spotify_player

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Examples
• Installation
• Features
  • Spotify Connect
  • Streaming
  • Media Control
  • Image
  • Notify
  • Mouse support
  • Daemon
  • Fuzzy search
  • CLI commands
• Commands
• Configurations
• Caches
  • Logging
• Acknowledgement

Introduction

spotify_player is a fast, easy to use, and configurable terminal music player.

Features

• Minimalist UI with an intuitive paging and popup system.
• Highly configurable
• Feature parity with the official Spotify application.
• Support remote control with Spotify Connect.
• Support streaming songs directly from the terminal.
• Support synced lyrics.
• Support cross-platform media control.
• Support image rendering.
• Support desktop notification.
• Support running the application as a daemon
• Offer a wide range of CLI commands

Examples

A demo of spotify_player v0.5.0-pre-release on youtube or on asciicast:

Checkout examples/README.md for more examples.

Installation

By default, the application's installed binary is spotify_player.

Requirements

A Spotify Premium account is required.

Dependencies

Windows and MacOS

• Rust and cargo as the build dependencies

Linux

• Rust and cargo as the build dependencies

• install openssl, alsa-lib (streaming feature), libdbus (media-control feature).

  • For example, on Debian based systems, run the below command to install application's dependencies:

    sudo apt install libssl-dev libasound2-dev libdbus-1-dev

Binaries

Application's prebuilt binaries can be found in the Releases Page.

Note: to run the application, Linux systems need to install additional dependencies as specified in the Dependencies section.

Homebrew

Run brew install spotify_player to install the application.

Scoop

Run scoop install spotify-player to install the application.

Cargo

Run cargo install spotify_player --locked to install the application from crates.io.

AUR

Run yay -S spotify-player to install the application as an AUR package.

Alternatively, run yay -S spotify-player-full to install an AUR package compiled with full feature support and Pulseaudio/Pipewire instead of rodio.

Void Linux

Run xbps-install -S spotify-player to install the application.

FreeBSD

Run pkg install spotify-player to install the spotify_player binary from FreeBSD ports.

NetBSD

Using the package manager, run pkgin install spotify-player to install from the official repositories.

Building from source,

cd /usr/pkgsrc/audio/spotify-player
make install

Docker

Note: streaming feature is disabled when using the docker image.

You can download the binary image of the latest build from the master branch by running

docker pull aome510/spotify_player:latest

then run

docker run --rm -it aome510/spotify_player:latest

to run the application.

You can also use your local config folder to configure the application or your local cache folder to store the application's cache data when running the docker image:

docker run --rm \
-v $APP_CONFIG_FOLDER:/app/config/ \
-v $APP_CACHE_FOLDER:/app/cache/ \
-it aome510/spotify_player:latest

Features

Spotify Connect

To enable a full Spotify connect support, user will need to register a Spotify application and specify the application's client_id in the general configuration file as described in the configuration documentation.

More details about registering a Spotify application can be found in the official Spotify documentation.

When spotify_player runs with your own client_id, press D (default shortcut for SwitchDevice command) to get the list of available devices, then press enter (default shortcut for ChooseSelected command) to connect to the selected device.

Streaming

spotify_player supports streaming, which needs to be built/installed with streaming feature (enabled by default) and with an audio backend (rodio-backend by default). The streaming feature allows to spotify_player to play music directly from terminal.

The application uses librespot library to create an integrated Spotify client while running. The integrated client will register a Spotify speaker device under the spotify-player name, which is accessible on the Spotify connect device list.

Audio backend

spotify_player uses rodio as the default audio backend. List of available audio backends:

• alsa-backend
• pulseaudio-backend
• rodio-backend
• portaudio-backend
• jackaudio-backend
• rodiojack-backend
• sdl-backend
• gstreamer-backend

User can change the audio backend when building/installing the application by specifying the --features option. For example, to install spotify_player with pulseaudio-backend, run

cargo install spotify_player --no-default-features --features pulseaudio-backend

Note:

• needs to specify --no-default-features here because rodio-backend is one of the default features.
• user will need to install additional dependencies depending on the selected audio backend. More details can be found in the Librespot documentation.

The streaming feature can be also disabled upon installing by running

cargo install spotify_player --no-default-features

Media Control

To enable media control support, spotify_player needs to be built/installed with media-control feature (enabled by default) and set the enable_media_control config option to true in the general configuration file.

Media control support is implemented using MPRIS DBus on Linux and OS window event listener on Windows and MacOS.

