The control row
This row appears just below the now-playing bar whenever a track is loaded. Each icon only shows up if its feature is turned on in the popup. By default, all four are on.
Focus mode
A target-shaped icon. Click it once and Sidekick closes Spotify's Now Playing view panel and collapses Your Library, leaving just the music and the player on screen. Click again to restore both exactly as they were.
If you'd already collapsed Your Library yourself before enabling focus mode, Sidekick leaves it collapsed when you turn focus mode back off. It only restores what it changed.
Click to toggle5-star rating
Five star outlines next to the current track. Click any star to rate the track up to that point: clicking the third star gives it 3 stars, filling the first three. Click the same star again to clear the rating back to zero.
Ratings are stored per track and stay attached to it the next time it plays, even across sessions.
Click a star to rateAdd to Play Later
A plus icon. Adds the currently playing track to a separate Play Later list, capped at 10 tracks. A small on-screen toast confirms when it's added, or warns if the list is full.
The list lives in the popup under the Library tab. Each entry is clickable and opens that track in Spotify directly.
Click to add current trackTime listened today
A stopwatch badge counting minutes of active listening. It only ticks while something is actually playing, not while paused or idle. Resets at midnight, and hovering shows a one-line summary.
This feeds directly into the weekly recap in the popup.
Read-only, hover for detailClick the toolbar icon
Everything that isn't a direct one-click action on the page lives here, across five tabs.
Library
Today's listening time and day streak, your Play Later queue, and every rated track. Each row is clickable and jumps straight to that track in Spotify.
Recap
A weekly summary for the Monday to Sunday block that just finished: top 5 artists, top 5 tracks, total time listened, and total plays. If your first full week isn't over yet, this tab shows a countdown to when it unlocks.
Playback
Sleep timer
Three presets, 15, 30, or 60 minutes, pause playback when the time is up. A Cancel button appears while one is active.
Idle auto-pause
Pauses playback automatically after inactivity. The delay is adjustable from 5 to 60 minutes on the slider below the toggle.
Feature toggles
On/off switches for keyboard shortcuts, the sleep timer, idle auto-pause, and the multi-tab warning, which is a notification if Spotify is playing in more than one tab at once.
Appearance
Theme presets
Five built-in color themes shown as swatches. Click one to repaint Spotify's interface immediately.
Custom theme
Pick the "Custom" swatch to define five colors by hand (background, surface, text, muted text, and accent) via color pickers or hex input, then press Apply custom theme.
Font
A dropdown to replace Spotify's default typeface with an alternative, applied across the whole interface.
Cursor color
Turn this on to pick a custom color for your mouse cursor on the Spotify page. Text fields always keep a standard text cursor regardless.
Auto day/night theme
Automatically switches between a light and dark preset at set times, so you don't have to switch manually.
Custom CSS
A live text editor. Write any CSS rules and click Save CSS to apply them to the page immediately, for going further than the built-in themes allow.
More
Accessibility
Three independent toggles: high contrast, larger click targets, and reduced motion. These are separate from anything Spotify itself offers.
Right-click search
Turn Genius and YouTube on or off individually for the right-click menu entries described above.
Export my data
Downloads everything Sidekick has stored (ratings, settings, Play Later list, listening log) as a single JSON file.
Reset all data
Clears everything Sidekick has stored and returns to a clean state. This cannot be undone, so export first if you want a copy.
For when your hands are already on the keyboard
Active anywhere on the Spotify page except while typing in a text field, so they won't fire during search or playlist renaming. Turn them off in the Playback tab if you'd rather not have them.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Play / pause |
| → | Next track |
| ← | Previous track |
| ↑ | Volume up |
| ↓ | Volume down |
| F | Toggle fullscreen view |
| 1 | Rate current track 5 stars |
| L | Add current track to Play Later |
Fullscreen view (F) is a dedicated now-playing display. Press Esc or click × to close it.