Audio playback does not route to output correctly on Windows (Windows Terminal)

Author: selvmayaCreated Jan 30, 2025Updated Jul 22, 2026
Labelsbug

Describe the bug The audio output of spotify-player does not respect the audio routing chosen in Windows 10 (& 11?) per-app audio settings. It seems to always use the default output no matter what.

To Reproduce Open Windows terminal, run spotify-player. Either select the per-app setting in Windows "App volume and device preferences" (Win10) before or during/between playback (refreshing does not help).

Expected behaviour The audio routes to the correct audio output (see C in reference image) instead of default output (see A in reference image). This works for (nearly) every single windows application. Exceptions to this usually only have problems routing while the application is running, but usually still works if you select the app route before it starts. Specific apps fix it if you refresh the setting during runtime.

Log and backtrace spotify-player-25-01-30-16-33.log GitHub did not let me upload a (0KB) backtrace file (also seems irrelevant).

Screenshots Reference image: Image This image shows spotify_player in a Windows Terminal window, the Windows 10 "App volume and device preferences" settings window, as well as live audio software Voicemeeter. Note: Firefox is not playing any audio here, only spotify-player is. The fact that apps with individual sliders often show up in the default output or not at all in Voicemeeter is a common unrelated issue.

Environment

  • OS: Windows 10 Home 22H2
  • Application version: 0.20.4
  • Application features: default features + image + fzf
  • Extra build notes: Built using cargo-install with --config "lto=true"

Additional context This could be a Windows Terminal bug or a audio backend (default: rodio) feature that is simply unimplemented. My surface-level look over the existing open/closed issues did not find an issue with this target problem. If there is a workaround (e.g. alternative backend) or a problem inherent to Windows Terminal, I would like to know (and this could be documented as a limitation).