What is SpotKeys?
SpotKeys is a project I built one Saturday afternoon last fall to solve a problem that had been bugging me for a while. Imagine you’re browsing, writing an email, or playing a game with Spotify running in the background. A song comes on that you want to know the name of. For screen reader users, that means stopping what we’re doing, jumping over to the Spotify client, hunting for the song details, maybe adding it to our library (if we can figure out how), then jumping back to what we were doing, hoping we didn’t lose our place, and trying to get back into focus.
It might sound like a minor inconvenience, but for someone who likes to check song names, artists, and other details often, it’s a frustrating break in flow just to grab a bit of information.
SpotKeys offers an entire set of keyboard shortcuts that reads the current track details, lets users adjust playback, add or remove songs from their library, copy the current track’s URL to the clipboard, play tracks directly from URLs, and more.
Is it Public?
Technically, yes. The source code is on GitHub, but there are a few catches.
The Current Situation
Spotify’s Hostile API Policy
Newly created apps start out in Developer Mode, which allows up to 25 users. During this phase, every tester must be added manually.
As of May 15 this year, Spotify adopted a rather hostile policy toward individual developers. Apps that want to go beyond 25 users and enter Extended Quota Mode now need to meet strict criteria, such as being tied to a registered business or organization and having at least 250,000 monthly active users.
That makes it basically impossible for independent developers like me to publish projects for public use. This policy wipes out an entire middle class of creators who build tools to fill gaps the official Spotify client doesn’t cover, especially on desktop.
I Have to Grant You Access
For now, I have to manually add the email addresses of anyone testing the app to a list of approved users in my Spotify Developer dashboard. This is how Spotify enforces the 25-user testing limit and tracks who’s making requests. So, you can’t just download the app and start using it. I need to add you to the list, like the nerdiest bouncer ever.
What’s My Plan?
Honestly, I don’t know. Right now, SpotKeys has just over a dozen active testers, so I’m not close to hitting the 25-user ceiling yet. I’m being careful about who I add while I figure out what comes next.
If It’s Open Source, Can People Host Their Own?
Absolutely. Just keep in mind that running your own copy means trusting my code to act on your behalf. You’re welcome to spin up your own version of SpotKeys under your own Spotify Developer account, but doing so carries some small risk. If there’s ever a bug or security issue, it could compromise your developer account, or even your personal Spotify account if you use the same email for both.
What’s the Vision for the Project?
I want to reach as many Windows screen reader users who love Spotify as I can. I enjoy building tools that make life easier for myself and others. The feedback I’ve received so far has been really encouraging. People love being able to hear the current song’s name with a single shortcut without breaking focus.
As I said earlier, I don’t have a clear plan for what happens once we hit 25 users. I could technically walk people through setting up their own versions, but that’s more work for them, more work for me to troubleshoot, and it would mean updating the app so it talks to Spotify’s API through their credentials instead of mine.
Final Thoughts
SpotKeys is my first real attempt at building software for a wider audience of blind users who rely on screen readers coming from various technical backgrounds. It’s been a fun and rewarding project so far, and I hope to keep refining it. For now, it serves a small handful of users who find it highly valuable, and my hope is Spotify loosens their policy so I may reach a greater number of users.