An open source Spotify client running as a UNIX daemon.
Spotifyd streams music just like the official client, but is more lightweight and supports more platforms. Spotifyd also supports the Spotify Connect protocol, which makes it show up as a device that can be controlled from the official clients.
Note: Spotifyd requires a Spotify Premium account.
We provide pre-built binaries through Github Actions for the more popular platforms: Linux, macOS and ARMv7. You can find them here. For extra integrity, the file's SHA-512 gets calculated and uploaded as well.
The provided binaries come in two flavours, slim and full. Each are compiled with different features. slim only contains the platform's most used audio backend, full has also all optional features enabled (see Feature Flags).
You can also compile Spotifyd yourself, allowing you to make use of feature flags. Spotifyd is written in Rust. You can download the toolchain (compiler and package manager) over at rustup.rs. Follow their instructions to get started.
Spotifyd might require additional libraries during build and runtime, depending on your platform and the way to compile it (static or dynamic). The following table shows the libraries needed for each OS respectively.
| Target Platform | Libraries | |-----------------|------------------------------------------------------| | Fedora | alsa-lib-devel, make, gcc | | openSUSE | alsa-devel, make, gcc | | Debian | libasound2-dev libssl-dev libpulse-dev libdbus-1-dev | | macOS | dbus, pkg-config, portaudio |
Note: The package names for Linux are the ones used on Debian based distributions (like Ubuntu). You will need to adapt the packages for your distribution respectively.
To compile the binary, run
bash
cargo build --release
To install the resulting binary, run
bash
cargo install --path .
Spotifyd is split into a base package plus additional features that can be toggled on or off during compilation. Those can be split into two groups: The audio backend features that are responsible for playing back the music and additional functionality features, which enhance your experience using spotifyd.
To enable an additional audio backend, pass <audio_backend_name>_backend as a feature flag. We currently support alsa, pulseaudio and portaudio.
Spotifyd provides the following additional functionality:
| Feature Flag | Description | |--------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | dbuskeyring | Provides password authentication over the system's keyring (supports all platforms) | | dbusmpris | Provides multimedia key support (Linux only) |
Note: Compiling Spotifyd with all features and the pulseaudio backend on Ubuntu would result in the following command:
cargo build --release --no-default-features --features pulseaudio_backend,dbus_keyring,dbus_mpris
Spotifyd implements the MPRIS D-Bus Interface Specification, meaning that it can be controlled by generic media playback controllers such as playerctl as well as some tools specifically designed for use with the official Spotify client such as sp.
Note: Make sure to rename the service name within the
spscript tospotifyd!
Although the code greatly improved, this feature is still considered experimental. Make sure to open an issue if you encounter any issues while using other players to control spotifyd.
By default, the audio backend is ALSA, as ALSA is available by default on a lot of machines and usually doesn't require extra dependencies. There is also support for pulseaudio and portaudio.
Note: To disable this audio backend, pass
--no-default-featuresdown during compilation.
To use PulseAudio, compile with the --features flag to enable
it:
bash
cargo build --release --features "pulseaudio_backend"
You will need the development package for PulseAudio, as well
as build-essential or the equivalent package of your distribution.
To use PortAudio (works on macOS), compile with the --features flag to enable it:
bash
cargo build --release --no-default-features --features="portaudio_backend"
Note: It is important that you also pass down
--no-default-featuresas macOS doesn't support thealsa_backendfeature!
To use Rodio (works on Windows, OSX, Linux), compile with the --features flag to enable it:
bash
cargo build --release --no-default-features --features="rodio_backend"
On Linux you will need the development package for alsa and make/gcc. (libasound2-dev,build-essential on debian, alsa-lib-devel,make,gcc on fedora)
Spotifyd is able to run without configuration at all and will assume default values for most of the fields. However, running without configuration will only allow you to connect to it if you're on the same network as the daemon.
Note: This is currently not possible anymore and under investigation. For more information and updates, take a look at #366.
Spotifyd can be configured using CLI arguments. For a detailed description as well as possible values for each flag, run
bash
spotifyd --help
Spotifyd is able to load configuration values from a file too. The file has to be named spotifyd.conf and reside in the user's configuration directory (~/.config/spotifyd) or the system configuration directory (/etc or /etc/xdg/spotifyd). This also applies to macOS!
The configuration file consists of two sections, global and spotifyd, whereas spotifyd takes priority over global.
The configuration file has the following format:
```ini [global]
username = username
password = password
#
password field. Bothpasswordcmd = commandthatwritespasswordtostdout
spotifyd tries to look up your#
password field. Bothuse_keyring = true
spotifyd --help.backend = alsa
aplay -L,device = alsaaudiodevice
device field.control = alsaaudiodevice
spotifyd.mixer = PCM
spotifyd --help.volume_controller = alsa
onsongchangehook = commandtorunonplaybackevents
devicename = devicenameinspotify_connect
bitrate = 160
#
cachepath = cachedirectory
noaudiocache = true
volume_normalisation = true
normalisation_pregain = -10
spotifyd uses to announce its service over the network.zeroconf_port = 1234
spotifyd will use to connect to spotify.proxy = http://proxy.example.org:8080 ```
password_cmd config entry
This feature allows you to provide a command that prints your password to stdout, which saves you from having to store your password in the config file directly. To use it, set the password_cmd config entry to the command you would like to use and remove the password config entry.
For example (using the password-management utility pass).
```ini
password_cmd = pass spotify ```
use_keyring config entry / --use-keyring CLI flag
This features leverages Linux's DBus Secret Service API or native macOS keychain in order to forgo the need to store your password directly in the config file. To use it, complile with the dbus_keyring feature and set the use-keyring config entry to true or pass the --use-keyring CLI flag during start to the daemon. Remove the password and/or password_cmd config entries.
Your keyring entry needs to have the following attributes set:
application: rust-keyring
service: spotifyd
username: <your-spotify-username>
To add such an entry into your keyring, you can use secret-tool, a CLI used to communicate with agents that support the Secret Service API:
bash
secret-tool store --label='name you choose' application rust-keyring service spotifyd username <your-username>
You can use the keychain GUI on macOS to add an item respectively.
password_cmd or on_song_changed_hook If either of these options is given, the shell spotifyd will use to run its commands is the shell indicated by the SHELL environment variable, if set. If the SHELL environment variable is not set, spotifyd will use the user's default shell, which, on Linux and BSD, is the shell listed in /etc/passwd. On macOS it is the shell listed in the output of dscl . -read /Users/<username> UserShell.
A systemd.service unit file is provided to help run spotifyd as a service on systemd-based systems. The file contrib/spotifyd.service should be copied to either:
/etc/systemd/user/
~/.config/systemd/user/
Packagers of systemd-based distributions are encouraged to include the file in the former location. End-user should prefer the latter. It should be noted that some targets are not available when running under the user directory, such as network-online.target.
Control of the daemon is handed over to systemd. The following example commands will run the service once and enable the service to always run on login in the future respectively:
systemctl --user start spotifyd.service
systemctl --user enable spotifyd.service
We always appreciate help during the development of spotifyd! If you are new to programming, open source or Rust in general, take a look at issues tagged with good first issue. These normally are easy to resolve and don't take much time to implement.
This project would not have been possible without the amazing reverse engineering work done in librespot, mostly by plietar.