How To Delete Recently Played on Spotify: Visibility & History Control

It’s common to want to clear your listening records, whether to hide a guilty pleasure track or simply to reset your feed. If you’re looking for how to delete Recently Played items from your official Spotify account, you should know that Spotify’s policy on deleting history has changed.

Unfortunately, official Spotify no longer provides a single button to completely wipe your entire listening history or remove individual tracks from the main Recently Played list that influences your recommendations.

Deleting your recently played history helps protect your privacy and improve recommendations.
Keep Spotify account safe

However, you can control what is recorded and who sees it. Here are the methods for managing your listening activity and history on the official Spotify app.

---

Method 1: Hide New Activity with Private Session

The Private Session feature is the best way to listen to music anonymously without it being recorded in your public activity or affecting your recommendations.

What Private Session Does:

• Hides from Followers: Temporarily hides your listening activity from your followers on the Friend Activity feed.
• Protects Recommendations: Content listened to in a Private Session will generally not influence your algorithmic recommendations (like Daily Mixes or Discover Weekly) or your end-of-year Spotify Wrapped.
• Important Note: A Private Session automatically ends after 6 hours of inactivity or when you close and restart the official Spotify app.

How to Enable Private Session:

1. Open the official Spotify app.
2. Tap on your Profile Icon (or Settings icon depending on your app version) at the top right or top left of the screen.
3. Scroll down to the Security and Safety & Social section.
4. Toggle the Private Session option to ON.

For a more permanent privacy solution, you can also consider switching off the Listening activity toggle in this same menu so your friends won’t be able to see what you are listening to at all.

This applies whether you’re using the standard app on a phone or using a specialized version, which you can find more information about in our guide on the Spotify APK.

---

Method 2: Log Out to Temporarily Clear Recents

While it doesn’t permanently delete the data from Spotify’s servers, logging out and logging back in often refreshes the client interface and can temporarily clear the visible recently played list on your device’s screen.

How to Log Out and Back In:

1. Open the official Spotify app.
2. Tap on your Profile Icon (or Settings icon).
3. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Settings menu.
4. Tap on Log Out.
5. Log back into your account.

Sometimes recently played items persist due to app glitches or caching issues.
Fix these issues using this tutorial on why Spotify is glitching and how to fix it.

This can often resolve minor visual glitches and temporarily reset the Recently Played panel that appears on your home screen.

---

Method 3: Hiding Recently Played Artists from Your Public Profile

Even if you can’t delete the history for yourself, you can prevent your public profile from broadcasting your recent interests.

How to Adjust Visibility:

1. Go to Settings and privacy.
2. Scroll to the Privacy & Social section.
3. Ensure the toggle for Recently played artists is OFF.

Restarting Spotify can refresh your activity feed and fix minor issues.
Restart Spotify guide

When this is disabled, the artists you’ve listened to recently will no longer be shown on your public profile, although this information will still be visible to you alone. This setting is useful whether you’re using Spotify for PC or a mobile version like the one we detail in our Spotify for iOS guide.

---

Alternative Method: Contacting Spotify Support (Limited Success)

Some users attempt to contact official Spotify support directly to request a data wipe.

1. Head to Settings and privacy.
2. Select Support (or Help).
3. Search for a relevant help article (e.g., “delete listening history”).
4. You may find an option to submit a support request.

While you can write to official Spotify requesting them to delete your recently played songs, success is not guaranteed. Official Spotify often retains this data to build your user profile and improve recommendation algorithms, which are core to their service.

For now, focusing on using the Private Session and managing visibility remains the most reliable way to control your listening activity on official Spotify.

Managing your listening history can improve personalized recommendations.
Check out this article on Spotify tips and tricks for better control over your music experience.