Image

To enable image rendering support, spotify_player needs to be built/installed with image feature (disabled by default). To install the application with image feature included, run:

cargo install spotify_player --features image

spotify_player supports rendering image in a full resolution if the application is run on either Kitty or iTerm2. Otherwise, the image will be displayed as block characters.

spotify_player also supports rendering images with sixel behind sixel feature flag, which also enables image feature:

cargo install spotify_player --features sixel

Notes:

• Not all terminals supported by libsixel are supported by spotify_player as it relies on a third-party library for image rendering. A possible list of supported terminals can be found in here.
• Images rendered by sixel can have a weird scale. It's recommended to tweak the cover_img_scale config option to get the best result as the scaling works differently with different terminals and fonts.

Examples of image rendering:

• iTerm2:

• Kitty:

• Sixel (foot terminal, cover_img_scale=1.8):

• Others:

Notify

To enable desktop notification support, spotify_player needs to be built/installed with notify feature (disabled by default). To install the application with notify feature included, run:

cargo install spotify_player --features notify

Note: the notification support in MacOS and Windows are quite restricted compared to Linux.

Mouse support

Currently, the only supported use case for mouse is to seek to a position of the current playback by left-clicking to such position in the playback's progress bar.

Daemon

To enable a daemon support, spotify_player needs to be built/installed with daemon feature (disabled by default). To install the application with daemon feature included, run:

cargo install spotify_player --features daemon

You can run the application as a daemon by specifying the -d or --daemon option: spotify_player -d.

Notes:

• daemon feature is not supported on Windows

• daemon feature requires the streaming feature to be enabled and the application to be built with an audio backend

• because of the OS's restrictions, daemon feature doesn't work with the media-control feature on MacOS, which is enabled by default. In other words, if you want to use the daemon feature on MacOS, you must install the application with media-control feature disabled:

  cargo install spotify_player --no-default-features --features daemon,rodio-backend

Fuzzy search

To enable fuzzy search support, spotify_player needs to be built/installed with fzf feature (disabled by default).

CLI Commands

spotify_player offers several CLI commands to interact with Spotify:

• get: Get Spotify data (playlist/album/artist data, user's data, etc)
• playback: Interact with the playback (start a playback, play-pause, next, etc)
• connect: Connect to a Spotify device
• like: Like currently playing track
• authenticate: Authenticate the application
• playlist: Playlist editing (new, delete, import, fork, etc)

For more details, run spotify_player -h or spotify_player {command} -h, in which {command} is a CLI command.

Notes

• When using the CLI for the first time, you'll need to run spotify_player authenticate to authenticate the application beforehand.
• Under the hood, CLI command is handled by sending requests to a spotify_player client socket running on port client_port, a general application configuration with a default value of 8080. If there is no running application's instance, a new client will be created upon handling the CLI commands, which increases the latency of the command.

Commands

To go to the shortcut help page, press ? or C-h (default shortcuts for OpenCommandHelp command).

Tips:

• you can search in the shortcut help page (and some other pages) using Search command
• RefreshPlayback can be used to manually update the playback status.
• RestartIntegratedClient is useful when user wants to switch to another audio device (headphone, earphone, etc) without restarting the application, as the integrated client will be re-initialized with the new device.

List of supported commands:

