Spicetify lets you customize your Spotify desktop app - Here's how to use it (2024)

If you love listening to music all the time, you probably use music streaming applications like Spotify. While I've never had many complaints about Spotify, the most recent update to the desktop and web clients which saw a complete overhaul of its UI has annoyed a lot of people. What if you could customize the UI to your liking instead? What if you could pick and choose what features you want to add? Enter Spicetify, a command-line interface application that lets you customize your Spotify desktop client.

How to install and use Spicetify

First and foremost, this tutorial is for Windows users, and you'll need to be using the official Spotify desktop client downloaded from Spotify — not from the Windows Store. If you have Spotify installed from the Windows store, you'll need to uninstall it and re-install it from the official website. If you use Linux or macOS, you can take a look at the official GitHub page for more information on how to install it on your machine. If you're using Windows, then read on!

Step 1: Installing with PowerShell

By far the easiest way of installing Spicetify is by using Windows PowerShell. Simply run the following command.

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/khanhas/spicetify-cli/master/install.ps1" | Invoke-Expression 

If you see an output that looks anything like the above, you're good to move onto the next step!

Step 2: Setting up Spicetify

Once Spicetify is installed, you still need to configure it to point to your current Spotify install. Generate the default config file with the following command. This will find your current Spotify installation.

spicetify 

Now run the following command, which will apply the default Spicetify theme and patches to your Spotify client.

spicetify backupapplyenable-devtool 

If you see an output similar to the above, then that means you're good to go. If you launch Spotify, you should see Spicetify's default light theme applied.

Step 3: Installing a custom theme

Now that you have Spicetify all set up, it's time to install a custom theme! Here is a fantastic GitHub repository filled with custom themes that you can install. On Windows, you can navigate to C:/Users/<your username>/.spicetify to find where you need to save your themes and extensions for Spicetify. If you want to install a custom theme, navigate to the themes folder, create a new folder named after the theme you want to install, and save the color.ini and user.css files in this folder.

Next, navigate back to the .spicetify folder and open the config.ini file. Change current_theme from SpicetifyDefault to the name of the theme folder that you created. For me, I changed its value to "Elementary". When you're ready, run the following command.

spicetify apply 

Spotify should now re-launch, and if it worked, you'll see your new theme applied!

Step 4: Installing extensions and apps

Spicetify isn'tjust about themes — you can install extensions, too! You install these in C:/Users/<your username>/.spicetify/extensions, and you can view a full list of the officially supported extensions here. There's a Reddit app too, which can fetch the top 100 Spotify posts in any given subreddit. It can even fetch YouTube posts and play them on Spotify. While I had some trouble getting this working (as the Spotify-made GLUE CSS didn't load), it's worth giving a shot to see if it works for you!

You're done!

If you followed all of the steps above, you should have Spicetify completely configured and ready to go. It's a bit of a convoluted process, but once you get it working, it's a great way to customize your Spotify desktop client to your own liking. If you find any great themes, apps, or extensions, let us know in the comments below!