OPEN SOURCE · MIT · FREE

Your keyboard, playing along.

keybars turns your keyboard's backlight into a music equaliser. Whatever your computer plays, each column of keys becomes a bar, with a peak dot that holds a moment and falls like a hi-fi meter.

Install keybars Build your config

Colours

One command, the whole board

keybars finds the connected keyboard on its own and starts drawing. Bass sits on the left, treble on the right, and the number row is left alone for your other lights.

Sends only the keys that changed, so it keeps up: about 30 frames a second on a Moonlander
When the music stops, the keys go back to your layout's colours
Runs in the background, and starts at login with launchd or systemd

# macOS or Linux; brings cava too
$ brew install jwarykowski/tap/keybars

# the connected keyboard, bars up to the number row
$ keybars

# your own colours, bottom to top
$ keybars -colours '#00ff00,#ffff00,#ff0000'

# in the background
$ keybars start

Works with your keyboard

ZSA boards through Keymapp, and most other per-key RGB keyboards through OpenRGB.

ZSA Moonlander and Voyager

Through Keymapp's API, with built-in maps tested on real boards. keybars picks the map from the name Keymapp reports.

Most RGB keyboards

Razer, Corsair, Logitech, SteelSeries, ASUS, QMK and more through OpenRGB, which hands keybars the key layout, so there's no map to write.

Any other board

A text map drawn the way the keyboard looks. keybars gen writes one from QMK's definition, and keybars find lights one key at a time to fill it in by hand.

Tune it

Colours, gain, smoothing, peak dots, the bar height and keys to leave alone, as flags or in a config file.

Any audio source

cava listens to what your computer plays. Or pipe heights in from any program with -stdin.

macOS and Linux

Homebrew on both, binaries on GitHub, or go install from source. macOS needs a loopback device such as BlackHole.

Rather skip the setup?

keybars Pro is keybars as a desktop app. No cava, no loopback driver and no Keymapp: it hears what your computer plays and talks to the keyboard itself, with every setting in a window and a live preview.

Join the Pro waitlist What Pro adds

keybars stays free and MIT. If it makes your desk more fun, you can sponsor it.