A free music visualizer for OBS, Twitch and YouTube

Phosphene is a free, audio-reactive visualizer that runs in your browser, and it makes a striking background for a DJ stream, a music channel, a radio show or a listening party. OBS captures Phosphene's clean output window, and Phosphene listens to the same music your viewers hear, so the picture moves with every kick and drop.

Open PhospheneFree, no sign-up. It runs in your browser.

You need

OBS Studio on a Mac or Windows PC, and Chrome or Edge.

Streams to

Twitch, YouTube, Kick or anywhere else OBS can stream or record.

Setup time

About 10 minutes.

Price

Free, with no watermark on the visuals.

How it fits together

Phosphene runs in your browser and draws the visuals. OBS doesn't need to know anything about it: it simply captures the window Phosphene draws into, the same way it captures a game. The sound travels separately. Phosphene needs to hear the music so it can react, and OBS captures the music for your stream on its own.

Music            DJ software, a music app or a mixer
     │  virtual audio cable, line input or mic
     ▼
Phosphene        in Chrome or Edge
     │  output window, press O
     ▼
OBS Studio       Window Capture, plus your music as audio
     ▼
Twitch · YouTube · Kick

Step 1: get the music into Phosphene

Pick whichever matches where your music comes from.

The music plays on the same computer

This is the usual streaming setup: DJ software, Spotify or a playlist playing on the machine that runs OBS. A free virtual audio cable hands a copy of the sound to Phosphene.

• Mac: install BlackHole (free). In Audio MIDI Setup, create a Multi-Output Device with your headphones or speakers and BlackHole, and send the music to it. Then choose BlackHole as the input Phosphene listens to.
• Windows: install VB-Audio Virtual Cable (free). Send the music to CABLE Input and choose CABLE Output as Phosphene's input. To keep hearing it yourself, open the Sound control panel, go to Recording, open CABLE Output's properties and tick Listen to this device.

The music comes from a mixer or turntables

Run a cable from the mixer's record or booth output into an audio interface, and choose that interface as Phosphene's input. The DJ set guide has the details.

Choosing the input

Phosphene listens to the browser's microphone input. Choose which device that is at chrome://settings/content/microphone (the menu at the top), or make it your computer's default input. Then, in Phosphene's Audio tab, press Listen to Music Playing, watch the level bar move, and set Sensitivity. Phosphene turns off the browser's echo cancellation and noise suppression for music, so the signal arrives clean.

Step 2: open the clean output

1. Press O in Phosphene. A window called Phosphene Output opens with only the visuals in it: no panel, no buttons, no cursor. If nothing opens, allow pop-ups for beautifulengine.com.
2. Size it to roughly the shape of your stream. The picture keeps the shape of Phosphene's main window, so make the main window wide, close to 16:9, to fill a 16:9 stream without black bars.
3. Leave Phosphene's main window open and visible. Put it on a second monitor or beside OBS, but don't minimize it or cover it completely. When a browser window is hidden, the browser can pause it, and the output window freezes with it.

Step 3: add it to OBS

On Windows

1. In OBS, under Sources, press + and choose Window Capture.
2. For Window, pick the Chrome or Edge window titled Phosphene Output.
3. If the capture is black, change Capture Method to Windows 10 (1903 and up). Chrome draws with the graphics card, which the older method can't see.
4. Untick Capture Cursor.

On a Mac

1. In OBS, under Sources, press + and choose macOS Screen Capture.
2. Set Method to Window Capture and pick Phosphene Output.
3. If the list is empty, give OBS screen recording permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security, then restart OBS.
4. Untick Show cursor.

Then, on either

• Right-click the source and choose Transform → Fit to screen.
• If a title bar or edge shows, hold Alt (Option on a Mac) and drag the source's edge to crop it off.
• Add your music to OBS as audio, from Desktop Audio, the virtual cable or your interface, if it isn't there already. Check that you don't capture it twice.

Layouts that work

Full-screen background behind a DJ cam

Put the Phosphene source at the bottom of the source list, fit it to the screen, and lay your camera, overlays and chat on top. For a DJ stream this is the classic look, and it means there's never a static frame on screen.

