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Installation

Refer to our Installation Guide for more details.

Python (Recommended Method)

• spotDL can be installed by running pip install spotdl.

• To update spotDL run pip install --upgrade spotdl

  On some systems you might have to change pip to pip3.

Other options

• Prebuilt executable
  • You can download the latest version from the Releases Tab
• On Termux
  • curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader/master/scripts/termux.sh | sh
• Arch
  • There is an Arch User Repository (AUR) package for spotDL.
• Docker

  • Build image:

    docker build -t spotdl .
    

  • Launch container with spotDL parameters (see section below). You need to create mapped volume to access song files

    docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/music spotdl download [trackUrl]
    

  • For Docker Compose and permission-managed Docker downloads, see the Docker section in /docs/index.md.

  • Build from source

    git clone https://github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader && cd spotify-downloader
    pip install uv
    uv sync
    uv run scripts/build.py
    

    An executable is created in spotify-downloader/dist/.

Installing FFmpeg

FFmpeg is required for spotDL. If using FFmpeg only for spotDL, you can simply install FFmpeg to your spotDL installation directory: spotdl --download-ffmpeg

We recommend the above option, but if you want to install FFmpeg system-wide, follow these instructions

• Windows Tutorial
• OSX - brew install ffmpeg
• Linux - sudo apt install ffmpeg or use your distro's package manager

Installing Deno

We strongly recommend installing Deno. spotDL uses yt-dlp for YouTube downloads, and some videos require Deno to download successfully. Without Deno, spotDL may fail to download some songs, including videos marked as "made for kids".

If using Deno only for spotDL, install Deno to your spotDL directory: spotdl --download-deno

If you want to install Deno system-wide instead, follow the official Deno installation guide.

Usage

Using SpotDL without options:

spotdl [urls]

You can run spotDL as a package if running it as a script doesn't work:

python -m spotdl [urls]

General usage:

spotdl [operation] [options] QUERY

There are different operations spotDL can perform. The default is download, which simply downloads the songs from YouTube and embeds metadata.

The query for spotDL is usually a list of Spotify URLs, but for some operations like sync, only a single link or file is required. For a list of all options use spotdl -h

Supported operations

• save: Saves only the metadata from Spotify without downloading anything.

  • Usage: spotdl save [query] --save-file {filename}.spotdl

• web: Starts a web interface instead of using the command line. However, it has limited features and only supports downloading individual songs.

• url: Get user-friendly URL for each song from the query.

  • Usage: spotdl url [query]

• sync: Updates directories. Compares the directory with the current state of the playlist. Newly added songs will be downloaded and removed songs will be deleted. No other songs will be downloaded and no other files will be deleted.

  • Usage: spotdl sync [query] --save-file {filename}.spotdl

    This creates a new sync file. To update the directory in the future, use:

    spotdl sync {filename}.spotdl

• meta: Updates metadata for the provided song files.

Music Sourcing and Audio Quality

spotDL uses YouTube as a source for music downloads. This method is used to avoid any issues related to downloading music from Spotify.

Note Users are responsible for their actions and potential legal consequences. We do not support unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material and take no responsibility for user actions.

Audio Quality

spotDL downloads music from YouTube and is designed to always download the highest possible bitrate; which is 128 kbps for regular users and 256 kbps for YouTube Music premium users.

Check the Audio Formats page for more info.

Contributing

Interested in contributing? Check out our CONTRIBUTING.md to find resources around contributing along with a guide on how to set up a development environment.

Join our amazing community as a code contributor

License

This project is Licensed under the MIT License.