What is Spotify on Mac?
By Junaid, maker of Taskglass · Last reviewed
The Spotify music app and its helper processes.
Spotify's desktop app uses an embedded web engine (Chromium), so it runs a main process plus Spotify Helper processes for its interface and graphics. Users have reported periods of high CPU from Spotify Helper, sometimes linked to settings such as crossfade, volume normalisation or hardware acceleration.
- Category
- Third-party
- Made by
- Spotify
- Safe to quit:
- Yes
Shown in Activity Monitor as Spotify, Spotify Helper, Spotify Helper (Renderer), Spotify Helper (GPU)
Why is Spotify using so much CPU or memory?
- Animated artwork, Canvas videos or visualisations
- Crossfade or volume normalisation (reported by users)
- Hardware acceleration issues
- Large offline downloads
What to do
- 1Quit and reopen Spotify
- 2Try turning off hardware acceleration in Spotify's settings
- 3Try turning off crossfade or volume normalisation to see if it helps
- 4Update Spotify
Safe to quit? Yes.
Safe to quit; your music stops.
Related processes
Part of the Taskglass Process Library