Someone Turned the Spotify Car Thing Into a Hackable Desk Assistant
If you bought a Spotify Car Thing before Spotify discontinued it, you might've wondered what to do with the hardware once the official support dried up. Instead of letting it collect dust, one developer turned it into a fully customizable desk assistant running community-made apps. Meet DeskThing.
What It Does
DeskThing is an alternative operating system for the Spotify Car Thing. It's built around a Chromium-based website running on the device that communicates with a desktop application on your computer. The Car Thing becomes the display and control surface, while the desktop app handles the heavier lifting, like managing apps, updating the display, and handling device configuration.
The architecture is straightforward: you install the DeskThing desktop app, connect your Car Thing, and then load community-made apps onto it. From there, you can do things like control your local audio, see who's in your Discord call, or check what's currently playing on Spotify. The desktop app also serves as an app store, so you can browse and download apps directly without fiddling with the device itself.
Why It's Cool
The real appeal here is that DeskThing treats the Car Thing as a general-purpose display and controller rather than a single-purpose Spotify accessory. That shift in framing opens up a lot of possibilities.
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Configurable controls that actually mean something. You can map any button on the Car Thing to any function, whether that's the top buttons, front buttons, or back buttons. The mappings are editable from the desktop UI, and apps can add their own mappings on top of that. It's a small thing, but it turns the hardware from a fixed interface into something you can shape around your workflow.
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Spotify integration that goes beyond the basics. You get the expected controls (skip, pause, play, rewind, shuffle, repeat), but also album art, podcast support, and the ability to set your audio output source. There's even a community app called LyrThing that shows Spotify lyrics on the display.
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Local audio control for everything else. If you're not using Spotify, DeskThing still works. It can display and control any playing media on your system, with the same set of playback controls. That makes it useful as a general-purpose media controller, not just a Spotify companion.
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A real app ecosystem. The desktop app includes an app store, and you can browse community apps on the DeskThing website. The README highlights custom apps, image viewers, and community projects like LyrThing. It's early, but there's clearly a community forming around it.
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It's free, but donations are appreciated. The project is completely free to use, with optional donations through Buy Me a Coffee or GitHub Sponsors. That's a refreshing model for a project built around reviving discontinued hardware.
How to Try It
Getting started is a bit different from your typical open-source install, so pay attention to this part.
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Don't clone the main branch. The README explicitly warns against pulling from main to install. Instead, head to the official website and download the installer for your operating system.
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Visit the official site. Go to deskthing.app and grab the installer for your OS. The site also has a video walkthrough for v0.6.0 if you want to see the setup process in action.
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Check the community resources. There's a Reddit community at r/DeskThing, a Trello board for tracking development, a DeskThing Discord, and a Car Thing Hax community Discord if you want to dig into the hardware side of things.
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Browse the app store. Once you've got the desktop app running, you can browse and install community apps directly from within it.
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Check out the video coverage. Dammit Jeff posted a video covering DeskThing, and there's a separate walkthrough video for v0.6.0 if you want a visual guide.
You can find the repository at github.com/itsriprod/deskthing.
Final Thoughts
DeskThing is a solid example of what happens when a community decides not to let good hardware go to waste. It's not trying to be a polished commercial product, and the README is upfront about that. Instructions are current as of v0.9.0-beta, and some features are pending revision. If you've got a Car Thing sitting in a drawer and you're comfortable with a bit of setup, this is worth a look. If you're looking for a plug-and-play desk gadget, you might want to wait until it's further along. Either way, it's a fun project to follow.