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Spotifast lets you enjoy Spotify tracks while lowering RAM usage by 5x or more
Tired of RAM-hogging Electron apps? Spotifast should soothe your memory.
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It's a reasonable assessment that everyone and their dog is tired of Electron-based desktop apps that pack a full web browser and waste gobs of RAM. Spotify lovers now have a reprieve from the memory blues in the form of the Spotifast client.
Spotifast is an OS-native application written in Rust, with an emphasis on lowering memory consumption and CPU utilization. The author claims that the app ought to use 150-200 MB of RAM, compared to the usual 600 MB to 1 GB that the official application chews through.
By default, Spotifast offers a reasonable facsimile of the standard Spotify UI, though with additional features including an EQ-like visualizer on the play bar, and dozens of keyboard shortcuts and playlist management features.
The alternative client also packs a bevy of add-ons, including dark, light, and custom themes, Milkdrop visualization support, and a Winamp mode that turns Spotifast's UI into the much-beloved player.
There's even support for Winamp skins in the .wsz format, too. Those features may be tugging at nostalgia, but they're also a breath of fresh air in this age of excessive minimalism.
To use Spotifast, you'll need to have a Spotify Premium account, as presumably the ad delivery of the free version is tied to the official client. Once installed, you'll configure Spotifast as a connected device and grant it permissions to your account.
For now, there's no support for lossless audio, but that's subject to change — the librespot library underpinning Spotifast's playback doesn't yet support DRM'd lossless files, but might add the feature at some point, as popular demand seems quite high.
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