spotui

spotui

spotui is a Spotify player for the terminal. It plays music through the speakers of your computer. You do not need the Spotify desktop app.

spotui contains go-librespot, an open-source implementation of the Spotify Connect protocol. Spotify does not support this protocol for third-party apps. A change on the Spotify side can stop playback until go-librespot gets an update.

spotui also shows up as a Spotify Connect device. You can control it from the Spotify app on your phone.

Requirements

You need these items to use spotui:

• A Spotify Premium account. Spotify does not allow playback in third-party players without Premium.
• One of these systems:
  • Linux on x86-64 or ARM64, with PulseAudio or PipeWire. ALSA also works.
  • macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon.
  • Windows 10 or later on x64. Use Windows Terminal.

Install

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install juthrbog/tap/spotui

Download a release

Each release has these files:

The Linux binary needs glibc 2.28 or later and the ALSA library (alsa-lib on Arch Linux, libasound2 on Debian and Ubuntu). Most desktop distributions have both. The macOS and Windows binaries need nothing else.

These commands download version 0.1.0 for Linux on x86-64 and install it in ~/.local/bin. Change version and platform as necessary:

version=0.1.0 platform=linux_amd64
curl -LO "https://github.com/juthrbog/spotui/releases/download/v${version}/spotui_${version}_${platform}.tar.gz"
gh attestation verify "spotui_${version}_${platform}.tar.gz" --repo juthrbog/spotui
tar -xzf "spotui_${version}_${platform}.tar.gz" spotui
install -D -m 755 spotui ~/.local/bin/spotui

The gh attestation verify command is optional. It makes sure that the GitHub release workflow of this repository built the file. Each release also has a checksums.txt file.

On Windows, extract spotui.exe from the zip file and run it in Windows Terminal.

Build from source

To build spotui, you need these items:

• Go 1.27.2 or later.
• A C compiler, pkg-config, and the libraries for ALSA, Ogg, Vorbis, FLAC, and mpg123.

On Arch Linux, this command installs the libraries:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel pkgconf alsa-lib libogg libvorbis flac mpg123

On macOS, this command installs them:

brew install pkgconf libogg libvorbis flac mpg123

On Windows, use the release binary.

To install the latest version from source, run this command:

go install github.com/juthrbog/spotui@latest

To build from a copy of the repository, run these commands:

git clone https://github.com/juthrbog/spotui.git
cd spotui
go build -o spotui .

To show the version of spotui, run spotui -version.

First start

1. Run spotui. If you built from the source code, run ./spotui in the spotui directory.
2. spotui opens a Spotify login page in your browser. If the browser does not open, open the link that spotui shows.
3. Log in to Spotify and approve the device. If Spotify asks for a code, enter the code that spotui shows.

spotui saves the login. You log in only one time.

After the login, the Library tab shows Liked Songs and your playlists. Select a playlist and push enter to see its tracks. Select a track and push enter to play it.

Set up search and saved albums

Search and saved albums use the Spotify Web API. The Web API needs a client ID from your own Spotify developer app. A client ID is the public name of an app on the Spotify platform. Playback and playlists work without it.

1. Open the Spotify developer dashboard and log in.
2. Create an app. The name and description can be any text.
3. Add this redirect URI: http://127.0.0.1:8898/callback
4. Under "Which API/SDKs are you planning to use?", select Web API.
5. Save the app and copy its client ID.
6. Write the client ID into client_id in ~/.config/spotui/config.toml.
7. Restart spotui.

When spotui starts, it opens a second login page in your browser. Approve it. spotui saves this login too.

You can also give the client ID in the SPOTUI_CLIENT_ID environment variable. The variable overrides the value in the configuration file.

Spotify sets these limits on apps in development mode:

• The owner of the app must have Spotify Premium.
• Five Spotify users at most can use one app.
• A search gives 10 results at most for each type.

