- Spotifast is a native Spotify desktop app that doesn’t eat up all your RAM
- It stores all of your playlists, allowing you to browse, search, and play music
- You need Spotify Premium for it to work
I love using Spotify’s desktop app for a handful of reasons, but mainly because it’s a much easier way for me to create and manage my playlists — I’ve always preferred navigating larger screens for the best music streaming services.
Despite this, one of the biggest downsides to using Spotify in its desktop form as opposed to its mobile app is the substantial amount of RAM it eats up (it can use anything from 600MB to over 1GB). That’s where Spotifast comes to save the day.
Spotifast is a new lightweight native desktop app that connects to your Spotify account and imports all of your music. As its name suggests, it’s designed to decrease RAM consumption without compromising speedy performance, which its developer says loads “in well under a second and typically uses 100–250 MB of memory” on Spotifast’s information page.
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To get started, you’ll need to be a Spotify Premium subscriber, and will need to grant two approvals; one for access to your Library, and the other to play music on your computer. Free accounts can only browse and search. The app is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, but how similar or different is it to the official Spotify app?
Layout-wise, it’s not far off what you already get with Spotify’s standard desktop app. Your main Home and Search page rests in the center, while your Library and playlists make up the left sidebar and your Queue sits on the right — both of which are collapsible. But there’s more emphasis on design.
The playback bar, which sits horizontally at the bottom of the page, features animated EQ visualizers as a song plays, which you can easily turn on and off. With Spotifast, you also have the freedom to customize how your app looks, giving you the choice between light and dark modes, as well as a selection of custom themes allowing you to make the app your own.
There’s also a strong nostalgia element to Spotifast thanks to its support for the Milkdrop visualizer which, if you grew up being mesmerized by Windows XP music animations, might be the reason you abandon the standard Spotify app. Additionally, the app supports classic Winamp Miniplayer 2 skins, giving the listening experience another nostalgic flair.
What’s missing?
The developers of Spotifast pride themselves on having created a faster alternative to the standard Spotify app, and it already has the stamp of approval from users on Reddit, but there’s a reason why it’s so much speedier — it’s sacrificed a lot of native Spotify tools.
For starters you won’t be getting support for lossless audio. Instead, Spotifast supports up to 320 kbps which, for some users, isn’t a dealbreaker (the difference between lossless and hi-res is minimal). The app is also completely stripped of social features.
While you can still create playlists within Spotifast, it takes them back to basics. There are no AI-powered playlist-making tools, so that means no Prompted Playlists, Mixed Playlists, Blends, or Collaborative Playlists. On the bright side, this encourages you to make playlists using your own initiative, rather than relying on an AI to do the work for you.
So far, those who’ve migrated to Spotifast for a smoother experience have been overwhelmingly positive about its speedy performance, but everything comes with a slight caveat, as the developers note on Spotifast’s information page:
“Spotify limits how often apps can ask for information. Spotifast normally shares this allowance with other listeners and several other music players. When that shared connection is busy, your library and search results can take longer to load. The top bar shows a spinner while you wait.”
You should also note that Spotifast is an unofficial app, and any changes made in the standard Spotify app can temporarily break features until Spotifast is updated.
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