Spotifyd
Looking for maintainers!
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.
Installation
Provided binaries
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).
Compiling from source
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.
Note: Please make sure that you compile the package using the most recent
stable
verison of Rust available througrustup
. Some distro versions are quite outdated and might result in compilation errors.
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
cargo build --release
To install the resulting binary, run
cargo install --path . --locked
Installing with Cargo
If you have cargo
installed, you can directly install spotifyd
by running:
cargo install spotifyd --locked
That will compile and install spotifyd
's latest version under $HOME/.cargo/bin
for you.
Building a Debian package
You can use the cargo-deb
create in order to build a Debian package from source.
Install it by:
$ cargo install cargo-deb
Then you can build and install the Debian package with:
$ cargo deb --install
Note, that when building a Debian package, the --release
is passed to the
build command already and you do not need to specify it yourself. See for the
flags that are set by default in Cargo.toml
.
Feature Flags
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 |
---|---|
dbus_keyring | Provides password authentication over the system's keyring (supports all platforms) |
dbus_mpris | 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
Media controls
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
sp
script 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
.
Audio Backends
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-features
down during compilation.
PulseAudio
To use PulseAudio, compile with the --features
flag to enable
it:
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.
PortAudio
To use PortAudio (works on macOS), compile with the --features
flag to enable it:
cargo build --release --no-default-features --features="portaudio_backend"
Note: It is important that you also pass down
--no-default-features
as macOS doesn't support thealsa_backend
feature!
Rodio
To use Rodio (works on Windows, OSX, Linux), compile with the --features
flag to enable it:
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)
Configuration
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 via Spotify Connect if you're on the same network as the daemon.
CLI options
Spotifyd
can be configured using CLI arguments. For a detailed description as well as possible values for each flag, run
spotifyd --help
Configuration file
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:
[global]
# Your Spotify account name.
username = username
# Your Spotify account password.
password = password
# A command that gets executed and can be used to
# retrieve your password.
# The command should return the password on stdout.
#
# This is an alternative to the `password` field. Both
# can't be used simultaneously.
password_cmd = command_that_writes_password_to_stdout
# If set to true, `spotifyd` tries to look up your
# password in the system's password storage.
#
# This is an alternative to the `password` field. Both
# can't be used simultaneously.
use_keyring = true
# The audio backend used to play the your music. To get
# a list of possible backends, run `spotifyd --help`.
backend = alsa
# The alsa audio device to stream audio to. To get a
# list of valid devices, run `aplay -L`,
device = alsa_audio_device # omit for macOS
# The alsa control device. By default this is the same
# name as the `device` field.
control = alsa_audio_device # omit for macOS
# The alsa mixer used by `spotifyd`.
mixer = PCM
# The volume controller. Each one behaves different to
# volume increases. For possible values, run
# `spotifyd --help`.
volume_controller = alsa # use softvol for macOS
# A command that gets executed in your shell after each song changes.
on_song_change_hook = command_to_run_on_playback_events
# The name that gets displayed under the connect tab on
# official clients. Spaces are not allowed!
device_name = device_name_in_spotify_connect
# The audio bitrate. 96, 160 or 320 kbit/s
bitrate = 160
# The directory used to cache audio data. This setting can save
# a lot of bandwidth when activated, as it will avoid re-downloading
# audio files when replaying them.
#
# Note: The file path does not get expanded. Environment variables and
# shell placeholders like $HOME or ~ don't work!
cache_path = cache_directory
# If set to true, audio data does NOT get cached.
no_audio_cache = true
# Volume on startup between 0 and 100
initial_volume = 90
# If set to true, enables volume normalisation between songs.
volume_normalisation = true
# The normalisation pregain that is applied for each song.
normalisation_pregain = -10
# The port `spotifyd` uses to announce its service over the network.
zeroconf_port = 1234
# The proxy `spotifyd` will use to connect to spotify.
proxy = http://proxy.example.org:8080
# The displayed device type in Spotify clients.
# Can be unknown, computer, tablet, smartphone, speaker, tv,
# avr (Audio/Video Receiver), stb (Set-Top Box), and audiodongle.
device_type = speaker
Alternatives to storing your password in the config file
-
password_cmd
config entryThis 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 thepassword_cmd
config entry to the command you would like to use and remove thepassword
config entry.For example (using the password-management utility pass).
# ~/.config/spotifyd/spotifyd.conf password_cmd = pass spotify
-
use_keyring
config entry /--use-keyring
CLI flagThis 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 theuse-keyring
config entry totrue
or pass the--use-keyring
CLI flag during start to the daemon. Remove thepassword
and/orpassword_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: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, or with the built-in
security
tool:security add-generic-password -s spotifyd -D rust-keyring -a <your username> -w
password_cmd
or on_song_changed_hook
Shell used to run commands indicated by 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
.
Running as a system service
on Linux
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
on macOS
On macOS the system wide and per-user daemon/agent manager is known as launchd
. Interfacing with launchd
is performed through launchctl
.
In order to use spotifyd
as a service on macOS one must specify a .plist
that represents the service, and place it in /Library/LaunchDaemons
.
Here is a .plist which works with macOS Catalina 10.15.3:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>rustlang.spotifyd</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/local/bin/spotifyd</string>
<string>--config-path=/users/YourUserName/.config/spotifyd/spotifyd.conf</string>
<string>--no-daemon</string>
</array>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>YourUserName</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>ThrottleInterval</key>
<integer>30</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
Once present in the /Library/LaunchDaemons
directory, the .plist must be loaded and started with the following commands.
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/rustlang.spotifyd.plist
sudo launchctl start /Library/LaunchDaemons/rustlang.spotifyd.plist
One may also unload/stop the service in a similar fashion replacing load/start with unload/stop.
Note:
-
You should update "YourUserName" with your actual username for macOS (or remove "UserName" to run as root.
-
The string, --no-daemon is needed as launchd won't receive a PID for the process and will lose its remit over spotifyd. So it's best to include it, there will be no difference in use, nor will you see any log output.
-
macOS tries to start the daemon immediately on boot, and spotifyd fails if Wifi isn't connected. So one must have a keep alive (which retries if it fails to launch on boot), that retries after 30 seconds, which is enough for wifi etc to come up.
Common issues
- Spotifyd will not work without Spotify Premium
- The device name cannot contain spaces
Contributing
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.
Credits
This project would not have been possible without the amazing reverse engineering work done in librespot, mostly by plietar.