An in-depth guide on modding Spotify with updated methods to remove ads, bypass country restrictions and theme the application

spotify.md

Spotify Modding & Guides

This is a collections of script, patches and procedures to mod Mobile and Desktop Spotify Applications.

If you know about something that isn't listed here and you would like it to be feel free to tell me about it in the comments or send an e-mail to dav@davoleo.net

Table of Contents

• Spotify Modding & Guides
  • Table of Contents
  • Disabling Ads
    • Desktop
      • Windows
        • Important Notes
      • Linux
    • Mobile (Android)
      • Steps
  • Theming the Desktop App
    • Spicetify CLI
  • Downgrading the Desktop App
    • Downgrading and Blocking updates
    • Unblocking Spotify Updates
  • Bypass Country Restrictions
    • Steps:
    • What do I do if I have a Premium subscription?
    • Additional Notes:
  • Saving Spotify Songs Locally
    • Spytify
      • Pros:
      • Cons:
      • Steps:

Disabling Ads

Desktop

Windows

Install the active fork of BlockTheSpot

Installation and update instructions are in the README

Important Notes

• If you have the Windows Store version of Spotify or you don't feel very confident use the "Fully Automated installation" method that installs the right version of Spotify and BlockTheSpot for you.
• The automated script will download the latest copy of the patch and apply it to Spotify.
• Important Note: After updating and Changing Theme via spicetify Spotify will need to be patched again by BlockTheSpot for it to work properly

Linux

spotify-adblock by abba23

Refer to the README on the repository page for more information on installation; it does assume the users to be experienced with the command line and buildind from sources, but if you're using Linux that means you probably have the skills to install it.

Mobile (Android)

Steps

• Uninstall any previous version of Spotify you may have had before
• Allow non-PlayStore apps installation in the settings
• Download and Install xManager-v2 for spotify
• Once opened this app will allow to install and update modded spotify versions as soon as they're out (you can also install an AMOLED Themed version, if you're display supports AMOLED)

Theming the Desktop App

To inject a custom theme into spotify we'll use a command line utility called Spicetify.

Spicetify CLI

Installation scripts are on this page of the spicetify CLI wiki

• Press Start + R, then write powershell and press Enter in the window that shows up
• In the powershell window that opens run the scripts you need depending on the OS

In the wiki what is referred to as "Spicetify Marketplace" is an extension that you can install that allows you to install plugins and themes from the Spotify app itself, just with simple clicks; it is recommended to install it if you don't know much about the commandline. Here's a screenshot of the interface:

In case you want to install themes from outside the marketplace you should refer to the project's installation instructions.

If you want to know more about the features of spicetify, its commands and their usage check out the Advanced Usage Page in the wiki and/or run spicetify -h to get the whole list of commands and their description.

Downgrading the Desktop App

There could be some reasons you might want to downgrade Spotify to a certain version (for example, during June/July 2021 spicetify broke due to serious changes in the latest version of Spotify and the only way to fix to keep using spicetify was to downgrade Spotify to the last compatible version)

Although whatever your reasons are to downgrade the app be sure it's the only way to solve your issue before doing it, as not getting updates means the app will not get new features and might at some point stop working due to deprecated functionality.

Here I'll be explaining how you can downgrade Spotify as well as making it a permanent downgrade that you can disable whenever you want manually.

Downgrading and Blocking updates

1. Document yourself on the version you're interested in having installed, then download it from this repository
2. Uninstall any Spotify version you already had on your machine (and cleanup any remeaining Spotify files/folders in %appdata% and %localappdata% directories)
3. Install the old version you downloaded from the repository above. (Don't log into your account after having installed the old version)
4. Open %appdata%\Spotify again and here create a new file changing it's name to Spotify_new.exe (be sure to change the actual extension and not to save it as a normal text file [if you don't see extension in the Explorer you can go in View section above and tick File Name Extensions])
5. Right click on that file -> Properties and tick the Read-Only checkbox
6. Open %localappdata%\Spotify here create a new folder called Update and be sure that it's empty then right click it go into Properties and then into the Security Tab
7. In the security tab you need to click Edit... and then check Deny on Full Control for each group/user name in the list above, then press Apply (as a proof you did correctly you should get a permission error when you try to open the folder)
8. After this you've successfully blocked Spotify Updates

Unblocking Spotify Updates

1. Open %localappdata%\Spotify and open the properties of the Update folder
2. Now in the Security tab you need to remove all the permission denial you added to block updates
3. To do that click on Edit... and for each group/user name you need to uncheck the Deny checkbox for all permissions in the list.
4. After that just keep using Spotify as normal and eventually the update to the latest version should pop up.

