explaingit

rigellute/spotify-tui

★ 19,182RustAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5DormantLicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

A keyboard-driven Spotify client for the terminal that lets you browse playlists, search songs, and control playback without leaving the command line.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Browse playlists
      Search and play
      Control playback
      Like songs
    How to use
      Terminal interface
      Keyboard shortcuts
      Command-line scripting
    Setup
      Spotify account
      API key registration
      One-time config
    Platforms
      macOS
      Linux
      Windows 10
    Use cases
      Terminal workflow
      Music scripting
      Lightweight control

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Control Spotify playback from your terminal without opening the desktop app.

USE CASE 2

Write shell scripts to automate music playback, like playing a random song from a playlist.

USE CASE 3

Search for tracks and format the output for use in other command-line tools.

USE CASE 4

Integrate music control into a terminal-based workflow or development environment.

Tech stack

RustSpotify API

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires Spotify API credentials (OAuth setup) and Rust toolchain installation.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you keep the copyright notice and license text.

In plain English

Spotify TUI is a Spotify client for your terminal, written in Rust. Instead of opening the Spotify desktop app or web player, you control your music entirely through a keyboard-driven text interface in the command line. It connects to Spotify's official API, so you need a Spotify account (free or premium) and a brief one-time setup to register an API key. Once configured, you can browse your playlists, search for songs, play and pause tracks, like songs, toggle shuffle, and more, all without leaving the terminal. There is also a command-line interface for scripting: you can write a shell command to play a random song from a specific playlist, search for tracks with custom output formatting, or toggle playback from a script. The app is available on macOS, Linux (including Arch, Fedora, NixOS, and Void Linux), and Windows 10. You would use Spotify TUI if you prefer living in the terminal and want to control Spotify without the overhead of a graphical app, or if you want to script music playback as part of a workflow. It pairs well with spotifyd, a lightweight background Spotify daemon also mentioned in the README.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I set up spotify-tui with my Spotify account and get it running in my terminal?
Prompt 2
Show me how to write a shell script that uses spotify-tui to play a random song from one of my playlists.
Prompt 3
What keyboard shortcuts does spotify-tui support for browsing playlists and controlling playback?
Prompt 4
How can I use spotify-tui's command-line interface to search for songs and format the output for scripting?
Prompt 5
Can I use spotify-tui alongside spotifyd, and how would I set that up?
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.