Listening Party

A Listening Party keeps the playback of a host and one or more guests in sync, so everyone hears the same track at the same position. spotatui connects them through a small WebSocket relay.

Every participant needs a Spotify login, and Spotify in spotatui needs Premium. The party follows Spotify tracks only: while the host plays another source, the room stays open but the guests get nothing new.

Press Ctrl+p (the listening_party key) in the terminal app. The desktop app has a Listening party page.

Hosting

Press 1, h or Enter to start a party. spotatui creates a room on the relay and shows a 6-character code. Share it with your guests.

Your track, position and play or pause state go to the guests every 2 seconds.
c switches the control mode (below).
l ends the party. Esc only closes the menu; the party keeps running.

Joining

Press 2 or j, type the 6-character code, then your display name (up to 32 characters), and press Enter. Your playback then follows the host. When your position drifts by more than about 3 seconds, spotatui seeks again, with the network delay taken into account. l leaves the party.

Control modes

Mode	Behavior
Host only (default)	Only the host controls playback; guests follow.
Shared control	The host accepts playback commands from guests. spotatui guests do not send any yet, so this changes nothing for them today.

While a party runs

The playbar shows Party: N listeners (host) or Party: following <host> (guest), and a status message tells you when someone joins or leaves.

Your own relay

The default relay is wss://spotatui-party.spotatui.workers.dev/ws. To use your own, set it in config.yml:

behavior:
  relay_server_url: "wss://relay.example.com/ws"

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