frostify

A small, frosted-white-glass Spotify GUI for Hyprland. Your own front-end — browse playlists, search, like songs, add to playlists, and control playback — with audio played locally by spotifyd.

Built with PySide6 + QML: Python handles auth and the Spotify Web API (search, playlists, library); QML draws the UI. The glass look comes from a translucent window

• Hyprland's blur.

How it works

• Playback runs through spotifyd, a lightweight Spotify daemon. frostify controls it locally over D-Bus (MPRIS) — play/pause, skip, seek, and now-playing all happen with no network calls, so you never hit Spotify's API rate limits.
• Search, playlists and library use the Spotify Web API. These are cached and only fetched when you ask, so traffic stays tiny.
• Playback needs Spotify Premium (spotifyd's requirement). Browsing, searching, liking and editing playlists work on free accounts too.

Setup

1. Install dependencies (Arch)

sudo pacman -S pyside6 spotifyd
paru -S python-spotipy

On other distros: install spotifyd from your package manager (or cargo), plus PySide6 and spotipy via pip.

2. Configure spotifyd

Create ~/.config/spotifyd/spotifyd.conf:

[global]
device_name = "frostify"
device_type = "computer"
bitrate = 320
backend = "pulseaudio"   # or "alsa" / "pipewire" to match your audio setup
# required — lets frostify control playback over D-Bus instead of the Web API:
use_mpris = true
dbus_type = "session"

Then start it (and enable it so it's always running):

systemctl --user enable --now spotifyd

The first time, log spotifyd into your Spotify account — run spotifyd --no-daemon once and authorize via the Spotify app (Connect → "frostify"), or follow spotifyd's OAuth setup.

3. Make a Spotify app (for search/library)

1. Go to https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard → Create app.
2. Set the Redirect URI to exactly: http://127.0.0.1:8888/callback
3. Copy the Client ID (no client secret needed — frostify uses the PKCE flow).

4. Configure frostify

mkdir -p ~/.config/frostify
cp config.example.toml ~/.config/frostify/config.toml
# then edit ~/.config/frostify/config.toml and paste your Client ID

5. Log in (one time)

./run.sh --login

This opens your browser to authorize the app, then caches a refresh token at ~/.config/frostify/.cache. You won't have to do it again.

6. Run

./run.sh

Press play on any track in frostify — that hands playback to spotifyd, and from then on the now-playing bar and all transport controls run locally over D-Bus.

Note: spotifyd only exposes its D-Bus controls while it's the active playback device. So on a fresh launch the now-playing bar is empty until you play something through frostify; after that it stays live for the whole session.

Frosted look on Hyprland (optional)

Blur is automatic for the translucent window. To make it float at a nice size, add these to your Hyprland config (the app's class is frostify):

windowrulev2 = float, class:^(frostify)$
windowrulev2 = size 1100 720, class:^(frostify)$
windowrulev2 = center, class:^(frostify)$

Layout

frostify/
  frostify/            python package
    main.py            entry point: builds the QML engine, wires backend + theme
    backend.py         QObject bridge — Web API on a worker thread, playback over D-Bus
    auth.py            spotipy PKCE auth + scopes
    config.py          reads ~/.config/frostify/config.toml
    theme.py           the frosted-glass palette (exposed to QML as `Theme`)
    qml/               the UI
      Main.qml         window, layout, signal wiring
      Sidebar.qml      playlist list
      ContentView.qml  track list (playlist or search results)
      PreviewPane.qml  details for the selected playlist / track
      StatusBar.qml    transport controls + progress
      IconButton.qml   reusable round glyph button
      Toast.qml        little confirmation/error popup