If you’re like me and like to just hit your PC power button and logon to a nice, clean, unbusy desktop like the good ol’ days, then this tutorial is for you. Over time, some software developers (this is Windows. I will never call them “apps”) got it into their heads that they wanted to take the “personal” out of our personal computers, and make everyone have their obnoxious program glaring in our faces from the start. Spotify is one of them, but follow these steps and it will no more.
First, download and install Spotify.
Next, open Spotify, click your profile pic on the top right > Settings > Startup and window behavior
Beside “Open Spotify automatically after you log into the computer” it should be already set to “Minimized. If so, leave it there. If not, then change it to it.
Beside “Close button should minimize the Spotify window”, toggle it to “on”
Close Spotify using the “X” button on the top right
Next, open Notepad (or whatever text editor you use) and copy and paste in the below code:
@echo off
powershell -Command “Get-Process spotify | Where-Object {$_.MainWindowTitle -ne ”} | ForEach-Object { $_.CloseMainWindow() }”
Click File, Save As, and click the the “Save as type” box at the bottom of the window and select “All Files (.)
In the File name box, type in CloseSpotify.bat and click Save. Sidenote: Be sure you save the file somewhere you won’t accidentally delete it
Next, open Windows Task Scheduler by pressing Windows+R and in the field type in taskschd.msc
Press Enter or click OK
Windows Task Scheduler will open
On the far right side, under Actions, click “Create Basic Task”
In the Name field, type in “Close Spotify”. You can leave Description blank. Click Next
For “When you do want the task to start”, select “When I log on”. Click Next
For “What action do you want the task to perform?”, select “Start a program”. Click Next
For “Program/script”, click the Browse button and navigate to wheverever you saved the CloseSpotify.bat file. Select it and click Open. Click Next
On the Summary page, click the box beside “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish”
If you did everything correctly, you’ll be presented wit ha Summary screen that looks something like this:
Click Finish and you’ll get a new screen.
Click the box beside “Run with highest privileges” to enable it
Next, click the Triggers tab
Click Edit at the bottom
Put a check beside “Delay task for” and select “30 seconds”. Click OK. Click OK again on the next screen.
Sidenote: I chose “Any user” as a personal preference. You don’t have to.
Your batch file should be all set and you can close the Task Scheduler.
Now, everytime you log on to Windows, Spotify will open in the system tray only and not minimized.
Restart your computer to make sure it all works.
Enjoy! 🦉