Mute Spotify ads on Macs with Smutefy

Spotify is one of the best music applications on Mac but the only drawback of the free version are the ads. As the application becomes more popular, the ads have increased a lot but help is at hand from Smutefy which aims to reduce them intruding on your listening as much as possible.

Smutefy is a free small menu bar application that automatically detects and mutes Spotify ads. It doesn’t actually block the ads – it simply reduces the volume when an ad comes on so that you don’t hear it.

Firstly, you’ll need to make sure that you have both Growl and Soundflower installed for Smutefy to work. Smutefy doesn’t block Spotify Growl ad popups but it uses both Growl and Soundflower to monitor the application so that it can auto adjust the volume when an ad comes on.

All you have to do to activate Smutefy is double click on it in your Applications folder. Smutefy then places a small icon in your menu bar. When an ad is detected by the application, the icon will change color and mute the system sound until the ad finishes.

Smutefy works very effectively the only problem being that the first second of an advert isn’t muted but it kicks-in pretty quickly after that and all you hear is silence instead of adverts until the next track starts.

Smutefy is an ideal application for all those Spotify users that prefer silence over adverts.