and even the desktop browsers you use for Spotify Web Player. That is much easier than trying to remember which gadgets you locked down manually. 
• Built-in tools against trackers and shady links. Features like NetGuard block trackers, malicious domains, and some intrusive advertising across apps. This helps when someone sends you a suspicious playlist link outside Spotify or you click on a banner that promises “free premium music” but really tries to steal your account.

Try using VeePN without risks, as we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Written by Oliver Bennett Oliver Bennett is a dedicated cyber security content writer with a knack for breaking down intricate cyber topics into accessible and actionable insights.

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