A maintained, update-resilient take on BlockTheSpot — the classic Spotify ad blocker whose original repo is now archived and which breaks on nearly every Spotify update. This fork fixes the two things that made the original painful:
- 🛡️ It doesn't crash when Spotify updates. The original hard-codes internal offsets into
config.ini; when Spotify shifts them, Spotify won't even launch (0xC0000005). This version detects them at runtime and guards every access — a mismatch degrades to "ads not blocked" instead of a dead app. - 🤖 It watches Spotify for you. A CI job checks daily for new Spotify releases, verifies the patches still match, publishes a fresh build, and opens an issue if anything went stale — so you're never silently broken.
| This (Resilient) | BlockTheSpot (original) | SpotX | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Survives Spotify updates without crashing | ✅ runtime offset detect + guard | ❌ crashes, needs manual offset edit | |
| Auto-builds + alerts when Spotify updates | ✅ CI watcher | ❌ | ❌ |
| Blocks audio + banner ads | ✅ | ✅ (signatures rot) | ✅ |
| Patches your official Spotify in place | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Keeps Spotify's code signatures intact | ✅ redirects the check | ✅ | ❌ strips signatures |
| Auditable install | ✅ ~40-line PowerShell | iwr|iex script |
Open PowerShell and run:
iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thomas-quant/BlockTheSpot-Resilient/master/install.ps1 | iexIt's a short, readable script — read it first if you like (you should, for anything that patches an app). It stops Spotify, backs up the original chrome_elf.dll, drops in the latest release files, and relaunches.
Uninstall anytime:
iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thomas-quant/BlockTheSpot-Resilient/master/uninstall.ps1 | iex
Manual install (if you'd rather not run a script)
- Go to
%AppData%\Spotify. - Rename
chrome_elf.dll→chrome_elf_required.dll. - Download
chrome_elf.dll,blockthespot.dll, andconfig.inifrom the latest release into that folder. - Launch Spotify.
Two DLLs, a decoy-and-payload design:
chrome_elf.dll(decoy) replaces Spotify's real one. It re-exports every function Spotify imports and forwards each to the genuine DLL (renamedchrome_elf_required.dll), so nothing breaks — then loads the payload.blockthespot.dll(payload) hooks Chromium's networking to block ad requests, patches the ad banner out of the UI, and — cleanly — redirects Spotify's own signature check at the original signed DLL rather than stripping signatures.
Ad blocking runs in two independent layers so a Spotify update can't take out both at once:
- URL blocklist — drops ad fetches (
/ads/,/ad-logic/, hpto, …). Needs no per-version tuning. - UI patch — removes the leaderboard ad banner above the playback bar. Anchored on stable tokens with wildcards; if it ever goes stale it no-ops (banner returns, no crash) and the watcher opens an issue.
Built on the excellent work of mrpond/BlockTheSpot (original, archived) and Nuzair46/BlockTheSpot (continuation). The injection core is theirs; this fork adds update-resilience, the crash guard, a current ad patch, and the auto-build watcher.
For educational use. Modifying the Spotify client may violate Spotify's Terms of Service. Consider Spotify Premium — it's the only way to support artists. Use at your own risk.