How to Add a Monochrome Spotify Indicator Icon?

Question

Spotify's green colored "tray" icon looks out of place on Ubuntu's Unity bar, next to the other monochrome icons. In addition to the color, the size of the icon is a bit too large. How can an appropriate monochrome indicator icon be used with Spotify?

Here is a picture of the color Spotify indicator icon.

Answer 1

Unlike solutions posted elsewhere, you do not need to download an icon from the Internet. This solution creates an appropriately sized monochrome icon from the existing Spotify indicator icon already installed on your system.

Here is a picture of the new monochrome Spotify indicator icon.

Create Monochrome Icon

1. Make a backup of the original resources.zip file, which contains the Spotify indicator icon.

   sudo cp /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip.original
   

2. Extract the Spotify indicator icon to modify it.

   unzip /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip _linux/spotify-linux-512.png
   

3. Install and check your version of ImagicMagick.

   We will use ImagicMagick to create the monochrome icon. With ImagicMagick version 6.8.4.x, there was a major change in the way ImagicMagick treats grayscale images.

   sudo apt-get install imagemagick
   convert --version | grep Version
   

4. Create the new monochrome Spotify icon.

   For ImagicMagick version < 6.8.4.x, do the following. If you are using Ubuntu 14.10, you will have ImagicMagick version 6.7.7-10.

   convert _linux/spotify-linux-512.png -resize 448x448 -background transparent -extent 512x512-32-32 -colorspace gray -sigmoidal-contrast 10,19% _linux/spotify-linux-512.png
   

   For ImagicMagick version => 6.8.4.x, do the following. If you are using Ubuntu 15.04, you will have ImagicMagick version 6.8.9-9 or higher.

   convert _linux/spotify-linux-512.png -resize 448x448 -background transparent -extent 512x512-32-32 -colorspace gray -sigmoidal-contrast 10,50% _linux/spotify-linux-512.png
   

5. Update Spotify with the new monochrome icon.

   sudo zip /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip _linux/spotify-linux-512.png
   

   If Spotify is already running, exit Sotify and restart it for the new icon to become available.

6. Remove working files.

   rm -rf _linux
   

Undo Changes

To revert to the original color Spotify indicator icon, execute the following.

sudo cp /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip.original /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip

Software Updates

Whenever you update Spotify, the custom icon will be overwritten, so simply perform steps 1 thru 6 to recreate the monochrome indicator icon.