shpotify

shpotify is a simple Bash/Apple script to control Spotify from the command line on a Mac.

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Installation

Download and install the Spotify desktop application if you haven’t already.

With Homebrew

The easiest way to install shpotify is by using the Homebrew package manager:

brew install shpotify

Manual installation

If you don’t use Homebrew, you can install the script manually by following a few simple steps:

1. Fetch a copy of this repository, either with git or download the zip archive.

2. Navigate to the folder where you fetched the repository (unzip if needed) and make sure the file called spotify is executable:

   cd shpotify
   chmod +x spotify
   

3. Copy the file spotify to a convenient location in your PATH, or set your PATH to include the folder where the file is located.

Connecting to Spotify’s API

shpotify needs to connect to Spotify’s API in order to find music by name. It is very likely you want this feature!

To get this to work, you first need to sign up (or into) Spotify’s developer site and create an Application. Once you’ve done so, you can find its Client ID and Client Secret values and enter them into your shpotify config file at ${HOME}/.shpotify.cfg.

Be sure to quote your values and don’t add any extra spaces. When done, it should look like the following (but with your own values):

CLIENT_ID="abc01de2fghijk345lmnop"
CLIENT_SECRET="qr6stu789vwxyz"

Usage

With shpotify you can control Spotify with the following commands:

spotify play                       Resumes playback where Spotify last left off.
spotify play <song name>           Finds a song by name and plays it.
spotify play album <album name>    Finds an album by name and plays it.
spotify play artist <artist name>  Finds an artist by name and plays it.
spotify play list <playlist name>  Finds a playlist by name and plays it.
spotify play uri <uri>             Play songs from specific uri.

spotify next                       Skips to the next song in a playlist.
spotify prev                       Returns to the previous song in a playlist.
spotify replay                     Replays the current track from the beginning.
spotify pos <time>                 Jump to a specific time (in seconds) in the current song.
spotify pause                      Pauses (or resumes) Spotify playback.
spotify stop                       Stops playback.
spotify quit                       Stops playback and quits Spotify.

spotify vol up                     Increases the volume by 10%.
spotify vol down                   Decreases the volume by 10%.
spotify vol <amount>               Sets the volume to an amount between 0 and 100.
spotify vol [show]                 Shows the current volume.

spotify status                     Shows the play status, including the current song details.
spotify status artist              Shows the currently playing artist.
spotify status album               Shows the currently playing album.
spotify status track               Shows the currently playing track.

spotify share                      Displays the current song's Spotify URL and URI.
spotify share url                  Displays the current song's Spotify URL and copies it to the clipboard.
spotify share uri                  Displays the current song's Spotify URI and copies it to the clipboard.

spotify toggle shuffle             Toggles shuffle playback mode.
spotify toggle repeat              Toggles repeat playback mode.

Authors and contributing

shpotify is primarily written and maintained by Harish Narayanan.

Since it’s an open source project, it contains numerous contributions from many helpful people, including:

• Jorge Colindres
• Thomas Pritchard
• iLan Epstein
• Gabriele Bonetti
• Sean Heller
• Eric Martin
• Peter Fonseca

If you’re interested in contributing too, please consider addressing some of the issues people have previously reported and submitting a pull request. Thank you!

Copyright and license

Copyright (c) 2012–2023 Harish Narayanan.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.