If you’re a Spotify Premium subscriber — get you, fancy pants — did you know you easily stream music from the command line?
For: Premium on mobile and tablet Note: Group Session is in Beta, which means it’s being tested and features could change. Listen together, in real time. In a group session, everyone invited can control what plays. Open Spotify and play something.Tap at the bottom of the screen.Under Start a group Session tap START SE. MacOs Catalina 10.15 (19A583) After upgrading to Catalina, the Play button on the Mac Keyboard no longer controls Spotify. With Spotify open, no other music player, if I hit the Play/Pause button, it will open the Apple Music app and not control Spotify. Spotify's mobile apps for iOS and Android let you control the desktop software running on a Windows or Mac computer, providing they're on the same Wi-Fi network. You can import your own local music from the “Local Files” section in the Preferences menu. To get to it on a PC, go to Edit Preferences or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + P. On Mac find it in Spotify Preferences or the keyboard shortcut Command +. Hit “Add Source” to add any folders that have the music you’re looking for.
Like, music from the actual Spotify library?
Well, you can! Download lmms for mac. And it’s all thanks to an
ncurses Spotify written in Rust called (obviously) ncspot .
Now I know what you’re thinking: there is an official, sanctified, and (somewhat regularly) updated Spotify for Linux client for the desktop. It’s even available as a Snap.
Command line? Pah! Who needs it. We should use what Spotify gives us, for free, and say thanks, right?
And you’re right.
Well, half right.
Well, maybe not even half right because the official Spotify desktop app is aab outright, absolute, never ending garbage fire.
It works (sometimes) but it runs poorly. And while it might integrate with Linux DEs to the point I can smush a keyboard media key to skip a track, that’s only really useful if the thing plays some music to skip in the first place!
Maybe I’m being mean. But it has just taken me nigh on 6 minutes to go from launching the Spotify for Linux apps to it actually loading, let alone doing what I want (which is play New Found Glory’s cover of Eye of the Tiger in honour of the new Ubuntu 20.04 wallpaper) so whatever ??♂️.
ncspot is a CLI Spotify Player
Back to
ncspot , source code for which you’ll find up on Github.
Keep in mind that as this is a geekishly (new word, learn it) cool tool and superbly designed (for a terminal app) it isn’t what a man more patronising than me would describe as ‘grandpa-friendly’.
— tl;dr: this is not the “easiest” way to listen to Spotify on Linux.
But it works well, which is all I really care about as I like to listen to music, not stare at it.
Helpfully the app even boasts support for MPRIS, i.e. media player controls:
And it can be configured with keybindings too — neat!
Oh, I haven’t even mentioned that it’s super resource efficient yet, either!
That’s what I call a table.
But best of all
ncspot is very easy to install on virtually any Linux distro out there because it’s available as a Snap app on the Snapcraft store.
To install ncspot on Ubuntu run:
Boom — done! Ultramixer youtube plugin.
The first time you run
ncspot in a new terminal window you’ll be prompted to login with your Spotify Premium account. This is all “on screen” and easy to do. The app even saves your credentials after login so that you don’t have to login each time you use it.
And that’s pretty much all there is to it!
Elmo software download for mac. Be sure to take a few minutes out to glance over the litany of keyboard shortcuts needed to navigate the UI, manage tracks, queues and playlists, and so on.
Bad news: there are a lot of shortcuts to learn.
Good news: they are very logical and easy to remember.
Better yet, if you forget which key does what just press the
? key with the CLI tool in focus to call up a handy cheat sheet.
In summary, if you’re not put off by the idea of streaming music from a command line app and you happen to be a Spotify Premium subscriber there’s no better client out there than
ncspot .
P.S., in case you missed the memo in the copy above, this client does not work with free Spotify accounts. I checked. So, for something similar, try Tizonia instead.
Try it out and let me know what you think of it in the comments — and if you fancy hand crafting a Yaru-themed colour scheme for it, do share it below!
Found a cool CLI app for a task? Let me know about it via the tip form
H/t Popey
I don’t live in the US but I listen to music via Spotify’s web app when I’m writing or just browsing the net. I use the free ad-supported tier because I don’t need access to premium mobile features (podcasts FTW) and it’s better than blatant piracy.
Cool Tip: I use Hola Unblocker Chrome extension to mask my real location in Spotify’s web player. That’s also how I made the Spotify account.
Spotify Mac Download
The reason I don’t use Spotify’s stellar Mac app is because every week or so I get kicked off for “not being in a supported country”. I need to reinstall the app and wait for the game of cat and mouse to begin again. So eventually I just gave up and settled on the web player. I don’t get support for plugins but that’s OK.
One thing I sorely miss on the Mac app is access to Mac’s built in Play/Pause, Next, and Previous keys. When you’re listening to music on Spotify/Pandora/Rdio on the web, the tab is usually in the background. I hate going hunting for it every time I need to pause playback.
Which is why I’m glad to share with you a simple Mac menubar utility that lets you control more than a dozen web based music/media player sites using your Mac’s media keys. All you need to do is use a keyboard shortcut to set the current tab as active and just like that Mac’s media keys will take over the tab’s playback.
How To Install BeardedSpice
Download the zipped file from the website, use Mac’s built in Archive Utility to unzip it, and drag the unzipped app to the Applications folder. The first time you open the app, Mac will give a default warning. Just click Open.
Hello YouTube: BeardedSpice supports video sites like YouTube and Vimeo as well with no issues in performance. Scroll to the last section for the entire list of supported services.
Now you’ll see the BeardedSpice logo in the menubar. As the name suggests, the logo is a beard and a mustache.
How To Use And Configure BeardedSpice
Now that BeardedSpice is up and running, go to any of the supported web based media players. Click the menubar utility and you’ll see the media tab listed.
Click on a web page to activate it. A checkmark beside the selected site will show up.
Configuring Keyboard Shortcuts
To make the activation process for web based players as quick as possible, BeardedSpice supports keyboard shortcuts. The default shortcut to activate BeardedSpice is Cmd+F8. F8 is conveniently also the Play/Pause key.
But for some reason I found this shortcut to be buggy. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Thankfully, you can change the keyboard shortcut.
Spotify App For Mac
Click the BeardedSpice menubar utility and go to Preferences. Here click on the space beside Set active tab and type in your preferred shortcut. I have mine set to Cmd+8 as it’s right below the Play/Pause button.
Enable/Disable Supported Services
From the same Preferences menu you can decide which web players you don’t want BeardedSpice to interact with.
Here’s the entire list of supported web players:
Where Do You Plan On Using BeardedSpice?
What services do you plan on using BeardedSpice with? Do you wish that it supported more players like Netflix.com? Let us know in the comments below.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#music #spotify Did You Know
Since its launch, Shazam has been used more than 30 billion times to identify songs.
More in Internet and SocialA Guide to Scheduling Emails in Gmail on Mobile and DesktopComments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |