Listening Party

Listening Party

A Listening Party synchronizes playback between a host and one or more guests in real time, so everyone hears the same track at the same position. spotatui connects host and guests through a lightweight WebSocket relay.

Opening the Party screen

Press Ctrl-p (the listening_party keybinding) to open the Party screen.

Hosting a party

From the Party screen, start a party by pressing 1, h, or Enter. spotatui creates a room on the relay and displays a 6-character party code. Share that code with the people you want to invite.

As the host:

• Your playback is broadcast to all guests (current track, position, and play/pause state).
• Press c to toggle the control mode (see below).
• Press l to leave / close the party. The guests are notified that the room has closed.

Joining a party

From the Party screen, press 2 or j to enter the join flow:

1. Type the 6-character code the host shared.
2. Type a display name (up to 32 characters).
3. Press Enter to join.

Once joined, your playback follows the host. spotatui corrects drift automatically: if your position diverges by more than ~3 seconds it re-seeks, compensating for network latency. Press l to leave.

Control modes

Mode	Behavior
Host only (default)	Only the host controls playback; guests receive sync updates.
Shared control	Guests can send playback commands (play/pause/next/previous/seek) to the host, who executes them and re-broadcasts the new state.

The host switches modes with c on the Party screen.

What gets synced

On each sync the host sends: the track URI, current position (ms), play/pause state, and a timestamp used for latency compensation. Guests apply track changes, play/pause corrections, and position re-seeks based on that payload.

Requirements & notes

• Each participant controls their own Spotify playback, so everyone needs an active playback device. Native streaming (playing audio directly in spotatui) requires Spotify Premium — see Native Streaming.
• The default relay is wss://spotatui-party.spotatui.workers.dev/ws. You can point spotatui at your own relay with relay_server_url in config.yml (see Configuration).
• The party code is the only thing guests need; there is no account requirement to join.