Spotify Lyrics

A seamless, time-synced scrolling lyrics panel for the Noctalia desktop shell. It integrates directly into your Noctalia bar and displays a beautifully formatted, auto-scrolling lyrics card — no API keys, cookies, or web scraping required.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	goatnath/spotify-lyrics
Entries	Bar widget: lyrics; panel: lyrics-panel; desktop widget: lyrics-desktop

Requirements

This plugin requires playerctl, python3, and the syncedlyrics Python package.

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S playerctl python
pip install syncedlyrics

Usage

1. Set up the Background Daemon

The daemon listens to your media player (Spotify, MPD, etc.) and fetches the lyrics.

1. Copy the spotify_lyrics_daemon.py file to your preferred location (e.g., ~/.local/bin/).
2. Set it up to run in the background. The recommended way is using a systemd user service:

# ~/.config/systemd/user/noctalia-lyrics.service
[Unit]
Description=Noctalia Lyrics Daemon
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /path/to/spotify_lyrics_daemon.py
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Start and enable the daemon:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now noctalia-lyrics.service

2. Enable the Plugin

1. Install this plugin from the plugin manager or download the folder to ~/.local/share/noctalia/plugins/spotify-lyrics/.
2. Enable the plugin via CLI:

noctalia msg plugins enable goatnath/spotify-lyrics

3. Add the lyrics widget to your bar's layout in your ~/.local/state/noctalia/settings.toml (next to the media widget).

start = [ "launcher", "workspaces", "media", "lyrics" ]

3. Toggle the Lyrics Panel

Click the ♫ bar icon to toggle the panel, or run:

noctalia msg panel-toggle goatnath/spotify-lyrics:lyrics-panel

Notes

• Zero Configuration: Lyrics are pulled from public databases (LRCLIB, NetEase) automatically.
• Caching: The daemon caches lyrics and album art to ~/.cache/noctalia/lyrics/ so subsequent plays load instantly.
• Network: The daemon makes HTTPS requests to LRCLIB and NetEase for lyrics, and to the album art URL provided by MPRIS metadata.
• Processes: Requires a separate spotify_lyrics_daemon.py process running as a systemd user service.