About This Software

Turn your music into a living visual world.

Spiroshader™ turns the music playing on your computer into real-time visuals that move with the beat. Music apps, your browser, DJ software and games playing through your system output all work, with no microphone needed. Pick your audio output and press play. On macOS, allow audio capture once first.

Play presets in the classic MilkDrop format, stunning GPU shaders and your own images, all in one playlist. They scale from integrated graphics to high resolutions, high refresh rates and HDR on capable hardware. For Windows, Linux and macOS.

• Second monitor or TV - fullscreen ambience that keeps changing
• Psychedelic webcam mirror - with green-screen and built-in effect support for parties and streams
• Your brand on every visual - logo watermarks and live stingers for streams and events
• Streaming-ready - share the output with OBS through Spout, Syphon or PipeWire, bring cameras and other video sources in
• HDR highlights that rise above SDR white on a supported HDR display
• Find the vibe - search by complexity, movement, colors, brightness, flicker and patterns

Three visual formats, one playlist

MilkDrop 1 and 2 presets. The classic preset format, including custom shaders, waves, shapes and sprites. Compatibility depends on the preset and the textures it expects.

Shadertoy-style shaders. Single- and multipass GPU shaders: fractals, fluid simulations, ray-marched worlds, procedural landscapes and abstract digital art, fed with Spiroshader's real-time audio analysis.

Images. Photos, artwork and HDR images (Radiance HDR and OpenEXR) as backdrops, interludes or calmer moments between animated scenes.

A curated starter library. Spiroshader ships with a set of 350+ original presets. It can also play compatible presets and preset packs you add yourself. Third-party presets are not included, and WiderUp does not review or endorse them: their authors' licenses apply, and you use them at your own risk.

HDR

On an HDR display, Spiroshader keeps the visual pipeline in high dynamic range. Glowing highlights reach above ordinary SDR white.

HDR output requires an HDR-capable display and a supported Vulkan, Direct3D 12 or Metal setup.

Turn a webcam into a psychedelic magic mirror

Point a webcam at yourself, your friends, a dance floor or anything around you. Camera-aware presets pull the live image into the visual: liquid distortion, kaleidoscopes, feedback tunnels and infinity-mirror effects that react to the music.

With chroma-key / green-screen support, remove the camera background and place a person or object inside the generated scene. Use it as a party mirror, a performer backdrop, a stream effect or an art installation.

Your logo, alive in the visuals

Turn every visual into branded stream and event content. Add your logo as a transparent PNG sprite and keep it on screen across every preset as a watermark. Or feed it into the preset, so the same warps, feedback and color that shape the visuals make your logo ripple, melt and swirl with the music.

Fire a logo stinger live from a hotkey. Combine it with your keyed or picture-in-picture camera for a complete branded look, then share the result with OBS through Spout, Syphon or PipeWire.

Visuals that respond to the music

Spiroshader continuously analyzes the audio and hands it to the presets: bass and percussion, mids and vocals, highs, musical peaks, the full spectrum and overall energy. Per-preset controls let you adjust smoothing, frequency balance and sensitivity.

A playlist that fits the room

Play in order, shuffle, or favor your top-rated presets. Give entries their own duration, mark favorites, lock a preset, skip one, or cut automatically on strong beats. Use smooth crossfades or instant cuts, and control everything from the couch with mouse, keyboard, gamepad or touch.

Something colorful but calm? Filter for it.

Spiroshader indexes loose files and installed packs into a searchable library. Search names, authors, tags and metadata, preview results live, and add your own tags.

Every preset can be described by six visual characteristics:

Complexity · Movement · Colors · Brightness · Flicker · Patterns

Spiroshader can measure them in the background for presets that don't carry them. Sort and filter by them alongside ratings, favorites and skip marks. Find something dark and slow for late nights, or simply less flicker.

Tune the look without touching the preset

Choose an enhancement level, then fine-tune glow, vividness, clarity, motion speed, beat sensitivity, feedback timing and audio analysis. Tune each control globally or per preset. Spiroshader does not modify the preset file itself.

Render resolution is independent of the window size, so you can balance image quality and GPU load per preset.

For streamers, VJs and tinkerers

• Live video in and out: cameras and webcams, Spout (Windows), Syphon (macOS, Metal renderer) and PipeWire (Linux, input with the Vulkan renderer). Composite a source over a visual, blend it, key it, or map it into a preset as a texture. You can also publish Spiroshader's own output to tools such as OBS.
• Your music here, the picture there: two copies of Spiroshader sync over your local network. The leader sends audio, timing, preset and effect changes to one follower on another screen. A separate license and Steam account is required for the follower copy.
• Conductor Mode: lead a follower without rendering locally.
• JSON-RPC remote control for scripts, show-control systems and integrations.
• Multi-display layouts on one computer: a horizontal or vertical stripe, or a 2×2 wall.
• A modern native graphics API on every platform: Direct3D 12 on Windows, Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS, with OpenGL as a fallback.

Packs and credits

Preset collections install as packs of presets, textures and playlists that you can enable or disable as a unit. Spiroshader shows each preset's author, source and license terms when the metadata is present. Always check the license of the presets you use. Spiroshader's own included presets are released under CC0 1.0 or 0BSD, at your option.

Start simple. Go as deep as you want.

Start it and leave it running fullscreen. Or build a curated visual library, show off your HDR display, turn a webcam into an installation, light up a party, brand a stream, or drive a second screen across the room.

WARNING - Photosensitive seizure warning: This visualizer produces strong contrast, rapid flashes, and flickering patterns synchronized to audio. Certain combinations of light, color and flashing can have adverse effects on your health. A very small percentage of people may experience seizures, blackouts, or other symptoms when exposed to such visual stimuli, even with no prior history of epilepsy. Stop using the visualizer immediately if you feel any discomfort, and consult a doctor if you experience dizziness, altered vision, eye or muscle twitches, loss of awareness, disorientation, or any involuntary movement or convulsion. Use in a well-lit room and sit a comfortable distance from the screen.

Spiroshader is a trademark of WiderUp LLC. The
Spiroshader wordmark may be used to refer to the product in reviews,
articles, videos, package descriptions and compatibility statements, as long
as the use is accurate and does not suggest that WiderUp made, sponsors or
endorses something it did not. Do not use the wordmark as part of your own
product, service or domain name.

Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
Valve Corporation. macOS and Metal are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered
in the U.S. and other countries and regions. Direct3D and Windows are
trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Vulkan and the Vulkan logo
are registered trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. OpenGL® and the oval logo
are trademarks or registered trademarks of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the
United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux® is the registered
trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. OpenEXR is a
trademark of LF Projects, LLC.
MilkDrop, Shadertoy and Radiance HDR are marks or names of their
respective owners and appear on this page only to describe compatible or
supported content formats. Spout, Syphon, PipeWire and OBS are marks or
names of their respective owners and appear only to describe supported
interoperability. Spiroshader is an independent product and is not
affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the owners of those marks.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Pre-generated: AI-assisted development was used for portions of WiderUp's
included preset/code content. Generative image tools were also used for
splash/backdrop artwork and parts of the user-interface icon set, based on
WiderUp's prompts and followed by human review/editing. Shipped outputs were
reviewed, tested and integrated by WiderUp. The product does not rely on an
AI service while it is running.

Live-generated: None. Spiroshader does not generate content with AI at
runtime and contains no runtime AI model or generative-AI service.