Spotify went a year without a glass redesign, and a Czech developer built one: 916 stars, 6,173 forks

spoti.pw (now called Chroma) is a jailbreak-free mod that gives iOS Spotify a Liquid Glass interface. The repo was created in Sep 2026 7, and as of Nov 6 it has 916 stars and 6,173 forks (GitHub daily numbers). Forks outnumber stars by 6.7x, which is rare on GitHub, because the install method itself is "fork it." This piece covers how it claimed a need a month before the official move, where the stars and forks came from, how many copycats appeared in that month, and whether there's room for you to build a project that gets similar traction.

Sep 7, two subreddits posted at once

In Sep 2026 7, Czech developer skopevoj created the spoti.pw repo and that day posted in Reddit's r/sideloaded and r/eeveespotifyipa, titled "Liquid Glass for Spotify on iOS - Tab bar you can reorder / AMOLED." Those two subreddits serve the same crowd: users who sideload modded Spotify on iPhone, who mostly used EeveeSpotify at the time.

The demand was already there. iOS 26 came out in fall 2025, big apps rolled out glassy new interfaces one after another, and Spotify stayed put. On r/truespotify, a post titled "Liquid Glass on Spotify" from Oct 2025 15 got 638 upvotes. In Jun 2026 30, TechRadar even wrote it up: a Reddit user turned on the system's "Invert Colors" so Spotify looked like Apple Music. Users wanted this badly.

In Sep 18, the author posted a weekly update, "spoti.pw – Spotify redesigned like Apple Music: new player, playlists, haptics, Live Activity," which got 542 upvotes and 392 comments on r/sideloaded. Spotify's official version only added some glass elements in early October 9.1.90, and one r/truespotify commenter called it "half-assed" (115 upvotes). The gap was about a month.

What it is

The first line of the README says it plainly: a jailbreak-free Theos tweak that rebuilds the iOS Spotify app with Liquid Glass. You inject it into your own decrypted IPA and sign it with your own certificate.

Specifically, it doesn't just blur the existing interface. It uses iOS 26's UIGlassEffect to redraw the player, tab bar, menus, home, search, library, album pages, and artist pages, with layouts modeled on Apple Music. The official chroma.pw site now promotes more than looks: word-by-word lyrics (each word lights up as it's sung), Sing (lowering the vocals so you can sing along), shader animations behind the player, lock-screen lyrics, dynamic covers, Live Activity, and audio tuning.

It deliberately stays away from two things: it doesn't distribute IPAs and doesn't unlock Premium. The terms state this plainly: free accounts still get ads, and Premium features still belong to Premium. That line matters. The original EeveeSpotify repo built its reputation on unlocking Premium locally, and in Aug 2025 14 Spotify sent a DMCA takedown. spoti.pw doesn't touch paid features, so it has stayed up on GitHub and can openly take donations.

Why forks are 6.7x stars

Because the fork is the install step. The README's "Build with GitHub Actions" section reads: fork this repo, open Actions, run "Build IPA from your own Spotify IPA," enter a direct link to your decrypted IPA, and a few minutes later you can download the patched IPA and install it with SideStore, Feather, or similar signers. No Mac required.

So everyone who wants to install has to fork it at least once. The fork count roughly tracks how many people went this route, as a lower bound. Later the author also built a web patcher (chroma.pw/patch, which says IPAs aren't uploaded), and people who use the web never leave a fork. Stars, by contrast, aren't the main way users express themselves:

From Oct 9 to Nov 6, forks rose 1,654 over four weeks, about 59 a day on average, and Oct 19 alone added 302 more; stars only rose 184, single digits a day, with the biggest single day being Oct 15 at 31 stars (GitHub daily numbers).

Here's a fact that matters if you want stars: a project can have thousands of real users and still only a few hundred stars. People come to install something, not to give you a thumbs-up.

Where the stars and users came from

Almost all of it came from the sideloading niche, and it never broke out of it:

• Reddit sideloading subreddits: Both subreddits posted on the day the repo was created, then every major version, v0.17, v0.50, and so on, got a post, roughly one a week. The author later became a moderator of r/eeveespotifyipa and opened a Discord.
• Jailbreak and sideloading news sites: onejailbreak.com ran a feature article in Oct 5, and newreleases.io tracks each release.
• TikTok tutorials: @leojyp posted a chroma.pw install tutorial, and the official install page embeds it as a video guide (view count not checked).
• Signing stores: The install page links to Arctic Sign (with a ref=spotipw referral parameter, from $8.89) and FlareStore (from $3); AppValley also lists "spoti.pw for Spotify."

