SwagLyrics displays the lyrics of the song that's playing in Spotify desktop and the web version

Spotify added support for Live Lyrics a few months ago (at least in some Countries). I don't like the way it has been implemented.

First there is the gigantic text which looks odd, but the main problem with it is that when you click on the mic button the program loads the lyrics in the main pane. If you click on anything else, the window changes, so you can't browse/discover music and have the lyrics displayed at the same time.

A side-panel for the lyrics would have been much better. Well, you can have one by installing a program called SwagLyrics. The tool is open source and is available in three flavors: a command-line tool, a desktop program and a browser extension.

SwagLyrics - Command Line

You'll need to install Python and Pip for the program to work. Since Python comes with the pip tool, you don't need to download that separately.

The next step is to open a Command Prompt window. Type the following command in it:

pip install swaglyrics

This will download SwagLyrics and some additional dependencies that the program requires to run.

You can now start using Swaglyrics from the command-line. Open the Spotify client on your PC, and play a song.

Switch to a command window and type

swaglyrics

You'll see a few switches that you can use.

To display the lyrics in the command window, run the following

swaglyrics -c

The program will fetch the song's lyrics and display it in the command line. Cool, isn't it?

To view the same in your browser type,

swaglyrics -t

The program opens a local URL (127.0.0.x) to display the lyrics in your browser. That wasn't too difficult now, was it?

SwagLyricsGUI

This is the easiest way to use SwagLyrics. Head to this page and download the SwagLyricsGUI installer (also requires Python). The installer will install all required dependencies when you run the program.

Note: The GUI's setup installs the files required for the command-line version, so you can use either program.

SwagLyricsGUI has a compact interface that is almost like a side panel. This window stays on top of other programs, which makes it great to use while you browse Spotify.

Play a song in Spotify, and the lyrics appears in SwagLyricsGUI's interface. The program has an auto scroll option that's pre-enabled, and it works quite nicely if you feel like singing along. The only other option that you can change in the application is the Theme.

Click on the drop-down menu to switch among Light, Dark and SwagLyrics themes.

Both versions of SwagLyrics support automatic detection of song change, and display the relevant lyrics accordingly.

Spotify web version

Hate the Spotify desktop program? If you want to use SwagLyrics with the Spotify web player, you'll need to install the SwagLyrics for Spotify Chrome extension. Unfortunately, a Firefox version isn't readily available, though the developer plans to release one in the future.

Login to your Spotify account in Chrome, play a song. Run the command-line or GUI version of SwagLyrics and the lyrics will be displayed in the corresponding window. The plugin acts as a bridge between the browser and SwagLyrics to help identify the song that's playing.

How it works

SwagLyrics doesn't rely on Spotify's API to get the song information. Instead, it detects the URL of the playing song in the streaming platform, and fetches the lyrics from Genius. You don't need Spotify Premium for using SwagLyrics.

Fun fact: SwagLyrics displays some random facts when Spotify is playing ads.

There were occasional hiccups when the program said lyrics for the song weren't available, but restarting the application fixed the issue. However, there are several songs for which lyrics aren't available on Genius, but that's technically not related to the application.

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