Installation¶

pyspotify is packaged for various operating systems and in multiple Linux distributions. What way to install pyspotify is best for you depends upon your OS and/or distribution.

Debian/Ubuntu: Install from apt.mopidy.com¶

The Mopidy project runs its own APT archive which includes pyspotify built for:

Debian 9 (Stretch), which also works for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Debian 10 (Buster), which also works for Ubuntu 19.10 and newer.

The packages are available for multiple CPU architectures: i386, amd64, armel, and armhf (compatible with Raspbian and all Raspberry Pi models).

To install and receive future updates:

Add the archive’s GPG key:

wget -q -O - https://apt.mopidy.com/mopidy.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

If you run Debian stretch or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:

sudo wget -q -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mopidy.list https://apt.mopidy.com/stretch.list

Or, if you run any newer Debian/Ubuntu distro:

sudo wget -q -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mopidy.list https://apt.mopidy.com/buster.list

Install pyspotify and all dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-spotify

Arch Linux: Install from AUR¶

If you are running Arch Linux on x86 or x86_64, you can install pyspotify using the python2-pyspotify package found in AUR.

To install pyspotify with all dependencies, run:
```
yay -S python2-pyspotify
```

Note

AUR does not provide libspotify for all CPU architectures e.g. arm. See installing from source in these cases.

macOS: Install wheel package from PyPI with pip¶

From PyPI, you can install precompiled wheel packages of pyspotify that bundle libspotify. The packages should work on all combinations of:

macOS 10.6 and newer
32-bit and 64-bit
Apple-Python, Python.org-Python, Homebrew-Python

Make sure you have a recent version of pip, which will default to installing a wheel package if available:
```
pip install --upgrade pip
```
Install pyspotify:
```
pip install pyspotify
```

macOS: Install from Homebrew¶

The Mopidy project maintains its own Homebrew tap which includes pyspotify and its dependencies.

Install Homebrew.
Make sure your installation is up to date:
```
brew update
brew upgrade --all
```
Install pyspotify from the mopidy/mopidy tap:
```
brew install mopidy/mopidy/pyspotify
```

Install from source¶

If you are on Linux, but your distro don’t package pyspotify, you can install pyspotify from PyPI using the pip installer. However, since pyspotify is a Python wrapper around the libspotify library, pyspotify necessarily depends on libspotify and it must be installed first.

libspotify¶

libspotify is provided as a binary download for a selection of operating systems and CPU architectures from our unofficial libspotify archive. If libspotify isn’t available for your OS or architecture, then you’re out of luck and can’t use pyspotify either.

To install libspotify, use one of the options below, or follow the instructions in the README file of the libspotify tarball.

Debian/Ubuntu¶

If you’re running a Debian-based Linux distribution, like Ubuntu, you can get Debian packages of libspotify from apt.mopidy.com. Follow the instructions above to make the apt.mopidy.com archive available on your system, then install libspotify:

sudo apt-get install libspotify-dev

Arch Linux¶

libspotify for x86 and x86_64 is packaged in AUR. To install libspotify, run:

yay -S libspotify

Note

AUR only provides libspotify binaries for x86 and x86_64 CPUs. If you require libspotify for a different CPU architecture you’ll need to download it from our unofficial libspotify archive instead.

macOS¶

If you’re using Homebrew, it has a formula for libspotify in the mopidy/mopidy tap:

brew install mopidy/mopidy/libspotify

Build tools¶

To build pyspotify, you need a C compiler, Python development headers, and libffi development headers. All of this is easily installed using your system’s package manager.

Debian/Ubuntu¶

If you’re on a Debian-based system, you can install the pyspotify build dependencies by running:

sudo apt install build-essential python-dev python3-dev libffi-dev

Arch Linux¶

If you’re on Arch Linux, you can install the pyspotify build dependencies by running:

sudo pacman -S base-devel python2 python

macOS¶

If you’re on macOS, you’ll need to install the Xcode command line developer tools. Even if you’ve already installed Xcode from the App Store, e.g. to get Homebrew working, you should run this command:

xcode-select --install

Note

If you get an error about ffi.h not being found when installing the cffi Python package, try running the above command.

pyspotify¶

With libspotify and the build tools in place, you can finally build pyspotify.

To download and build pyspotify from PyPI, run:

pip install pyspotify

Or, if you have a checkout of the pyspotify git repo, run:

pip install -e path/to/my/pyspotify/git/clone

Once you have pyspotify installed, you should head over to Quickstart for a short introduction to pyspotify.