A heavily animated Upside Down theme for the Spotify desktop app, built on spicetify.
Not a recolour. The whole client becomes the Upside Down: red lightning cracks across the window, spores drift through the layout, vines creep in from the edges, Joyce's alphabet wall spells words out of the dark, Vecna's clock materialises out of the mist, and every so often the Mind Flayer takes the entire screen.
Download the latest release · Report a problem · Discord
| Effect | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Red lightning | Cracks across the window every 4–10 seconds, plus an extra strike on every song change |
| Alphabet wall | Joyce's Christmas lights, hung from cables across the top. Dims the room, spells a word letter-by-letter, then breaks into a chaos flicker. Every 20–45s |
| Vecna's clock | Fades in from the mist every 70–150 seconds. Chimes only while music is paused — it never talks over your music |
| The Mind Flayer | Full-screen takeover every 10–20 minutes. Audio plays only if music is paused, muted otherwise. Press ESC to end it instantly |
| Demogorgon playbar | The progress handle is an open-petalled Demogorgon head; another sits in the sidebar |
| Vines & spores | Nine vines creeping the edges, drifting spore field |
| VHS grain | Scanlines and a periodic tracking jitter |
| Upside Down palette | Black / ember-red, themed scrollbars, rows, and cards |
Everything is timed to be atmospheric rather than constant, and every effect is GPU-composited — no repaint-heavy animation loops, so it won't cook your laptop.
- Spotify desktop (the real app — not the web player, not the Microsoft Store build)
- spicetify 2.43 or newer
- Windows, macOS, or Linux
- ~13 MB of disk space
Microsoft Store users: spicetify can't patch that build. Uninstall it and grab the normal installer from spotify.com/download first.
Download the latest release zip and unzip it anywhere, then run the installer for your platform.
Cloning the repo instead? The 11 MB Mind Flayer clip isn't in the git tree — it's attached to each release. Without it everything still works; the Mind Flayer just appears as a still image rather than the full-screen video. Drop
st-flayer.webmintoThemes/strangerThings/before installing if you want the video version.
Right-click install.ps1 → Run with PowerShell.
If Windows blocks it, open PowerShell in this folder and run:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1chmod +x install.sh && ./install.shThe installer closes and reopens Spotify — that's expected. It handles all the fiddly parts (flat extension layout, the restore→backup→apply cycle, placing the video, and blocking Spotify's self-updater).
Colours changed but nothing animates.
The extension isn't loading. Confirm strangerThings.js sits directly inside
your Extensions folder (not in a subfolder) and that config-xpui.ini reads
extensions = strangerThings.js with no folder prefix. Then re-run the installer.
Everything reverted to stock Spotify overnight. Spotify auto-updated and dropped a fresh UI over the themed one. Re-run:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1 -RepairThe installer normally blocks this by locking %LOCALAPPDATA%\Spotify\Update.
The right-click / 3-dots menu shows a "reload page" error.
Recent Spotify builds crash on spicetify's heavier code patches. The installer
disables them (expose_apis, home_config, experimental_features, and any
custom apps). If you re-enabled any of those, turn them back off and run a full
spicetify restore && spicetify backup apply — a plain apply won't take.
The Mind Flayer never appears (everything else works).
The video isn't where it needs to be. Copy Themes/strangerThings/st-flayer.webm
into <your Spotify folder>/Apps/xpui/. This must be redone after every
spicetify apply — spicetify doesn't track loose assets.
Effects feel too frequent or too rare.
Open Extensions/strangerThings.js and edit the scheduler timings near the
bottom — lightning 4000 + random*6000, wall 20000 + random*25000, clock
70000 + random*80000, Mind Flayer 600000 + random*600000 (all milliseconds).
Save, copy into your Extensions folder, run spicetify apply.
Ask in Discord — the #github-posts channel —
or open an issue. Include your Spotify version, your OS, and
anything spicetify apply printed. That's usually enough to spot it.
Windows — restores stock Spotify, deletes the theme files, and unblocks auto-updates:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File uninstall.ps1macOS / Linux:
spicetify config current_theme " " extensions strangerThings.js-
spicetify restore
userdata="$(dirname "$(spicetify -c)")"
rm -rf "$userdata/Themes/strangerThings" "$userdata/Extensions/strangerThings.js"This is free, and always will be — every effect is in the box, nothing is locked behind a paywall.
It did take a lot of nights to build, though. If it made your Spotify better and you want to throw a couple of dollars at it, that's genuinely appreciated:
Starring the repo and sharing a screenshot helps just as much, and costs nothing.
Theme code, CSS, effect engine, and Demogorgon vector art are original work.
Stranger Things, and all associated characters, imagery, audio and trademarks,
are the property of Netflix. This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project
and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Netflix in any way.
The show-derived image, video and audio assets are included under a claim of
non-commercial fan use — see LICENSE.txt before redistributing or selling.