It is primarily a CLI tool but apart from installation and activation, you don’t really have to do much in CLI. You can enjoy the extensions directly from Spotify app.sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install spotify-client
Table of Contents
Step 1: Prepare for installation
As far as the security concern, I cannot give a 100% yes or no. Spicetify is open source and so are all the extensions and themes. Of course, it is not possible to have a security check on all of them all the time. You should use extensions that have been recently updated and have good number of stars.For example, you can autoskip videos, hide podcasts entirely, compare playlists and much more. With themes, you can have a different looking interface.
Installing Spicetify on Ubuntu
It is not impossible to mess things up. The good thing is that you can restore the default Spotify looks with:
- Ensuring Spotify deb version installation
- Giving correct permission on Spotify folders
- Using a script to install Spicetify
Don’t install too many extensions unnecessarily. Remove the ones you don’t need.
Step 0: Remove Snap version of Spotify and get the debian version
spicetify restore
Not all extensions will work flawlessly, some might impact the Spotify app performance and user experience. For example, I installed a theme and it changed the interface and header menu was gone and I could not even access the market place or any other option. It can be reset which I discuss in later section.Else, remove the Snap version of Spotify with:sudo chmod a+wr /usr/share/spotify
sudo chmod a+wr /usr/share/spotify/Apps -R
Spicetify is installed without sudo permission and it has limited permission with read-write permissions to Spotify folders only. In theory, it should not impact anything other than Spotify on your system.Let’s see the steps in detail.Do that by running these two commands one by one:At the end of the entire thing, you’ll see an “error message” that “You haven’t backed up. Run “spicetify backup apply”. Press enter to install spicetify marketplace and the process continues.curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spicetify/cli/main/install.sh | sh
If you don’t do that, you’ll see the “Could not detect “prefs” file location” error later on.error Could not detect "prefs" file location.
success Default config-xpui.ini generated.
error Cannot detect Spotify "prefs" file location. Please manually set "prefs_path" in config-xpui.ini
Step 2: Start Spicetify installation
sudo snap remove spotify
curl -sS https://download.spotify.com/debian/pubkey_6224F9941A8AA6D1.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/spotify.gpg
spicetify restore
sudo apt install curl
By default, the extensions are displayed based on number of stars they have. This is already a good thing as it indicates that the extension should work properly.spicetify backup apply
rm -rf ~/.spicetify
rm -rf ~/.config/spicetify
Conclusion
Also, Spicetify works on client-side. Meaning, everything happens on your computer, not in your Spotify account. If you install Spotify on any other device, Spiectify changes won’t be there.
The open source project Spicetify lets you add a ‘marketplace’ feature to your Spotify app from where you can install extensions and themes.It’s not really an error and you should not just run ‘backup apply’ immediately. If you try to do that, it will show an error that “spicetify command not found”. That’s because spicetify is only recognized after the terminal session starts.When you click the install button, it is installed immediately and you’ll be asked to reload Spotify:
If you are a regular user of Spotify, you can customize the look, feel and behavior of Spotify application on Linux.
📋
Few tips on using the Spicetify marketplace
That’s okay. We handle it in the next step.
Choose your extensions wisely
Let me share a few tips from my Spicetify experience that should also help you.Now, all you have to do is fetch the official installation script and run it:In this tutorial, I’ll show the steps for installing Spotify on Ubuntu and Debian-based distributions.Only one theme can be installed and used at a time. And as soon as you install a theme, the previous one is no longer in installed state. Some themes have several color variants, though.
Theme it right, theme it once
spicetify apply
Update Spicetify
spicetify update
spicetify upgrade
Removing Spicetify
Again, ensure that you have Spotfiy app running and you are logged into it.snap list | grep spotify
Restart your terminal.Click on it and you shall see the option to install extensions, themes, snippets etc. Hover over an item and you’ll see the “install button”.Spicetify does not work with the Snap application. Check if you have snap version of Spotify installed on your Ubuntu system with:echo "deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list
🚧Congratulations! You can start enjoying Spicetify and customize your Spotify experience now.Once you have restarted the terminal, run the following command:
