Changelog

BeamTracer releases

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October 5, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • No more crashes on a first visit from a translated page or a locked-down browser. Pages that a browser translator or extension had rewritten, and browsers that refuse to store site data (some in-app browsers, privacy settings), could drop a first visit to an error page in Visualizers, Scope, Laser and Studio. They now load and work for the whole visit; with storage refused, settings simply are not kept afterward.
  • A clear message when a visualizer cannot start. On a device without graphics acceleration, a visualizer that cannot start now says so, with RETRY and a link to Browser support, instead of showing a black screen.
  • Keep your video’s original sound. Uploaded videos start with VIDEO SOUND on, so playback and rendered exports keep the source audio. Playing a separate track remains an optional replacement. Render an uploaded video
  • Render your video with tracking effects. Upload a clip under VISUAL SOURCE → VIDEO · IMAGE, choose your FX Rack look, then use RENDER to export the full clip with its effects, hand windows and tracking. Include the video’s original sound at normal speed or use a separate audio track. Render an uploaded video
  • Snare and hat hits as sources. Snare onset and Hat onset join Bass onset, so a snare can fire one effect and the hats another while the kick drives a third. Audio Analysis Engine
  • Spin with the energy, coast in the breakdown. The new Speed (integrate) route algorithm turns a source into a speed: the control sweeps on round its range, fast while the music is loud and slowing to a stop when it goes quiet, with Rate setting how fast. Modulation Matrix
  • Route options that do something. A route now shows Curve, Threshold, Steps and Clamp only when its algorithm and anchor use them, and Polarity drops Bipolar, which changed nothing. Modulation Matrix
  • Feedback that melts. The FX Rack's FEEDBACK gains BLUR, which softens the trail a little more each time round, DISPLACE, which pushes the trail along its own light into liquid smears, and RESET: ON HIT, which wipes the trail clean on every HIT so a kick can start it fresh. Performer FX Rack

October 4, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • Hear a video in the FX Rack. Switch on VIDEO SOUND to play an uploaded video’s sound and drive the visuals with it. A playing track or live audio input takes priority; the video returns when that source stops. FX Rack

  • Pick a visualizer by sight. The VISUALIZERS panel, in Visualizer mode and in Performer, shows every visualizer as a thumbnail by category, with a search at the top and a switch back to a list of names. Getting started

  • Performer panels look alike. Presets, Customize, Scene Sequencer, Shader Library, FX Rack and Visualizers share one header, width, type and green, with each panel's icon matching the button that opens it.

  • PARTICLES. The new FX Rack effect rebuilds any camera, video or visualizer from particles in its own colors: CLOUD stacks the picture in layers of small squares that swing in 3D and shimmer, and STREAM lets particles flow off it. EMIT FROM: PERSON builds only you, with no black backdrop needed, and DISSOLVE trades the picture and the particles like watercolor.

  • 3D models as holograms. PARTICLES' new SOURCE: MODEL turns a 3D model (the Daft Punk helmets, a stormtrooper, a TIE fighter, a lightcycle, a recognizer) into a turning cloud of glowing dots, painted with a palette RAMP, with zooming TRAILS, and can stream particles off it. Performer FX Rack

  • SNAP: turn to dust. PARTICLES' new SNAP mode disintegrates you (or anything in the picture) into dust that blows away in any direction, then holds, loops or flies back in to reform you, over a clean plate of the empty room. Performer FX Rack

  • Photos hold still. A photo chosen as the FX Rack's VISUAL SOURCE stays put instead of drifting slowly. Performer FX Rack

  • STEALTH, turn invisible. The new FX Rack effect turns you into glass: the room shows through you, bent at your edges, with your face and hands traced in the glass and a liquid wake behind every move. Give it a CLEAN PLATE (step out of frame and press CAPTURE, or load a photo of the empty room) and the glass shows exactly what is behind you. DETAIL, REFRACTION and SHINE shape the glass, and APPLY TO: MOTION glasses only what moves, over any picture. Performer FX Rack

  • DELAY, a long-exposure echo. The new FX Rack effect lays earlier copies of the picture over the live one, each older and fainter, like chronophotography. APPLY TO: PERSON echoes only you, HUE STEP turns each copy further round the color wheel, and LIGHTEN makes glowing trails on a dark room. Performer FX Rack

  • One-click layout for your drum machine. Performer Settings → MIDI → SHOWCASE MAPPING loads a controller layout for the six sequencer looks: notes recall them, kick, snare and hats fire their HITs, and CC 1 to 8 ride each look's main control, ready for an OP-XY's MIDI track or any controller. MIDI integration