Light over the camera

Put the Phosphene source above your camera instead, and set its blending mode to Screen or Additive from the right-click menu, available in recent versions of OBS. The black parts of the visuals disappear, and only the light lands on top of you. Dark, glowing engines such as Particle Field and Flow Particles work best for this.

Quiet background for talk or radio

Choose a slow scene, turn Sensitivity down, and add a Color Correction filter in OBS to lower the opacity. The picture breathes with the music without fighting the speakers for attention.

Music channel or listening stream

Run Phosphene full screen with only a small now-playing caption. Here the visuals are the show, so use autoplay, below, and let it change scenes on the bar.

Keep it moving on its own

You'll be busy with the music and the chat, so let Phosphene run itself.

• Autoplay (A) moves through scenes on its own, with smooth transitions.
• Drift (D) nudges colors, shapes and complexity so slowly you never notice a single change, yet after a few minutes everything is different.
• A cue list in the VJ tab plays a planned sequence of scenes, each for a set number of bars.
• Tap tempo (T) locks transitions and the strobe to the BPM when the automatic detection needs help.
• Tap effects: click the picture on a big moment for a drop of oil, a burst of particles or a new fractal right where you click.

Rapid full-screen flashing can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy, and it also turns to mush under stream compression. Keep the strobe for short bursts, or leave it off on stream.

Smooth streams

• Stream at 30 frames per second, or 720p at 60 if your viewers expect it. Phosphene's output window runs at 30, so a 30 fps stream matches it exactly.
• Leave hardware acceleration on in Chrome or Edge (Settings → System). Without it, Phosphene can't use the graphics card and will be slow.
• Close other tabs and apps. OBS's encoder, your DJ software and Phosphene all share the computer. Phosphene lowers its own render resolution when the frame rate drops, so it backs off before the stream does.
• If OBS reports encoding overload, drop the output resolution to 720p, or use the hardware encoder (NVENC, AMF, QuickSync or Apple VT) in OBS's output settings.
• Busy scenes cost bitrate. Fine, fast detail such as particles and fluid looks great live but needs bitrate to survive. If it smears on stream, pick a bolder, slower scene or raise the bitrate.

Clips for social

For a short clip, you don't need OBS. Phosphene's own Record button in the VJ tab records the visuals directly, up to 4K with HQ Recording on, and S saves a still, up to 8K. A share link recreates the exact scene, so a viewer who asks what you're using can open the same look.

Troubleshooting

The capture is black

On Windows, set Window Capture's Capture Method to Windows 10 (1903 and up). On a Mac, check that OBS has screen recording permission, then restart it.

The visuals freeze in OBS

Phosphene's main window is minimized or fully covered. Bring it back into view, on a second monitor if you have one, and keep it there.

The visuals don't react to the music

Phosphene is listening to the wrong input. Check that the level bar in the Audio tab moves. If it doesn't, choose the virtual cable or interface at chrome://settings/content/microphone and press Listen to Music Playing again. With a virtual cable, also check that the music is actually being sent to it.

Viewers hear the music twice, or with an echo

OBS is capturing the music from two places, such as Desktop Audio and the virtual cable. Mute one of them in OBS's audio mixer.

Questions

Can I use an OBS Browser Source instead?

A browser source can load Phosphene, but OBS's built-in browser generally can't use a microphone or audio input, so Phosphene can't hear the music and won't react to it. Capturing the output window from Chrome or Edge, as above, avoids that and gets the graphics card's full speed.

Does it work with Streamlabs Desktop?

Yes. Add Phosphene's output window with a Window Capture source, the same way as in OBS.

Can I send it to another computer?

Yes, through OBS. Capture the output window, then send it on with an NDI plugin such as DistroAV, and the other machine, OBS, Resolume or MadMapper, picks it up. There's more in getting Phosphene into Resolume or MadMapper.

Is it free to use on stream?

Phosphene is free, with no account and no watermark on the visuals.

Open PhospheneIt's free, and there's nothing to install.