How to listen to Spotify music on a Chromebook

Spotify has a web player, but if you use a Chromebook and wish you could use a native application to listen to your music, you’re in luck. Spotify is available on Linux, so it will work on your Chromebook. Here’s how to set it set up.

How to enable Linux on your Chromebook

Linux apps can run on Chromebooks with the help of a Linux container. To enable it, start by opening the settings. You can open the settings by clicking on the clock icon in the Chrome OS dash, followed by the gear icon.

Now that you’ve launched the settings area, find the “Advanced” section, and click on the down arrow to reveal the advanced options available in the settings. After revealing the advanced options, select the “Developer” option.

With the “Developer” option selected, find “Linux development environment” and click on the “Turn on” button. By selecting the “Turn on” button, Chrome OS will download a Debian LXC container for you to use.

After Linux support is enabled on your Chromebook, open up the terminal. You can open up the terminal on Chrome OS by searching for “Terminal” in the app menu. Once it is open, select “Penguin.” By selecting “Penguin,” you will launch the command-line interface for the terminal.

With access to the terminal, you must run the apt update and apt upgrade commands. These commands will check for updates and install them. These commands will refresh the packages in the containers and ensure you have the latest apps.

sudo apt update

The Linux container will refresh its software sources and check for the latest updates by running the update command. You can then install the latest updates using the following upgrade command.

sudo apt upgrade -y

How to enable Flatpak on Chrome OS

Flatpak isn’t required for Chrome OS, as the Linux container is Debian, and it is possible to install Spotify via apt. However, Spotify is available as a Flatpak, so it is nice to have it set up on your Chrome OS system. To start, install the following packages.

sudo apt install flatpak gnome-software gnome-software-plugin-flatpak

With the three packages installed on your Linux PC, you must enable the Flathub app store. Flathub has several software apps, including Spotify. To enable it, use the following remote-add command in a terminal window.

flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Flatpak will be enabled on your Chromebook when the command above is run.

How to install Spotify on Chrome OS

Users can install the official Spotify client on Chrome OS in two ways. Either via the official Debian software repository or as a Flatpak from Flathub. In this guide, we’ll cover both installation options.

To start the installation process for Spotify on your Chromebook, you must open up a terminal window. Open up a terminal window by launching the Chrome OS app menu. Once it is open, search for “Terminal” and open it.

With the terminal window open and ready to use on Chrome OS, find the “penguin” option, and select it with the mouse. Choosing “penguin” will give you command line access to the Linux terminal on your Chromebook.

Deb installation instructions

Setting up Spotify as a DEB means you’ll always get updates straight from Spotify each time you update the Debian container on your Chromebook. To start the installation, use the apt-key adv commands to import the Spotify keys.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 4773BD5E130D1D45

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 5E3C45D7B312C643

After importing the Spotify keys, you must add the official Spotify repository. Without this repository, installing the official Spotify client is impossible.

echo deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list

With the Spotify software repository enabled on your Chromebook, run the apt update command.

sudo apt update

Finally, install the Spotify client on your Chromebook using the apt install command.

sudo apt install spotify-client

To update your Spotify app, run the two commands below.

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade -y

Flatpak installation instructions

Flatpak is another excellent way to get Spotify working. Unfortunately, it isn’t official like the official Spotify Debian repository. However, it still gets fast updates and works well on Chrome OS.

To install Spotify as a Flatpak on your Chromebook, use the flatpak install command.

flatpak install flathub com.spotify.Client

Once the command above is run, Flatpak will search for the packages to install. It’ll then ask you to press the Y key on your keyboard to confirm that you wish to install the Spotify client as a Flatpak.

To update your Spotify client, run the following flatpak update command.