If you’re a Spotify user then it must have saddened you when it discontinued its lyrics feature. I don’t know why such a cool feature was taken out but my guess is things might remain unchanged for a while. The good news is we have found an excellent tool to fill in the gap – meet Instant Lyrics.
Instant Lyrics is an app that lets you automatically get the lyrics to whatever current playing track is in your Spotify desktop client nicely displayed in a window.
It was written by Bhrigu S in Python Gtk+3 (gi) to be swift and responsive with a beautiful UI that nicely integrates with your desktop – which includes virtually all the common Linux desktop environments including Unity, Gnome, and Cinnamon.
Instant Lyrics works with Spotify’s official desktop client and lives in the system tray area without interfering with your workflow.
Features in Instant Lyrics
- A beautiful and responsive UI
- Instant lyrics for Spotify tracks
- Search for lyrics without needing to use Spotify
Install Instant Lyrics on Linux
Instant Lyrics doesn’t have an installer yet, you will have to install it from source. To install from source you will first need to install the app dependencies specific to your Linux distro:
Ubuntu/Debian based systems
$ sudo apt install python-gi python-dbus gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1 python-requests python-bs4 python-lxml
Fedora Linux
$ sudo dnf install dbus-python python-gobject libappindicator-gtk3 python2-requests python-beautifulsoup4 python2-lxml
Arch Linux
$ sudo pacman -S python2-dbus python2-requests python2-lxml python2-beautifulsoup4 python2-gobject libappindicator-gtk3
Next, clone the Instant Lyrics and navigate to the directory in which you want to install the Instant Lyrics using your Terminal and enter the following:
$ git clone https://github.com/bhrigu123/Instant-Lyrics.git $ cd Instant-Lyrics/ $ python InstantLyrics.py
After installing from source, create a Instant Lyrics shortcut on Desktop. Open your system’s Preferences and click on the button ‘Create Desktop Entry‘ after which you will see Instant Lyrics application shortcut in your launcher menu.
The installation process might be a turn-off but once you’re past it’s all roses. Feel free to share your experience with Instant Lyrics in the comments section below.
How do i Uninstall the app assist please
Preferably, with your package manage of choice. Synaptic package manager is a good option.