  • Six looks made for playing from a drum machine. The FX Rack gains DATA HANDS, PIXEL GLITCH, PINCH SWEEP, THERMAL BODY, SPARK DRUMS and KICK FLIP, and looks can now be learned to pads up to LOOK 24. FX Rack

  • Kicks that flip, notes that hit harder. Modulation routes gain Toggle (each kick flips a control on, the next one off) and Count (each hit steps through a few levels), and the last MIDI note's Note velocity and Note pitch become modulation sources, so accented drum hits can drive an effect harder. Modulation Matrix

  • Cut presets from your sequencer's notes. Performer Settings → MIDI → NOTE MAP turns a run of notes into preset picks: the first note (F3 by default) plays the first preset and each note above the next, with a list showing which note plays which. PRESET 1 to PRESET 16 can also be learned to pads, one preset each. MIDI integration

  • Background Opacity holds everywhere. Orbital Blob's space photo and grid now show behind the blob and fade in Studio, in exports and in Performer as well as in the Visualizer; Silk fades all the way to transparent when you drag the slider live; Solar System's far dust no longer leaves a gray haze over what sits behind it; and Wormhole gains its Background Opacity slider. Studio export

  • Orbital Blob without its HUD. Orbital Blob gains HUD Widgets (on by default): switch it off to fly the blob alone, without the status readouts and the three analysis widgets. Orbital Blob

  • More looks in depth. TRACK's BOXES DEPTH and SHAPES DEPTH float the boxes and marks in front of and behind you like MOSAIC's tiles, so they grow and spread as you lean in, and EMIT's DEPTH pours bigger, faster particles when your mouth or hand is near the camera. FX Rack

  • TRACK keeps time with the band. TRACK gains a RHYTHM section: BASS → SCALE swells tiles, rings, boxes and shapes with the bass, MID → LINKS stretches the plexus with the mids, HIGH → DETAIL adds scan curtain and labels with the highs, SYNC STRENGTH scales all three, and BEAT OFFSET moves the beat the looks re-deal on, earlier or later. FX Rack

  • Performer follows your sequencer's clock. MIDI Clock: EXTERNAL now does what it says: a sequencer, drum machine or DAW sending MIDI clock sets Performer's tempo, MIDI Start plays the Scene Sequencer and Stop stops it, and the MIDI settings show the tempo coming in. MIDI integration

  • Birds stand out on any background. Birds gains Bird Color Mode: AUTO (the new default) reverses the bird color wherever it would vanish, so black birds turn white on a night sky or a black background; FIXED keeps the color you pick; HUE cycles the flock through the colors, with Hue Speed. Birds

  • Grids that fill with data. TRACK's GRID gains GRID FILL: each cell's number, its position and size as a data table, a scrolling machine log of pings and login attempts, or placeholder text that types and scrolls or flashes on the beat, or a different one in every cell. FX Rack

  • Off no longer lights up green. Across Scope, Viz and Laser, a setting you have switched off (an OFF or NONE choice, a section whose feature is off, or a generator card that is open but not running) now shows in neutral gray; green always means something is on.

  • TRACK looks preview without music. With the music stopped or paused, every TRACK look you have on stays on screen, dimmed to a faint preview, instead of seeming to vanish; it comes up to full when the music plays. The looks also add up properly now: SCAN keeps its face outline when CONSTELLATION is on, and under OBJECTS, SHAPES and PLEXUS draw on each object's box. FX Rack

October 3, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • A plexus wired by the music. TRACK's PLEXUS gains LINKS: BANDS: fans of links spring from a few points and rewire on the music's hits, long ones for the bass and short quick ones for the highs, and the busier the mids get the more of the web shows. Any effect on a music route now also follows the music in Performer over visualizers that publish no levels of their own. FX Rack

  • Call the jellyfish with an open hand. BioJelly gains Hand Tracking: open your hand on camera and the jellyfish nearby turn and swim to it, close it and they drift off; Scatter drives them away, and Draw Path leads them along a loop you trace. BioJelly

  • Strange Attractors in your hand. Strange Attractors gains Hand Tracking: the whole attractor glides to your raised hand, fills the frame as you push it toward the camera, and travels a loop you draw in the air or with the mouse. Strange Attractors

  • Particle Man moves with your hand. Particle Man gains Hand Tracking: the whole figure glides to your raised hand, nearer as you push it toward the camera, and walks a loop you draw in the air or with the mouse. Particle Man

  • Fluidic Balls gather at your hand. Fluidic Balls gains Hand Tracking: the balls pour out around your raised hand, swell toward you as you push it toward the camera, and pour along a loop you draw in the air or with the mouse. Fluidic Balls

