It has been reported that Spotify is testing a new feature that displays the lyrics of a song as it plays, so you can sing along with the lyrics. Well, right now, you can need to use the help of other apps, open-source programs, or Chrome extensions to help you achieve that.
In this article, I will show how to display full synced lyrics to the Spotify track that is playing. Whether you prefer to play Spotify music on the web, with a mobile app, or desktop app, you will find a solution to display synced Spotify Lyrics.
Synced Lyrics with Spotify Mobile App
For Android and iOS users, you can download the Musixmatch app. For displaying synced lyrics, it is free. You can use it to connect Spotify and then it will show real-time lyrics as the song plays.
You can control the tracks playing in this Musicmatch app and you can even translate the lyrics to another language. You can also contribute your own version of the translation to the database. You can also save lyrics offline and share to your friends. If you don’t like the Apple Music lyrics, you can also use this app to display timed lyrics.
Display Lyrics for Spotify Desktop App
For people who use the Spotify Desktop app, there are two Spotify Lyrics programs that you can use to show synced lyrics as Spotify music plays.
One is called spotifylyrics that fetches and displays lyrics to currently playing music in Spotify. For Windows users, just double click and start playing songs in spotify.
For Mac and Linux users, you can run it from source by following the steps below:
Step 1. Download and install Python 3.
Step 2. Download the project files from Github.
Step 3. Navigate to that folder and run the following command:
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
If you have lyrics stored on you hard drive, you can put them on windows in C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\SpotifyLyrics\lyrics and on the other OS’s in /home/<User>/.SpotifyLyrics/lyrics and the lyrics will be loaded automatically when you play the track with Spotify Desktop app.
Another project, spotify-lyrics-windows, also display Lyrics for Spotify, in real-time using Musixmatch as a backend. As its name suggested, it is only for Windows. This is how it looks like:
Display Lyrics on Spotify Web Player
For those who use Spotify Web player to listen to music, you can use this open-source tool, Spotify Lyrics. You can install it for Chrome or Firefox. Once installed, it adds a small icon close to the Heart icon. When clicked, it displays an album cover window along with timed lyrics.
I happened to notice that this one is no longer available in the Chrome web store. Alternatively, you can install the Tampermonkey extension and then use one of the Tampermonkey scripts to display Spotify Lyrics.
By using NeteaseCloudMusicApi, it can display most of the songs on Spotify. It hasn’t failed me once. In my Spotify library, there are English songs and Chinese songs.
Bonus: Display Spotify Lyrics for Mac
The automation app for iOS has come to macOS Monterey. If you have never used the Shortcuts app, this should help you get started with Siri Shortcuts. If your Mac is running macOS Monterey, you can use the Shortcuts app to display lyrics for the Spotify app.
Someone has made a shortcut to retrieve the song name and artist name from Spotify, creates a genius lyrics URL, and opens it on your default browser. It will display the lyrics even if the song is not playing. If it sounds good to you, you can get this SpotifyLyrics shortcut by clicking the link.
Conclusion
That’s all the tools that you can use right now to display Spotify Lyrics in real-time, so you can sing along with the music. Honestly, I really hope Spotify can roll out the full lyrics feature soon, but right now, I love these free apps. If you like to download Spotify music to MP3, be sure to check this post.