No major accounts reposting on X turned up, and mainstream tech media hasn't covered it. Going from v0.17 to v0.51 in two months, with a major release nearly every week, is why it has stayed in the conversation within this community.

Copycats that appeared within a month

taurus came out of necessity. The author 0.50 started putting some features (like reverb) behind the paid Plus tier. Under taurus's post on r/eeveespotifyipa, someone wrote "Not happy with the dev paywalling half the mod". taurus countered with "glass UI + free Premium" and hit 406 stars in a month, nearly half the original's count.

The author's response was to tighten the license. From v0.21.1 on, it switched from GPL-3.0 to PolyForm Strict 1.0.0: view-only, personal use, no modifying, no redistribution. So the vitrine batch stays frozen on the 0.21.1 code.

On the money side: Plus is billed monthly on Patreon or as a one-time buyout on Ko-fi. The prices only appear on those pages and I didn't capture them. Add signing-store referral commissions and Ko-fi tips. Revenue is not public.

If it were you

C. The playbook is worth learning, but the "glass UI for Spotify" gap has mostly closed. It took off by riding a year of pent-up demand plus about a month's head start. Now the official app has moved, Eevee caught up within a month, and five or six clones are competing in the same circles. The star growth tells the story: a few thousand real users, with stars adding single digits per day. Projects like this rarely generate stars. And because it sits on the gray line of modifying a commercial app, the bigger it gets, the more likely a DMCA takedown.

Who it fits: developers already doing iOS jailbreak or sideload tweaks, fluent in Theos and Objective-C hooks, or people with some reputation in the sideload scene looking for their next project.

Who it's not for: people hoping to rack up a few thousand GitHub stars to put on a résumé. Users in this space come to install things, not to star them. The project could also 451 at any time, and it doesn't carry much weight on a formal résumé.

How to do it: don't build another Spotify clone. If you want to follow, copy its three moves and point them at a different target:

1. Find the next big app that's dragging its feet on the system redesign. Every year after WWDC, some big app still hasn't updated its look. Search its official community and Reddit for "Liquid Glass" or "redesign". Complaint threads with hundreds of upvotes are the signal. Each time a new iOS 27 design ships, the window reopens (my inference).
2. Stick to looks and enhancements, and stay away from rights holders' money. Don't unlock paid tiers, don't remove ads, don't distribute IPAs. That's why it can stay on GitHub.
3. Fork-to-build. Use GitHub Actions so people without a Mac can still produce a build. That lowers the barrier, and the fork count can serve as evidence of how many people are using it.

The other path is to fill what it doesn't do, like the Android side it skips. Standalone Android clients built on librespot, such as Lelonio/Square, started in Aug 6 and already have 487 stars. That's proof that Android users also want a better-looking Spotify.

How to get users: follow its sequence. On the day the repo goes up, post in the one or two communities where your target users gather, with a headline that states the visible selling point ("Tab bar you can reorder / AMOLED"). Ship a release and post every week. Try to become a moderator, and open a Discord. Send assets to jailbreak news sites and TikTok tutorial creators. Stars won't come fast, so put a prominent "star it if you like it" line in the README to funnel fork users over.

When to move: before the window closes. The Spotify gap has already passed. The new window is the few months after the next major system overhaul (my guess: after June WWDC in 2027), before the big apps catch up. Pick your targets first and build the hook framework before then.

What would mean I misread it: ① Spotify sends DMCA notices to spoti.pw or taurus, or the repos change 451, which would mean this gray line sits closer than it looks, and the same risk applies to any app built on top of Spotify. ② spoti.pw's fork growth stalled in November, which would mean the demand disappears once the official app catches up, so this kind of project only rides a timing gap. ③ Conversely, if the stars climb again on features Spotify won't build, like lyrics, Sing, or shaders, and pass 2K, that would mean "enhancing a big app" can keep collecting stars over time, which justifies a B.

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Data and sources: GitHub repo, README, and daily star/fork numbers (10-09 to 11-06,10-22 to 10-31 with gaps); chroma.pw home page, /patch, /terms, /privacy; relevant Reddit threads on r/sideloaded, r/eeveespotifyipa, r/truespotify (vote counts as seen in search summaries); onejailbreak.com (10-05), nextjailbreak.com (10-14), TechRadar (2026-06-30), iphoned.nl; copycat repos and competitor stars from GitHub (11-06). Where I wrote "inference", it's an estimate.