Command	Description	Default shortcuts
NextTrack	next track	n
PreviousTrack	previous track	p
ResumePause	resume/pause based on the current playback	space
PlayRandom	play a random track in the current context	.
Repeat	cycle the repeat mode	C-r
ToggleFakeTrackRepeatMode	toggle fake track repeat mode	M-r
Shuffle	toggle the shuffle mode	C-s
VolumeChange	change playback volume by an offset (default shortcuts use 5%)	+, -
Mute	toggle playback volume between 0% and previous level	_
SeekForward	seek forward by 5s	>
SeekBackward	seek backward by 5s	<
Quit	quit the application	C-c, q
ClosePopup	close a popup	esc
SelectNextOrScrollDown	select the next item in a list/table or scroll down	j, C-n, down
SelectPreviousOrScrollUp	select the previous item in a list/table or scroll up	k, C-p, up
PageSelectNextOrScrollDown	select the next page item in a list/table or scroll a page down	page_down, C-f
PageSelectPreviousOrScrollUp	select the previous page item in a list/table or scroll a page up	page_up, C-b
SelectFirstOrScrollToTop	select the first item in a list/table or scroll to the top	g g, home
SelectLastOrScrollToBottom	select the last item in a list/table or scroll to the bottom	G, end
ChooseSelected	choose the selected item	enter
RefreshPlayback	manually refresh the current playback	r
RestartIntegratedClient	restart the integrated client (streaming feature only)	R
ShowActionsOnSelectedItem	open a popup showing actions on a selected item	g a, C-space
ShowActionsOnCurrentTrack	open a popup showing actions on the current track	a
AddSelectedItemToQueue	add the selected item to queue	Z, C-z
FocusNextWindow	focus the next focusable window (if any)	tab
FocusPreviousWindow	focus the previous focusable window (if any)	backtab
SwitchTheme	open a popup for switching theme	T
SwitchDevice	open a popup for switching device	D
Search	open a popup for searching in the current page	/
BrowseUserPlaylists	open a popup for browsing user's playlists	u p
BrowseUserFollowedArtists	open a popup for browsing user's followed artists	u a
BrowseUserSavedAlbums	open a popup for browsing user's saved albums	u A
CurrentlyPlayingContextPage	go to the currently playing context page	g space
TopTrackPage	go to the user top track page	g t
RecentlyPlayedTrackPage	go to the user recently played track page	g r
LikedTrackPage	go to the user liked track page	g y
LyricsPage	go to the lyrics page of the current track	g L, l
LibraryPage	go to the user library page	g l
SearchPage	go to the search page	g s
BrowsePage	go to the browse page	g b
Queue	go to the queue page	z
OpenCommandHelp	go to the command help page	?, C-h
PreviousPage	go to the previous page	backspace, C-q
OpenSpotifyLinkFromClipboard	open a Spotify link from clipboard	O
SortTrackByTitle	sort the track table (if any) by track's title	s t
SortTrackByArtists	sort the track table (if any) by track's artists	s a
SortTrackByAlbum	sort the track table (if any) by track's album	s A
SortTrackByAddedDate	sort the track table (if any) by track's added date	s D
SortTrackByDuration	sort the track table (if any) by track's duration	s d
ReverseOrder	reverse the order of the track table (if any)	s r
MovePlaylistItemUp	move playlist item up one position	C-k
MovePlaylistItemDown	move playlist item down one position	C-j
CreatePlaylist	create a new playlist	N
JumpToCurrentTrackInContext	jump to the current track in the context	g c

To add new shortcuts or modify the default shortcuts, please refer to the keymaps section in the configuration documentation.

Actions

A general list of actions is available; however, not all Spotify items (track, album, artist, or playlist) implement each action. To get the list of available actions on an item, call the ShowActionsOnCurrentTrack command or the ShowActionsOnSelectedItem command, then press enter (default binding for the ChooseSelected command) to initiate the selected action. Some actions may not appear in the popup but can be bound to a shortcut.

List of available actions:

• GoToArtist
• GoToAlbum
• GoToRadio
• AddToLibrary
• AddToPlaylist
• AddToQueue
• AddToLiked
• DeleteFromLiked
• DeleteFromLibrary
• DeleteFromPlaylist
• ShowActionsOnAlbum
• ShowActionsOnArtist
• ShowActionsOnShow
• ToggleLiked
• CopyLink
• Follow
• Unfollow

These actions can also be bound to a shortcut. To add new shortcuts, please refer to the actions section in the configuration documentation.

Search Page

When first entering the search page, the application focuses on the search input. User can then input text, delete one character backward using backspace, or search the text using enter.

To move the focus from the search input to the other windows such as track results, album results, etc, use FocusNextWindow or FocusPreviousWindow.

Configurations

By default, spotify_player will look into $HOME/.config/spotify-player for application's configuration files. This can be changed by either specifying -c <FOLDER_PATH> or --config-folder <FOLDER_PATH> option.

If an application configuration file is not found, one will be created with default values.

Please refer to the configuration documentation for more details on the configuration options.

Caches

By default, spotify_player will look into $HOME/.cache/spotify-player for application's cache files, which include log files, Spotify's authorization credentials, audio cache files, etc. This can be changed by either specifying -C <FOLDER_PATH> or --cache-folder <FOLDER_PATH> option.

Logging

The application stores logs inside the $APP_CACHE_FOLDER/spotify-player-*.log file. For debugging or submitting an issue, user can also refer to the backtrace file in $APP_CACHE_FOLDER/spotify-player-*.backtrace, which includes the application's backtrace in case of panics/unexpected errors.

spotify_player uses RUST_LOG environment variable to define the application's logging level. RUST_LOG is default to be spotify_player=INFO, which only shows the application's logs.

Acknowledgement

spotify_player is written in Rust and is built on top of awesome libraries such as tui-rs, rspotify, librespot, and many more. It's highly inspired by spotify-tui and ncspot.