AJ is a journalist from New York City. He's covered a variety of consumer tech topics throughout his career, with his work published on media outlets including CBS, FOX, and NBC.
Music streaming apps like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music aren’t just popular on phones anymore. They’re increasingly used on other devices, including desktops, Smart TVs, and even vehicles. But as your playlists and offline music data grow, so does the storage space these streaming services consume.
My music streaming apps are always in the not-so-exciting race for the most storage space on my iPhone. That’s partly why I like streaming on other devices, as it gives me more flexibility and one less reason to pick up my phone. I use Spotify and YouTube Music on my laptop for everyday tasks, but RAM and storage are concerns there, too. Fortunately, there’s a new app on the block that could be a lightweight alternative to Spotify.
Spotifast is a third-party Spotify ‘Lite’
The app is designed to use less RAM and storage than Spotify
Spotifast is an open-source Spotify desktop client developed in August 2026 that can play your Spotify library. It’s available on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and claims to use under 250 MB of RAM. You can track the development timeline on GitHub. The app has gained increasing popularity across social media. While it’s not perfect, it’s not as sketchy as some third-party music streaming clients, since it doesn't require your Spotify login credentials, according to the company. Instead, it uses OAuth authentication through Spotify’s official API, letting you sign in directly on Spotify’s website and granting the app permission.
Using under 250 MB of RAM is impressive for Spotifast, considering some Spotify users in community forums have reported that the Windows desktop app uses over 1GB of RAM. But as I mentioned earlier, Spotifast isn’t perfect, and there are a few things to consider before putting your full faith in it.
Spotifast is not officially supported by Spotify
The app also only works with Spotify Premium accounts
Spotifast is not officially supported by Spotify, so don’t mistake it for an official app or partner. While it’s open-source and its development is transparent, a Spotify update could potentially break the Spotifast app. You also can’t use a free Spotify account to play music; you must have Premium. There’s also the possibility that Spotify could send Spotifast a cease-and-desist letter to shut down its streaming client capabilities and distance itself from the Spotify name. While that doesn’t seem likely right now, never say never.
The app isn't perfect, but it's fairly easy to use
The music player is fairly straightforward, but loading speeds were an issue
I decided to give Spotifast a test run on my 2023 Microsoft Surface Laptop. After downloading the app, it redirects you to Spotify’s official website to log in and grant permission to the third-party application. One concern immediately came up when I opened the app. Spotifast displayed a message explaining that it uses a shared connection. Essentially, Spotify limits how much data third-party apps can request, meaning heavy usage by Spotifast users could lead to slower loading times.
A shared connection does not literally mean that your personal data is being shared across a network. Rather, Spotifast users share a connection to Spotify’s servers. The app lets you create your own private connection to minimize potential slowdowns, though Spotifast warns you may still experience them occasionally. To save time, I skipped creating that private connection.
While I use Spotify frequently, it’s more of a secondary music player for me, so my library may not be as extensive as others. But skipping the private connection turned out to be a mistake. Almost immediately, the app displayed loading errors and told me to retry later to reload my music library. There’s also a lyric player, but it took about two minutes for the lyrics to load. Within five minutes, though, the player started working pretty well. When I checked Task Manager, it showed the app used only approximately 30 MB of RAM.
The app could be worth a try
The visualizers are pretty dang cool
As long as you understand that this Spotifast is a third-party app and are aware of its potential downsides, I think the app is worth trying out if you use Spotify. The best feature of the app, hands down, is the music visualizers. There’s a mini visualizer bar that changes patterns when you click it, along with the MilkDrop visualizer, which can go full-screen and gives you some serious retro music-player vibes, and a mini visualizer display when you minimize the application screen.
If Spotifast ever made a version of this app for Smart TVs or gaming consoles, it would be more appealing, bringing back the feel of those old PlayStation music visualizers. Overall, I probably won’t use Spotifast as my primary laptop music player, but I think I’ll keep it around for when I’m in the mood for something different and could potentially hook it up to my television with an HDMI cord to display on my TV.