projectM Music Visualizer

projectM - The most advanced open-source music visualizer

Experience psychedelic and mesmerizing visuals by transforming music into equations that render into a limitless array of user-contributed visualizations.

projectM is an open-source project that reimplements the esteemed Winamp Milkdrop by Ryan Geiss in an open-source, cross-platform reusable library.

Its purpose in life is to read an audio input and to produce mesmerizing visuals, detecting tempo, and rendering advanced equations into a limitless array of user-contributed visualizations.

Visuals are read from files called "presets", of which there have been created many thousands in the last two decades. Presets are simple text files, containing settings, math equations and GPU shaders from which projectM creates moving, always-changing patterns that react to the playing music in different ways.

The latest source code of the projectM library, the frontends and additional preset collections are all available on GitHub:

• https://github.com/projectM-visualizer/

What do you get?

A number of download options are available, depending on your needs you might want to use different files:

• Most users will want the standalone visualizer, which is called projectM-SDL. It comes with a minimalistic, text-based menu to select presets and can be controlled via keyboard shortcuts. Press F1 to display a help screen. This version is available for all major desktop operating systems.
• An Apple Music app plug-in for macOS, which runs as a built-in visualizer in Music.
• Pre-built 64-bit development library packages for a number of operating systems and platforms, e.g. Windows, Linux, macOS (native code for both Intel and M1) and the Raspberry Pi 3/4.
• Source code packages from GitHub for both the latest development version and stable release of the projectM library and the standalone SDL visualizer.

Problems, feature requests or encountered a bug?

Great! The projectM team always wants to hear from you if you've got any issues with the program, or have feature requests. You can reach out to us either on the GitHub issue tracker or via Discord:

• https://github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm/issues
• https://discord.gg/tpEuywB

Documentation for the library and user manuals for the frontends are available or linked in the main project wiki:

• https://github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm/wiki

If you're a developer, contributions to any subproject are also always welcome. If unsure how you can help best, chat with us first. We'll surely find something you can do!