I’m trying to follow a Spotify development tutorial but running into issues. I downloaded the sample application and put it in my home directory under a folder called Spotify/Tutorial. When I launch Spotify and type spotify:app:Tutorial in the search bar, it prompts me to add the app to my sidebar. I click yes and the app appears in the sidebar, but when I select it, all I see is a completely empty white page.
I opened the developer tools to check what’s happening and the HTML structure looks like this:
<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
</html>
Basically there’s no content loading at all. I’m using Spotify version 0.8.0.952.g.0298b8ce and I do have a valid developer account set up. Has anyone else encountered this problem? What could be causing the tutorial app to display nothing but a blank page?
Had this exact problem with the Spotify tutorials last year. The Spotify client wasn’t loading local files properly. Fixed it by checking the console in developer tools - there were JavaScript errors preventing content from rendering even though the HTML looked empty. Open your developer console and look for error messages. Also make sure your index.html has the right Spotify API imports and you’re calling sp.core.getApplication() correctly. Check if your Spotify client version supports the API features from the tutorial - some older tutorials use deprecated methods that don’t work with newer clients.
Check if developer mode is enabled in your Spotify client. You’ll need to create a “prefs” file (no extension) in your Spotify installation directory and add this line: app-developer="/path/to/your/Spotify" - just point the path to your Spotify folder with the Tutorial directory. Without this flag, Spotify won’t run local apps even if they show up in the sidebar. I wasted hours on the same blank page problem before figuring out developer mode wasn’t turned on. The prefs file goes in different spots depending on your OS: Mac users put it in ~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/, Windows users usually find it in AppData/Roaming/Spotify/. Add the prefs file, restart Spotify completely, then try your app again.
same issue here! spotify needs a full restart after adding the app folder. close it completely (don’t just minimize) and reopen. double-check your folder has manifest.json, index.html, and all the other required files. the app sometimes gets cached weird and shows blank until you restart.
This usually happens when your manifest.json isn’t set up right or there’s a permissions issue. First, check that your manifest.json has the correct identifier - it needs to say “identifier”: “Tutorial” exactly, matching your folder name. Make sure the HTML file you specified in the manifest actually exists and has content. File permissions are another common culprit. The entire Spotify/Tutorial directory needs read permissions for the Spotify client. On Windows, try running Spotify as admin to see if that fixes it. I’ve run into this before when I started making Spotify apps - it’s usually a typo in the manifest or wrong file structure. Double-check you’ve got index.html in your Tutorial folder’s root with actual content inside.