Spotify's cache is wasting gigabytes on your phone, but this feature could solve it for good

Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek Published Sep 23, 2026, 4:43 PM EDT Sanket Mungase is a freelance tech writer focused on the latest tech, Android, and Windows updates. When he is not writing, you can find him digging into interesting details about cars. Sign in to your How-To Geek account If you use Spotify for streaming music, podcasts, and audiobooks, you may have noticed that your phone’s storage gets filled up too quickly. The streaming service quietly eats up gigabytes of storage space in the form of temporary cache. But now, the streaming service appears to be working on a new feature that would limit the cache, allowing better optimization of storage. Spotify users may soon be able to set a cache limit The feature is not yet confirmed Currently, Spotify caches streamed audio, album art, and app data in the background automatically so things load faster and consume less mobile data on repeated listening. However, this mechanism is sitting out of sight of the user, and it quickly fills up the device storage. Though users can manually free up storage by clearing the cache from the app’s Settings > Data saving & offline > Clear cache, clearing caches manually every time the app rapidly creates new caches can be daunting. To save the user’s efforts, Spotify appears to be working on a “Cache limit” feature. As spotted by Android Authority’s AssembleDebug during a recent APK tear down of Spotify for Android (version 9.1.88.815), a short code snippet reveals a yet-released cache limit setting, currently under development. This setting will allow users to limit the amount of local storage the app’s temporary files can consume – something like “up to X GB.” How will the feature work? Based on the strings found in the app, Spotify will allow you to choose the maximum cap for cached content, but this would be in GB (and not in MB). The app will likely have a drop-down menu, allowing users to set the limit for caches. Cache limit Manage how much space Spotify uses for cached content. Up to %1$s GB A small cache may affect playback and increase data usage. A larger cache means smoother playback and less data usage. Spotify recommended The application will give a direct caution stating a clear trade-off: if the limit is kept too low, it will potentially lead to stuttering playback and higher data consumption, since songs will need to be re-downloaded more often instead of staying cached. Spotify will also offer a recommended limit to help most people find a sensible middle ground. Your downloads are safe. Set a cache limit instead? Clearing your cache can temporarily affect your playback experience and increase data consumption. A cache limit manages storage automatically instead. Your downloads are safe. Changing this never deletes music or podcasts you’ve downloaded. To avoid confusion, the strings explicitly say that capping or clearing the cache won’t affect the offline downloaded data. Meaning this cache limit is completely separate from that offline storage pool. Your downloaded playlists, albums, and podcasts will remain intact on your device. It should be noted that the code strings indicate potential Spotify features the developers are working on. These features are subject to change or may not even make it to the public release.