Do you think the official Spotify for Linux client would look better with a major restyle? So did devs behind customisation tool Spicetify — so they’ve done just that!
I showcased a “hacky” way to use custom Spotify skins back in 2016 using the Spotio project. That effort is long dormant, but a few similarly-minded methods have since emerged all enabled by comprehensive CLI tool Spicetify (via Diolinux).
Now, I put “hacky” in quotes there as although these efforts aren’t “one click” solutions most users will feel comfortable applying they’re not exactly hard to make use of. Also: they’re not exclusive to Linux – you can use the Spicetify with Spotify for Windows and macOS too.
Spicetify lets you:
- Change colours within the UI
- Inject CSS for advanced customization
- Add extensions to extend functionalities, e.g., pop-out lyrics
- Add custom apps, e.g., Reddit recommends
- Remove bloated components to improve performance
Plus, if you’re content to run command line scripts you find online (you shouldn’t be if you do always give them a good look at first) you can choose from a range of community-made Spotify themes via Spicetify, including the most famous Spotify theme ‘Dribbblish‘ (see the hero shot).
It took me less than 5 minutes (plus a quick wallpaper change) to go from this Spotify look:
To this Spotify look:
I think it looks awesome! 😏
Admittedly, this entire effort requires copy/pasting a bunch of commands from my chosen’s theme’s ReadMe doc.
But when I look at the result it seems worth the effort.
Provided that you run all of the documented commands in order and use common sense when applying them (like checking you’re in the right directory), you can make your Spotify look as sassy as mine too.
The sidebar in the Dribblish theme is collapsable, so here’s how it looks extended:
Also, the Dribbblish theme has a bunch of sub-variants (called modes) too:
And if Dribbblish isn’t to your tastes all don’t worry: there are plenty of other Spicetify Spotify themes to choose from, including these:
To use Spicetify with the Spotify Linux app you need to have the latest release installed from either the Spotify APT repo, from Flatpak, or from a community-based source like the AUR.
You can’t use Spicetify with the Spotify Snap.
Now, I’m not going to walk though all of the steps needed as the Spicetify docs do a better job. I will run-through the basics of getting the tool installed and set up on Ubuntu using the repo version of Spotify.
First, run the script to download and install Spicetify:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spicetify/spicetify-cli/master/install.sh | sh
Next, give Spicetify (and the world in general) permission to modify Spotify:
sudo chmod a+wr /usr/share/spotify
sudo chmod a+wr /usr/share/spotify/Apps -R
Once that’s done, cd into the Spicetify folder (assuming you ran the first command from your Home folder directly):
cd spicetify-cli
And run:
./spicetify backup apply enable-devtool
Then:
cd
And run (install git first if you haven’t):
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/spicetify/spicetify-themes.git
Followed by:
cd spicetify-themes
And copy them over to where they need to be:
cp -r * ~/.config/spicetify/Themes
Now you’re basically all set to change/apply themes.
You can preview the available themes (and make a note of their names, which are case-sensitive) and apply one like so:
~/spicetify-cli/spicetify config current_theme THEMENAME
Followed by:
~/spicetify-cli/spicetify apply
Some themes, including the ‘dribbblish’ theme I made use of, require you to run additional steps. These are listed in the theme’s ReadMe.md file and are relatively straightforward (just copy/paste commands).
That’s pretty much it in terms of themes, but do check out all of what Spicetify is capable of.