Bypass Country Restrictions

It is known that some songs on Spotify are released and available for a limited number of countries usually due to record labels or, less often, artists restricting the license under which they release songs.

If you happen to see songs that are greyed out like this: Then you could try using a tool like https://kira.vercel.app to find out where these songs are available.

If you're looking through a playlist you might not see unavailable songs at all if you have this option disabled in your Spotify Settings, so make sure that's enabled

You can bypass country restrictions with a Free VPN (even the ones that have a low free quota work just fine) and a Free Spotify Subscription

Steps:

1. Access a country where you know that the song is available via the VPN Service
2. Login on spotify.com
3. Click Profile at the top right and then Account
4. Click Profile and change your 'Country' to the one you want (you should see the option if you're accessing the website correctly through the VPN)
5. Log out of your account, then you can shutdown the VPN as you won't need it anymore
6. After changing the country in your account settings you should be able to listen to any song available in that country for about 14~15 days
7. After the two weeks timespan has passed you need to change the Country back to your original country and then start again from step 1. if you want to listen to those blocked songs again

Note: if, after step 5., you still see the songs greyed out, it could be a cache issue, in that case if you try playing the songs you should be able to play them anyways and, after waiting a while, you'll see those songs as unlocked.

What do I do if I have a Premium subscription?

You can't apply the same steps listed above if you have (or you've had in the past) a Premium subscription to Spotify because Spotify stores your country information from the credit card you've used to pay the subscription. The only way (that I know of) to change your country with a premium subscription is to get someone else from another country to use their credit card to pay your subscription or to pay a new subscription with a card that has different country information.

Additional Notes:

There are some countries that have an additional listening limit:

• Japan
  • 15 hours limit
  • Limit Resets once every 30 days beginning with the login
  • This affects every kind of device except mobile phones (patched android mobile application count as tablets)
  • Premium Subscribers are not affected by this limit

While there's only one country that has restriction that I know of, there may be others, feel free to tell me about others in the comments if you know them, also feel free to tell me if this restrictions are not a thing anymore in listed countries

Saving Spotify Songs Locally

The methods I write about here can be used to save spotify songs locally, but they don't actually stream those downloads from Spotify, that is because streaming directly from Spotify is highly prohibited and can get your account banned, as such I won't write about existing projects like Soggfy, if you're going to use them anyways, be aware of the risks involved.

Spytify

Spytify is a way to get Spotify streamed songs locally on your device, it works by recording Spotify's streamed sound.

Pros:

• You can get any song you can stream on Spotify locally without a Premium Subscription
• Works really well with the Country Restriction Bypass I wrote above, to stream and record region-blocked songs

Cons:

• It's not a download so you have to stream the song at least once before being able to listen to it locally
• It's Windows-Only
• You can only record songs up to 320kbps (Spotify Premium) or up to 160kbps (Spotify Free) of bitrate quality (lossy MP3)

Steps:

• Download Spytify from https://jwallet.github.io/spy-spotify/overview.html
• Read about the tool on the different pages of the website linked above
• Extract the zip file on your computer
• Setup Spytify to your needs
• Start a session to record your Spotify Songs

Spotiflyer is both an android and windows app (i think webapp too) that lets you download music off spotify AND other supporrted sites like youtube and soundcloud (i have trouble with soundcloud tho). noffty app if you want any other alternative to download songs locally

Is there a way to somehow login to Spotify by editing a file? Spotify website is blocked at my work so it seems I can't login in windows app

Awesome tricks but some of them are working and other are useless, that's why I use original spotify apk.

@Davoleo can we have the Linux section of the same included in the guide ? Here is the corresponding repo : https://github.com/abba23/spotify-adblock

I've included a link to that project in the last revision

Is there a way to somehow login to Spotify by editing a file? Spotify website is blocked at my work so it seems I can't login in windows app

I doubt there is, if they've blocked the domain at your workplace even using an already established authenticated session won't probably allow you to stream stuff correctly, your best bet is probably to just use your phone

@DaddyDiegoBrando

Spotiflyer is both an android and windows app (i think webapp too) that lets you download music off spotify AND other supporrted sites like youtube and soundcloud (i have trouble with soundcloud tho). noffty app if you want any other alternative to download songs locally

I haven't tried that app recently, but afaik it doesn't download directly from spotify but tries to find the song on multiple services online, it is a cool option I could add, but last time i tried it was very finnicky and buggy so I haven't included it
(I also have a Premium Subscription now so I don't really have the need to download songs locally as files as much anymore), although if you say it's better now and works well consistently I can work on adding it eventually.