Keys

To filter a list, push f and type. The list shows only the items that contain every word that you type, for example beatles abbey. The filter works in the Library tab and in each track list. It uses no Web API calls. Push enter to keep the filter and go to the list, or push esc to clear it.

To search, push /, type the search, and push enter. While you type, the keys go into the search box. To stop typing, push esc or tab. In the results, push esc to type again.

Cover art

If the terminal is 90 columns or wider, spotui shows a panel on the right. The panel shows the cover of the selected playlist, album, artist, or song. If nothing is selected, the panel shows the cover of the song that plays.

spotui draws covers in one of two ways:

• Kitty graphics show sharp images. kitty and Ghostty support them. In this mode, spotui also shows a small cover next to the song that plays.
• Half blocks draw each cover with colored ▀ characters. They work in all terminals with true color, but the image is not sharp.

With the default cover_art = "auto", spotui asks the terminal at start if it supports kitty graphics. If the terminal does not answer, spotui uses half blocks.

If a cover shows as an empty box or as strange characters, set cover_art = "blocks" in the configuration file. This can happen when spotui runs inside a program that manages the terminal, such as herdr. In herdr, you can also turn on kitty_graphics in the herdr configuration.

Configuration

spotui writes the configuration file config.toml with comments on its first start. The Files section gives its location. The file contains these values:

If you change redirect_port, change the redirect URI of your developer app to the same port.

Files

spotui keeps its files in two directories:

The files are:

• config.toml: the configuration file.
• player-state.json: the Spotify login and the device ID.
• webapi-token.json: the Web API login.
• spotui.log: the log.

The login files contain secrets. On Linux and macOS, spotui makes them readable only by your user.

To remove both logins, run this command:

spotui -logout

Troubleshooting

If you hear no sound on Linux, set audio_backend = "alsa" in the configuration file and restart spotui.

If something fails, read the log spotui.log. The Files section gives its location. For more detail, start spotui with spotui -debug.

If the Web API login fails with an error about the redirect URI, make sure that the redirect URI in your developer app is exactly http://127.0.0.1:8898/callback. Spotify does not accept localhost in redirect URIs.

Run one copy of spotui at a time. Two copies use the same device ID, and Spotify cannot tell them apart.

Limits

• spotui loads 500 saved albums at most.
• A track list shows 800 tracks at most.
• Search does not find playlists that Spotify made, such as Discover Weekly. spotui shows them only if they are in your library.

How it works

spotui runs the go-librespot player inside its own process. The player plays the audio and keeps the queue. The terminal interface sends commands to the player over Go channels.

Liked Songs, playlists, and track lists come from the internal Spotify API through go-librespot. Search and saved albums come from the public Web API through your developer app. Spotify limits the Web API by app, so a personal app gives you your own limit.

Development

The Taskfile.yml file has the common tasks, for example task test and task lint. Run task --list to see all tasks.

To make a release, do these steps:

1. Merge the changes into the main branch.
2. On the main branch, run task release -- v0.1.0 with the new version. The task makes the tag and pushes it.
3. The Release workflow tests the code and builds the binaries for Linux (amd64, arm64), macOS (arm64), and Windows (amd64). It runs each binary on a computer of the same type. Then it publishes the release with the archives, checksums.txt, and build attestations, and updates the formula in the Homebrew tap.

All release binaries link the audio libraries statically. The Linux binaries are built in a Debian 10 container, so they run on most distributions. The Windows binary is built with MinGW in a container, and the macOS binary on a Mac.

To build a release binary on your computer, run task release:build -- <target>. The targets are linux-amd64, linux-arm64, and windows-amd64, which need Docker, and darwin-arm64, which needs a Mac. The binary goes to dist/<os>_<arch>/.

The tap update needs the HOMEBREW_TAP_SSH_KEY secret in this repository. It is the private key of a deploy key with write access to the tap. Prerelease tags, such as v0.2.0-rc.1, do not update the tap.

License

spotui is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3. Refer to LICENSE. spotui contains go-librespot, which uses the same license.

spotui is not affiliated with Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.