The official Spotify Linux client… Well, it exists, but I use the (superb) Spotify CLI client ncspot for my music streaming activities— however a GUI alternative is on the way!
Spot is an open source Spotify client created specifically for Linux. It’s built in GTK and Rust, and leverages the ace librespot library. While this player (like other third-party Spotify apps) requires a Spotify Premium account to function, most of the core features are present and working.
Using Spot you can search for artists, albums, and tracks (but not playlists); play, pause, and skip tracks; browse through your existing playlists; and view artist bio pages (complete with ‘top tracks’ list).
- Player controls
- View your saved albums, songs, playlists
- Search for albums and artists
- View artist pages
- MPRIS integration
The inclusion of artist pages is welcome, but the inclusion of ‘top track’s is something I really appreciate. I use this feature a tonne when looking up bands recommended to me.
Spot is under active😅 development (i.e. it is a bit buggy and it is not feature complete). But honestly? It didn’t crash once during my play with it this afternoon — and even if it had, I’d rather endure a few rough edges than use the official Spotify client!
The “main” issue I had was with the app not remembering its size between sessions. Once closed and relaunched Spot defaults to opening in a narrow portrait mode, not a wider desktop-friendly one. It’s not a major hassle as the app is (mostly) resizable.
And although the app boasts MPRIS integration (meaning you can control playback from the Notification Center/calendar applet) it didn’t show any music artwork (or any track change notifications, but the latter is intentional I believe).
Oh, I should point out that there’s no “tray” item to minimise Spot to (I think idea in GNOME Shell is that you don’t minimise apps you put them on separate workspaces). Anyway; be aware that closing this music player (an action instinctive to most of us thanks to years of system tray icons) cuts out the music.
Want to try it? You can! Spot is free, open source software. You can grab source code from GitHub, or install it on your Linux distro of choice from Flathub.
via Popey