SpotiByeAds

No one likes interruptions! Don't you hate it when you're listening to your favorite jazz track or your EDM playlist and an ad for Old Spice or Pepsi starting playing interrupting your mood? With SpotiByeAds, you can listen ad-free allowing you to concentrating less on those ads and more towards the task at hand!

How it works?

SpotiByeAds or SBA for short utilizes Python with the SpotiPy API and Pynput Libraries as well as the os and sys modules in order to provide you with an ad-free experience.

First, it asks you for your Spotify Username, Client ID and Client Secret (which is done by running python main.py). Of course if you've used this program and have saved the credentials, it should load a json file with your credentials in it and if not, it will ask for your credentials. Note that whenever you enter your credentials, you have the option of either saving your credentials for future use or keeping your credentials just for that session of using SBA.

After SBA has your credentials, it will establish a connection with Spotify by restarting it and setting it to your last known track/playlist. When an ad enters your spotify queue, SBA will detect the current track as an ad and restart the app. After the restart, SBA will automatically queue up the next track!

Requirements

• Python 3
• Pip (Python's Package Manager)

Installation

It should be noted that this is a quick way to get SBA (SpotiByeAds) up and running!

For a detailed documentation, go here.

• First, clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/daspartho/SpotiByeAds.git 

• Then, change your current directory into the SpotiByeAds repository.

cd SpotiByeAds

• Finally, install the requirements in the requirements file.

pip install -r requirements.txt

• From here, SpotiByeAds is installed. Continue to the Setting Up section in order to connect SpotiByeAds to Spotify itself.

Setting up

You should need to do these only the first time.

1. Go to https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard and sign in with your Spotify account.
2. Click on the 'CREATE AN APP' option and provide an app name and app description as you'd like.
3. Go to 'EDIT SETTINGS' and fill in the Redirect URIs placeholder with http://localhost:8080/, and click on Save.
4. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret and paste it in when you start the script later on.
   • ⚠️ Please remember to never share your Client Secret with anyone. This could lead to your account getting stolen or irregular Spotify user behavior that could lead to account termination.
   • Developers of SpotiByeAds will never ask for your Client Secret.

⚠️⚠️⚠️

If you are on Linux and installed a containerized version of Spotify (e.g via Snap or Flatpack) or any unofficial forms of distribution, please paste the path to the Spotify executable on your computer (or a command that starts up the Spotify app) in the main.py script on the line described below:

    PATH = (shutil.which("spotify")  # For any system with spotify on $PATH
            or ("{HOMEDRIVE}{HOMEPATH}\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Spotify.exe"
                .format_map(os.environ) if os.name == "nt"  # Windows
                else "/Applications/Spotify.app" if sys.platform == "darwin"  # MacOS
                else ""  # Custom path if installation is different
               )
           )

Please find this part of the script and paste the path/command within the "" (empty quotes) on the line with the comment # Custom path ....

This is also applicable on any other OS, if the Spotify installation path is different from the usual (and is not included in the $PATH environment variable).

⚠️⚠️⚠️

Usage

1. Open Spotify and start your favourite track.
2. Run the script from a terminal using python main.py in the local repository's directory (or probably by double-cliking on the main python script from your file explorer on Windows).
   • If it's the first time running the script, enter your Spotify username and paste in the Client ID and Client Secret when prompted to enter them.
3. Congratulations! You can now listen to Spotify with no ads and the peace of mind you deserve 😁.

Pausing playback, Skipping tracks, Changing playlists.

Due to the way the script works, pausing and playing or manually changing tracks disrupts it's work, such that the next ad that comes up might not be skipped. Not, to worry, the script has a way around this...

When you want to perform any of these actions:

1. Go to the terminal where in the script is running.
2. Press Ctr-C i.e hold down the Ctrl key and tap the C key.
3. Follow the prompts to perform your desired action.

⚠️Note: If you're using Command Prompt on windows, please note that it might have some unwanted behaviour with keyboard input that affects this feature. You are strongly adviced to run the script in Windows Powershell.

Contributing

If you want to contribute code, just write a quick pull request and the developers will take a look at it. If you want to suggest an idea, just write an issue and the developers will check it out!

Building

MacOS / Linux

If you'd like to build for Mac / Linux, do the following:

1. To build in a development environment (to make sure it works right), run python setup.py py2app -A. Please note: This builds the app in something called alias mode. This is NOT a proper build, and will only work on the machine it was run on.
2. To build a proper package, run python setup.py py2app.

Any major platform

You'll need Python 3 with the PyInstaller package installed. The run the following command in a terminal from the project directory.

pyinstaller --onefile --collect-submodules pynput -c -n SpotiByeAds main.py

If succesful, then check for the executable file in the dist/ directory created.