How to Remove Recently Played on Spotify iPhone

How to Remove Recently Played on Spotify iPhone

If you’re a Spotify user on your iPhone, you may have noticed the “Recently Played” section that shows up on the home screen of the Spotify app. This section displays the artists, albums, playlists, and podcasts you’ve been listening to most recently. While this feature can be convenient for quickly accessing your latest jams, it can also be a bit of an eyesore or reveal listening habits you’d rather keep private.

Maybe you were jamming to some embarrassing guilty pleasure tunes, or your kids got a hold of your phone and played a bunch of nursery rhymes or kid’s music that’s now clogging up your Recently Played. Or perhaps you simply prefer a minimalist, clean look on your Spotify home screen. Whatever the reason, you might be wondering how to remove or clear your Recently Played on Spotify for iPhone.

The good news is that it’s absolutely possible to get rid of your Recently Played on the Spotify iOS app. The bad news? There’s no straightforward “clear recently played” button or setting within the app itself. Removing your recently played artists, albums, and playlists requires delving into your listening history and manually clearing your cache. But don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it sounds! Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to remove recently played on Spotify for iPhone:

Step 1: Access Your Spotify Listening History
The first step is to pull up your full listening history within the Spotify app. To do this:

1) Tap the Home tab at the bottom of the Spotify app.
2) Scroll down and select the “…” button under the “Recently Played” section.
3) A popup will appear – tap “View Full Listening Activity.”

This will load your complete listening history, showing every song, album, artist, playlist and podcast you’ve listened to recently, sorted by date.

Step 2: Clear Your Listening History Cache
Now that you can see your full listening history, you’ll want to clear this cache to remove those recently played items from showing up on your Spotify home screen. Here’s how:

1) Tap on the line at the top of your listening history showing today’s date.
2) On the next screen, scroll all the way down to the bottom and tap “Clear Listening History.”
3) A popup will ask you to confirm clearing recent activities – tap “Clear” to confirm.

And just like that, your listening history cache for today’s date has been cleared! This will remove any “Recently Played” items from showing up on your Spotify home screen.

However, you’ll notice that past dates are still showing in your listening history. These past dates and activities can still show up and re-populate your “Recently Played” section over time as new items are added. So to completely remove your recently played history, you’ll need to clear your cache for previous dates too.

Step 3: Clear Previous Dates’ Listening Histories
To clear previous dates and fully wipe your recently played history on Spotify for iPhone, simply repeat the process from Step 2 for each individual date:

1) Tap on a previous date in your listening history.
2) Scroll to the bottom and tap “Clear Listening History.”
3) Confirm by tapping “Clear” on the popup.

Do this for every single date showing in your listening history until there are no more dates left. Your full listening history will now be completely cleared out.

Step 4 (Optional): Repeat Regularly for a Continuously Clean Home Screen
And there you have it – you’ve now successfully removed your entire recently played history from showing up on your Spotify iPhone app! Your home screen should be free of any recently played artists, albums, playlists or podcasts.

However, keep in mind that as you continue listening to content on Spotify going forward, new items will start re-populating your Recently Played section over time. So if you really want to keep your home screen squeaky clean and free of recently played history, you’ll need to repeat these steps regularly (perhaps weekly or monthly).

Simply go into your listening history, check the most recent date, and clear that day’s cache. Then check for any other new dates that have appeared and clear those too. It’s a bit tedious, but it’s the only way to continuously remove your recently played on Spotify for iPhone!

Some Additional Tips & Tricks:

• Log out and back into Spotify: Some users have found that logging out of their Spotify account on their iPhone, closing and re-opening the app, and then logging back in can help “reset” the Recently Played section and clear it out temporarily.
• Use Spotify on a Computer: The process for removing your recently played history on the Spotify desktop app is a bit more straightforward. There’s an “X” button that lets you easily clear recently played artists, albums and playlists individually from the Home screen on a computer.
• Listen in Private Session: Spotify has a “Private Session” mode that stops the app from updating your listening activity and adding to your history entirely. So anything you listen to in a private session won’t show up in your Recently Played. You can toggle Private Session on/off under Settings > Privacy.
• Make a New Playlist: If you want to listen to some tunes in private without tampering with your Recently Played, you can always make a new blank playlist and listen to tracks through that. As long as you delete the playlist afterward, nothing you listened to will be logged in your history.
• Clear Spotify Cache on iPhone: Another nuclear option is to completely clear the entire Spotify cache and data on your iPhone, forcing the app to start fresh. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Spotify > Offload App > Reinstall. Warning: this will log you out of your account.

To Wrap Up
Removing recently played content isn’t the most user-friendly process on Spotify’s iPhone app, but it’s definitely possible through clearing your listening history caches. It takes a bit of manual effort, but following the steps above will rid your Spotify home screen of any unwanted recently played albums, artists, playlists and podcasts.

Just keep in mind that you’ll need to repeat this clearing process regularly if you want to keep your Recently Played section continuously clean over time. Or take advantage of private sessions and making new playlists to avoid dirtying up your history in the first place. But for a minimalist, uncluttered Spotify home screen free of recently played tracks, going into your history and clearing those caches is the way to go!

Let me know in the comments if you run into any issues following this guide, or if you have any other tips for removing recently played on the Spotify app for iPhone. Happy listening!