A desktop app that turns a screen into a live display of whatever's currently playing on Spotify — full album art, fullscreen or windowed, a small widget mode, ambient idle-mode slideshows when nothing's playing, and hover-to-reveal playback controls.
Built with Tauri v2, SvelteKit (Svelte 5), and Tailwind CSS v4.
- A dedicated ambient display
- Features
- Download
- First-time setup
- Known issues
- Building from source
- Tech stack
- License
This is the primary intended use case: an old monitor, a Raspberry Pi, and this app turned into a small always-on cover art display sitting on a desk or shelf — no PC required once it's set up.
It works just as well as a normal desktop app on Windows or Linux, but this — a spare screen and a cheap Pi, permanently showing whatever's playing — is what it's actually built for.
Now Playing Full-bleed cover art with track/artist/album, long text scrolls once so it can be read in full, and a live progress bar tracking playback position.
Widget Mode A small window for keeping the current cover art visible while doing other things — remembers its own size and position across restarts.
Playback Controls Hover over the cover art to darken/blur it and reveal Back / Play-Pause / Forward — works in Now Playing, every idle mode, and widget mode. Can be turned off entirely in settings.
Idle Modes When nothing's playing, the app doesn't just sit blank — pick one:
- Video Art — loops your own ambient video files/URLs as a background
- Library Covers — shuffles through album covers from your Liked Songs
- Picture Frame — slideshow of your own photos, with an optional black & white filter
An optional ambient clock can overlay any idle mode.
Deep customization Accent color, metadata background style (solid color / color extracted from the cover / the cover art itself, blurred and extended), transparency, text color and opacity, font, and more — all through an in-app settings window. Also available as a standalone popup window when running in Widget Mode.
Remembers itself Window position, size, and whether it was in widget mode all persist across restarts (and survive a full PC reboot, not just closing the app). Login persists too — sign in once.
Grab the latest build for your platform from the Releases page.
| Platform | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | *_x64-setup.exe |
Just run it |
| Linux — Ubuntu / Debian / Pop!_OS / Mint | *_amd64.deb |
sudo apt install ./file.deb, or double-click in most file managers |
| Linux — Fedora / openSUSE | *.x86_64.rpm |
sudo dnf install ./file.rpm or sudo zypper install ./file.rpm |
| Linux — any distro | *_amd64.AppImage |
No installation: chmod +x, then run |
| Raspberry Pi (64-bit OS, Pi 3/4/5) | *_arm64.deb / *.aarch64.rpm / *_aarch64.AppImage |
Same as above, ARM64 build |
- Install and launch the app.
- Click Connect to Spotify on the login screen — this opens Spotify's own authorization page in your browser.
- Approve access, and you're back in the app, signed in for good (no need to log in again on future launches).
- Play something on any Spotify device (phone, desktop, web) — the cover art shows up automatically.
- Open the gear menu (top-right corner) for Settings, Widget Mode, Fullscreen, and Logout.
A Spotify account is required to sign in. Playback control (play/pause/skip) requires Spotify Premium, per Spotify's own API restrictions — reading what's currently playing works on any account.
- Linux: the "Transparent" background option for the metadata area doesn't currently produce the intended effect. It's one optional visual setting — everything else works normally. A fix is planned.
Found something else? Please open an issue.
Requires Rust and Node.js 18+. On Linux, also libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, libgtk-3-dev, libayatana-appindicator3-dev, librsvg2-dev, and patchelf.
npm install
npm run tauri buildBundled installers land in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.
Raspberry Pi: cross-compiling a Tauri app for ARM is unreliable due to native WebKitGTK bindings — build directly on the Pi itself. See docs/BUILD_RASPBERRY_PI.md for exact steps.
- Tauri v2 (Rust backend, native webview)
- SvelteKit with Svelte 5 runes
- Tailwind CSS v4
- Spotify Web API via OAuth Authorization Code with PKCE (no client secret required)