spotify-tui

• spotify-tui

  • A Spotify client for the terminal written in Rust.
    

  • GitHub/Star count: 19,244 as of 2026-06-27 Sat
  • Historically important predecessor to later Spotify terminal user interfaces, but it needs an external playback client such as the official Spotify app or spotifyd.
  • Latest release is much older than spotify-player and ncspot, so it is best treated as reference material rather than the first client to adopt.

  • Technical Aspects

    • Built with Rust 2018.
    • Binary name: spt.
    • Uses Spotify's Web API. The Web API is Spotify's HTTP-based application programming interface for searching, playback control, library actions, and account data.
    • Does not stream audio by itself. It controls another Spotify playback device, such as the official Spotify app or spotifyd.
    • Uses OAuth for login. OAuth is the sign-in delegation protocol that lets the app ask Spotify for limited account access without storing the user's Spotify password.
    • Stores Spotify client credentials in ${HOME}/.config/spotify-tui/client.yml.
    • Stores interface configuration in ${HOME}/.config/spotify-tui/config.yml.
    • Notable direct Rust libraries:
      • rspotify 0.10 for Spotify Web API access.
      • tui 0.16 with the crossterm backend for terminal layout and rendering.
      • crossterm 0.20 for terminal input, screen control, and styling.
      • tokio 0.2 for asynchronous work.
      • clap 2 for command-line argument parsing.
      • serde, serde_json, and serde_yaml for reading and writing structured data.
      • arboard for clipboard support.
      • unicode-width for measuring terminal text width.

  • Features

    • Terminal user interface plus a command-line interface. A command-line interface is a set of commands that can be run directly from the shell.
    • Search for tracks, albums, artists, and playlists.
    • Browse saved tracks, saved albums, followed artists, playlists, and recently played tracks.
    • Control playback on an available Spotify device.
    • Like and unlike tracks.
    • Configure theme colors, keybindings, playback step sizes, icons, and window-title behavior.
    • Copy song or album web addresses to the clipboard.

  • Supply Chain Notes

    • Cargo.lock shows about 255 locked package entries, 224 unique Rust/crate names, 14 direct dependencies, and an approximate longest dependency chain of 13 edges.
    • The tree is smaller than ncspot because spotify-tui mostly controls Spotify through the Web API instead of implementing audio playback.
    • The most security-relevant parts are network authentication, token storage, clipboard access, and the local callback server used during OAuth login.
    • The older stack is the main concern: tokio 0.2, clap 2, tui 0.16, crossterm 0.20, and rspotify 0.10 are all old by 2026 standards.
    • rspotify brings in HTTP and TLS (Transport Layer Security) dependencies through reqwest and native-tls. On Linux, source builds also need OpenSSL development files and pkg-config.
    • The lockfile has multiple versions of some foundational crates, including bytes, mio, rand, url, idna, proc-macro2, quote, and syn. Duplicate versions are common in older Rust projects, but they increase review work.
    • For security-sensitive use, prefer spotify-player or ncspot over this project unless there is a specific reason to use spt.