Features

Detects the beat of the music and synchronizes your lights with it.
- Select which audio device to read from, can read any input device.
- Listen to your systems stereo mix, see here for more details.
- Beat detection calibrates automatically, no configuration necessary.
Sets the brightness depending on the current intensity of the music.
- Minimum and maximum brightness are configurable.
- Allows for a more relaxed or intense visualisation with configurable brightness settings.
- Brightness fades on the beat, the difference in brightness during fade is configurable.
Creates a dynamic music visualization with multiple effects.
- Selects effects based on relative loudness.
- Both brightness and color strobing effects can be fully disabled.
Light fade time configurable, allowing for an even more relaxed visualisation.
- Minimum time between beats configurable, to reduce the number of light updates.
Select the colors that will be used or randomize to set your mood.
- Comes with editable and removable color presets and the ability to add your own color sets.
- Color picker allows you to select any color from anywhere on your desktop.
Amount of lights that is updated per beat is configurable, you can increase the probability if you wish to have more lights update at once.
- Select which lights to use.
- Recovers your lights initial states after stopping.
Most settings can be adjusted while the visualizer is active.
Fully open source under GPLv3.
Platform independent, runs on any Java compatible operating system.
Easy to use user interface.
Stores your last settings and can be configured to start visualization directly after launch.
Notifies you when an update is available.

Gallery

Click on the image for a description/controls or swipe with your mouse/finger.

‹ ›

Get in touch

You can either join our Discord or mail directly to hello@lightbeat.io.
Feel free to use our issue tracker on GitHub to report any bugs you come across or tell us about your ideas.

Please read through the questions below, yours may already have been answered.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

How much does it cost?

LightBeat is completely free and open source, there is no adware bundled with it and no ads are served.
If you are having a good day and enjoy LightBeat I would appreciate a small donation.

A star on GitHub would be very nice, too!

Star

Do I need to have Java installed?

If you are using Windows you can just use the installer, which will drop Java right next to LightBeat without installing it system wide and doesn't require a manual Java installation. For other operating systems, please download and install the latest version of Java here. If you have already installed at least Java 8 you can also either use the Windows portable version, which doesn't require installation, or download the all platforms version, which should work on any operating system.

How many lights should I have?

You should have at least two lights in your configuration and it works great with three lights. There is no hard limit for how many lights can be used, besides what your bridge can hold.

What are the system requirements?

The hardware requirements are quite low, LightBeat should run on most and older systems that run any OS that supports Java. It does however require a Philips Hue Bridge (or a device that supports it's API) to connect to. As long as your lights are compatible with said bridge you should be able to use LightBeat with them. Non colored lights are supported but probably not very fun to use.

If you don't own a Philips Hue Bridge you could set up an emulator and connect whatever light system you want to it. You can use diyHue, Home Assistant and openHAB. They all allow you to connect all sorts of non-Hue systems under one joined system but are generally not easy to install and setup correctly. Also keep in mind that LightBeat wasn't tested with them and the quality of the visualisation will differ alot depending on which light systems you hook up. OpenHAB in particular had some quirks in it's Hue API implementation and high latency, but your mileage may vary (tested on OpenHAB v3.2.0).

Does it work with Spotify/YouTube/etc.?

Technically it can listen to anything and you do not need to play your music loudly over a speaker. See the audio setup guide on how to set it up.

I'm having latency issues, how can I improve my setup?

It is difficult to troubleshoot without knowing your exact setup. Firstly, there is always going to be a small latency between the sound and the light update if you are listening via your microphone or a stereo mix device. By using a virtual audio cable you will automatically have a small audio playback delay until you hear what is played, which may already be enough to synchronize the lights better.

Other causes for latency may be:

Bad connection in your local network
If you are connected via WiFi ensure that your connection is stable. WiFi may cause issues especially in crowded neighborhoods or if your router is overloaded.
Using too many lights
Disable any lights you don't need in LightBeat to reduce the latency. If you want to use more than four lights you may have to increase the minimum time between beats. The default is 200 milliseconds, try to increase the value to reduce congestion. Four lights or less should usually not cause LightBeat to send too many commands at 200ms.
Too much distance between lights
Hue bulbs communicate via the ZigBee standard. If they are too far apart the network will slow down. Try disabling more remotely located lights.
Running outdated firmware
Use your Philips Hue app and check for firmware updates for your bridge and lights. Newer versions usually contain performance optimizations.
Using a V1.0 hue bridge
If you are still using the circular hue bridge (not the square with rounded corners) you may want to consider upgrading, as the new bridge also comes with performance improvements.

What does setting X do?

Hover over the slider/checkbox/setting to get a description for your option. For sliders you will also see it's current and default value.

Why aren't my lights responding to the music under macOS Mojave (or newer)?

Apple introduced privacy controls for accessing the microphone (which LightBeat listens to) under macOS Mojave. Currently, when running the LightBeat.jar by double clicking it, the OS doesn't seem to ask for permissions, and it is not trivially possible to manually add Java to the list of apps that may access your microphone. You should be able to run LightBeat in a Terminal window by using this command: java -jar path/to/LightBeat.jar
Replace path/to/ with your path to LightBeat, for example Downloads/LightBeat.jar. You should now be prompted to give LightBeat permissions to access your microphone when pressing on start. This issue was potentially fixed already.

Some of my lights stay off for extended periods of time, is this intended?

When the Strobe or Glow effects are active lights get turned on/off depending on the intensity of the music. These effects usually don't last for too long and your lights shouldn't stay turned off for extended periods of time. Users have reported incompatibilities with the "Glow" effect (toggleable under advanced settings) and third-party lights, try disabling the Glow effect if this is a problem for you.