Linux Desktop Client Missing Lossless Audio Support

[jesse1231]

Hi Spotify Team,

I'm excited to see that lossless audio has finally started rolling out to Premium subscribers! However, I've noticed that the Linux desktop client appears to be missing this highly anticipated feature.

According to the September 10, 2025 announcement, lossless streaming is available on "mobile, desktop, and tablet" - but when I check my Linux Spotify client settings, there's no option to enable lossless quality under Media Quality settings. The highest available option is still "Very High" rather than the new "Lossless" setting mentioned in the announcement.

As a Linux user and Premium subscriber, I'd really appreciate having feature parity with other desktop platforms. Many Linux users are audiophiles who would greatly benefit from 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC streaming, especially since we often have high-quality audio setups.

Could you please confirm:

1. Is lossless support planned for the Linux desktop client?
2. If so, what's the expected timeline for this feature?
3. Are there any technical limitations preventing lossless on Linux specifically?

I understand the feature is rolling out gradually, but it would be great to know that Linux users aren't being left behind on this major Premium feature enhancement.

Thanks for your time and for continuing to improve Spotify!

[Azenyr]

+1

No linux, no buy - I have been following this philosophy for years now for many if not all of my software and hardware. Microsoft/Apple doesn't pay me, and it surely doesn't pay the Spotify company so that their software only works on those devices. As an independent company, please don't force users to use the monopoly that is Microsoft Spyware OS.

If no Linux support arrives in the following months, I'm switching to whoever competition supports Linux. I have full price family account so I am bringing a lot of people with me if I switch.

[RandomUsername44]

+1

I booted into Windows today after a long time and I was pretty surprised how much the Linux app is missing at the moment.

Lossless, Mix, ability to save custom EQ profiles, and this is just what I noticed looking around for 1 minute, it's likely there's more that I missed.

The Linux app is due an update.

[Artymissi]

+1

[Artymissi]

+1

Spotify please fix

[K1tsu]

Lossless is available in the cachyos-extra-v3 repository on the "spotify-launcher" package as of 14/10/25

Edit : You can choose lossless in the settings but it doesn't show up under the artist name like on windows, so not sure if it's actually lossless

[SebestyenBela]

It works for me too! I am so happy! 🙂

[obitorio]

Yes it works with packages on Mint. You can verify with the command pw-top which shows the rate

[no4b]

Spotify streams both lossy and lossless in 44.1 kHz so it is not a correct way to verify.

[internettum]

Interesting! Same with the snap, I can now chose lossless, but the app does not show the lossless label while playing. As far as I can see there are also no updates to the app. Still running `1.2.63.394.g126b0d89 2025-06-30`, so I suspect it's not really streaming lossless yet.

[no4b]

I checked logs and it looks like this:

21:19:29.651 I [f:325 ] Opening sink for playback.
21:19:29.651 I [f:326 ] codec: flac
21:19:29.651 I [f:327 ] bitrate: 1400000 bits/s
21:19:29.651 I [f:328 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz
21:19:29.651 I [f:329 ] sample format: 32-bit-float-pcm
21:19:29.651 I [f:335 ] duration: 264780 ms

Obviously sample format is wrong (should be either 16 or 24 bit).

[Finch7501]

it seems they just made the option available in the old spotify client for linux.

a good way to see that it is in fact lossless is to check the file size of downloads of lossless vs very high.

as far as I can tell we are getting lossless with these options enabled 👍😍

[aayz]

It does seem to download significantly larger files.

"Revolver (Remastered)" by the Beatles (34min, 45sec) used up 77MB when downloaded as Very High and 207MB when downloaded as Lossless.

Method of testing:

1. clear Spotify cache
2. Set quality
3. Download album
4. remove download (just click on download icon again)
5. check cache size, it contains the downloaded data
6. repeat for desired quality

[arglebargle123]

If you would like to keep an eye on things in the terminal, this command gets the most important info:
spotify --show-console 2>&1 | stdbuf -o0 grep --line-buffered -E "codec:|bitrate:|sample rate:"

When tracks begin playing, you should see something like this:
10:12:23.360 I [f:326 ] codec: flac
10:12:23.360 I [f:327 ] bitrate: 700000 bits/s
10:12:23.360 I [f:328 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz

[Oldics]

Well this was very unexpected

10:12:23.360 I [f:326 ] codec: flac
10:12:23.360 I [f:327 ] bitrate: 700000 bits/s
10:12:23.360 I [f:328 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz

---

Very curious to know how this is calculated, 16 bits tracks are 700000 bits/s, which adds up (16bit * 44.1KHz), while tracks I know for sure are 24 bits output 1400000 bits/s which looks more like (16bit * 44.1KHz * 2 chans).

By the way, if using PipeWire you should also add default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 ... ]  to your config file for bitperfect.

[TomRDA]

I can see `lossless` next to my desktop device name when I open Spotify on mobile while listening on the linux snap spotify. So definitely working

[sjanssen15]

Thank you! I was able to change my PipeWire config to use all available bit rates of my DAC.

I used the following to find DAC information:

grep -E 'Codec|Audio Output|rates' /proc/asound/card*/codec#*

After that I copied these rates and create my PipeWire config. I did not have a seperate config so created it

cp /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf

Edit the new file and uncommented the setting you sent

context.properties = {
    ...
    ## Properties for the DSP configuration.
    #default.clock.rate          = 48000
    default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 88200 96000 176400 192000 ]
    #default.clock.quantum       = 1024
    ...

After a reboot I verified while playing a song with pw-top and look at spotify + DAC rate

pw-top

[laurent367]

Thanks Spotify to make lossless a reality under Linux!!!!

[oidarnam]

Awesome, I guess the desktop app doesn't need to be updated to support lossless. My mobile app also shows lossless for the desktop over Connect. 

18:40:20.481 I [f:326 ] codec: flac
18:40:20.481 I [f:327 ] bitrate: 1400000 bits/s
18:40:20.481 I [f:328 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz

[oidarnam]

Also, earlier today as I was reading these new posts here, the desktop app still had streaming quality Very High as the maximum setting. Just now, I noticed it finally has the Lossless option, which was already selected. I'm happy now 😁

[kearnmachine]

Thank you for adding lossless! I just moved my playlists to Qobuz and discovered, that they had suddenly very similar quality 😄 looked into the settings and there is it: lossless! Thank you very much! Next time just post the info that it also gets added to linux some time in the future. That would have saved me some hassle.