ncspot

ncurses Spotify client written in Rust using librespot. It is heavily inspired by ncurses MPD clients, such as ncmpc. My motivation was to provide a simple and resource friendly alternative to the official client as well as to support platforms that currently don't have a Spotify client, such as the *BSDs.

Resource footprint comparison

Measured using ps_mem on Linux during playback:

Client	Private Memory	Shared Memory	Total
ncspot	22.1 MiB	24.1 MiB	46.2 MiB
Spotify	407.3 MiB	592.7 MiB	1000.0 MiB

Requirements

Rust
Python 3 (needed for building rust-xcb dependency)
libpulse-dev (or portaudio-dev, if you want to use the PortAudio backend)
libncurses-dev and libssl-dev
libdbus-1-dev
libxcb + development headers (for clipboard access)
A Spotify premium account
pkg-config

On Debian based systems you need following packages for libxcb development headers:

sudo apt install libpulse-dev libssl-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev

For Fedora, these dependencies are required:

dnf install pulseaudio-libs-devel libxcb-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel dbus-devel

Usage

Install the latest ncspot release using cargo install ncspot
- or build it yourself using cargo build --release
- both approaches require a working Rust installation
For debugging, pass a debug log filename, e.g. ncspot -d debug.log

Audio backends

By default ncspot is built using the Rodio backend. To make it use the PortAudio backend (e.g. for *BSD or macOS), you need to recompile ncspot with the portaudio_backend feature:

cargo run --no-default-features --features portaudio_backend,cursive/pancurses-backend

Key Bindings

The keybindings listed below are configured by default. Additionally, if you run ncspot with MPRIS support, you may be able to use media keys to control playback depending on your desktop environment settings. Have a look at the configuration section if you want to set custom bindings.

? show help screen
Navigate through the screens using the F-keys:
- F1: Queue
  - c clears the entire queue
  - d deletes the currently selected track
  - Ctrl-s opens a dialog to save the queue to a playlist
- F2: Search
- F3: Library
  - d deletes the currently selected playlist
Tracks and playlists can be played using Return and queued using Space
. will move to the currently playing track in the queue.
s will save, d will remove the currently selected track to/from your library
o will open a detail view or context menu for the selected item
Shift-o will open a context menu for the currently playing track
a will open the album view for the selected item
A will open the artist view for the selected item
Backspace closes the current view
Shift-p toggles playback of a track
Shift-s stops a track
Shift-u updates the library cache (tracks, artists, albums, playlists)
< and > play the previous or next track
f and b to seek forward or backward
Shift-f and Shift-b to seek forward or backward in steps of 10s
- and + decrease or increase the volume
r to toggle repeat mode
z to toggle shuffle playback
q quits ncspot
x copies a sharable URL of the song to the system clipboard
Shift-x copies a sharable URL of the currently selected item to the system clipboard

You can also open a Vim style commandprompt using :, the following commands are supported:

quit: Quit ncspot
toggle: Toggle playback
stop: Stop playback
previous/next: Play previous/next track
clear: Clear playlist
share [current | selected]: Copies a sharable URL of either the selected item or the currernt song to the system clipboard

The screens can be opened with queue, search, playlists and log, whereas search can be supplied with a search term that will be entered after opening the search view.

Configuration

Configuration is saved to ~/.config/ncspot/config.toml. Possible configuration values are:

use_nerdfont: Turn nerdfont glyphs on/off <true/false>
theme: Set a custom color palette (see below)
backend: Audio backend to use, run ncspot -h for a list of devices
backend_device: Audio device string to configure the backend
audio_cache: Enable or disable caching of audio files, on by default <true/false>
volnorm: Enable or disable volume normalization, off by default <true/false>
volnorm_pregain: Normalization pregain to apply (if enabled)
default_keybindings: If disabled, the default keybindings are discarded, off by default <true/false>

Keybindings can be configured in [keybindings] section in config.toml, e.g. as such:

[keybindings]
"Shift+i" = "seek +10000"

See the help screen by pressing ? for a list of possible commands.

ncspot will respect system proxy settings defined via the http_proxy environment variable.

Initial state

The initial state can be specified in the configuration. It allows for example enabling shuffle per default. Following entries can be added to the configuration file:

[saved_state]
volume = 80
repeat = "track"
shuffle = true

volume needs to be an integer value between 0 and 100
repeat can be "track", "playlist" or any other value which defaults to no
shuffle must be "true" or "false"

Theming

The color palette can be modified in the configuration. For instance, to have ncspot match Spotify's official client, you can add the following entries to the configuration file:

[theme]
background = "black"
primary = "light white"
secondary = "light black"
title = "green"
playing = "green"
playing_selected = "light green"
playing_bg = "black"
highlight = "light white"
highlight_bg = "#484848"
error = "light white"
error_bg = "red"
statusbar = "black"
statusbar_progress = "green"
statusbar_bg = "green"
cmdline = "light white"
cmdline_bg = "black"

More examples can be found in pull request hrkfdn#40.

hhsnopek / ncspot