Spotube v6 arrives with a complete redesign, Android Auto support, and AGPL-3.0 relicense

Spotube, the popular open-source Spotify client, has released version 6, marking the most significant overhaul in the project's history. The app has been rebuilt from the ground up, migrating from Flutter to Compose Multiplatform, a move the developers say enables better platform integration and lays the foundation for future growth. Android users in particular benefit from a native APK with a reduced installation size and performance improvements, while the desktop and Android experiences now share a truly unified Kotlin-based codebase.

The release also introduces what the team calls the Millennium UI, a complete visual redesign that blends a nostalgic 2000s aesthetic with modern 2026 polish. Beyond looks, Spotube v6 brings major new functionality: Jam sessions let friends and family listen together in sync, powered by a dedicated room server with host-only controls and device bans to keep sessions safe. Android Auto users gain full integration with Browse, Library, and Search screens, no longer limited to the playback queue, and the iOS app now routes audio through VLC, ensuring every streaming format works and playback continues reliably in the background.

The update significantly expands the plugin ecosystem as well. Plugin development has migrated from hetu_script to Kotlin, now powered by Zipline by Cash App, and the platform is opening up to lyrics and scrobbling providers. A redesigned plugin manager tightens security: login pages for plugins can only access cookies and scripts from the domains they explicitly declare. Perhaps most consequential, Spotube has relicensed from BSD-4-Clause to AGPL-3.0-or-later, the same direction taken by Asahi Linux, which we covered earlier, a shift the developers describe as friendlier to open source while guarding against closed-source and maliciously modified distributions. Rounding out the release are dozens of smaller enhancements and bug fixes that are detailed in the release notes.