  • Tube Trails follow your hand. Tube Trails gains Hand Tracking: the glowing tubes chase your raised hand, swell toward you as you push it toward the camera, and run a loop you draw in the air or with the mouse. Tube Trails

  • Man In White follows your hand. Man In White gains Hand Tracking: in Performer with your camera under it, the figure flies to your raised hand and stays under it on screen, nearer as you push your hand toward the camera. Draw Path lets it walk a loop you trace in the air or with the mouse. Man In White

  • Camera tips for first-timers. The first time the camera controls show, six short tips explain turning on your camera, choosing one, mirroring, hand and face tracking, what your hands can control, and getting good tracking, one at a time. Settings → Display → Tips turns tips off or back on and replays them all. Getting started

  • Tracking in depth. The camera now reads how near your face and hands are from how big they look. Three new sources, Face near, Hand near and Hand depth (your hand held toward the camera or back, against your face), can drive any slider. MOSAIC gains DEPTH: its tiles float in front of and behind you, growing and sliding as you move and lean in. Birds gains HAND DEPTH: push your hand toward the camera and the flock flies toward you, and a path you draw while reaching forward becomes a loop in 3D. FX Rack · Birds

  • Birds out of your mouth, and the flock along a path you draw. Birds gains MOUTH EMITTER, on by default: open your mouth on camera and new birds pour out toward you and join the flock, which keeps flying. HAND: DRAW PATH lets you point and draw a curve in the air, or drag one with the mouse, and the birds stream along it; SHOW PATH draws the line as you go. Birds

  • EMIT: particles from your mouth or hands. A new FX Rack effect sprays flapping birds, sparks, hearts, bubbles, confetti or stars from your mouth, an open hand, a pointing fingertip or the middle of the frame, over any visualizer; a HIT bursts a flock at once. Camera tracking adds Face in view, Pointing, Fingertip X/Y and Mouth X/Y sources. FX Rack

  • Birds: a flock of thousands of birds. The new Birds visualizer sweeps a murmuration across the sky, calm on its own as a screensaver and surging, startling and beating its wings with the music. Move the pointer through it to scatter it. CURL swirls the flock into eddies, from a little to a lot. In Performer, set Visual Source to Visualizer: Over and the flock flies over your camera and follows your hand, or flees it. Birds

  • Effects on your whole body, or only behind you. MASK gains SHAPE: PERSON: everything below it plays only on you, hair and hands included, or with OUTSIDE only on the room behind you, so you can stand in a thermal or ASCII world as yourself. FX Rack

  • Record your Performer set live. RECORD beside RENDER records what the Performer shows as you play, your camera, tracking, hits and shader layer included, with the music, and saves an MP4 when you press STOP. On the free plan a recording uses one of the month's free exports and carries the watermark. Record a live take

  • Nexus Lattice without its floor. FLOOR OPACITY fades the reflective floor under the lattice; at 0 with BACKGROUND OPACITY at 0, only the lattice sits over your other Studio layers. Nexus Lattice

  • Move any slider with your hands or face. Modulate with gains Camera tracking in Performer: hand position, pinch, an open hand, an open mouth, a head turn, how fast you move, or how many objects are in view. Open your hand to blur the picture or move it to zoom; the tracking it needs starts on its own. Performer FX Rack

  • ASCII rain, waves and noise, in three fonts. ASCII gains FIELD: the characters can draw falling rain, spreading waves or flowing noise instead of the picture, or blended with it so the picture shows through, and FONT sets them in a terminal face, the app's JetBrains Mono or a typewriter. FX Rack

  • Steadier ASCII on a live camera. ASCII gains STEADY: it averages the last few frames, so camera noise stops flipping characters back and forth while real movement still comes through. FX Rack

  • Hand gestures play the Performer. MIDI Learn now learns a hand gesture to the camera like a pad: open palm, fist, thumb up or down, pointing up, victory or I love you can fire an effect's HIT, recall a look, step presets or flip any learnable switch, once per gesture. MIDI & OSC Integration

  • Play a source video slower or faster. SPEED under VISUAL SOURCE plays a video or an example from a quarter speed to four times faster, so slow footage keeps the tracking looks busy. FX Rack

  • Track what moves. TRACK's new FOLLOW: MOTION anchors its boxes, lines and box effects on whatever moves in the picture and leaves a still background alone. FX Rack

  • Tracking boxes in any shape. With MASK on BOXES, REGION turns each box into a circle, diamond, hexagon, ring or heart, and the effects, outline and glow follow the shape. FX Rack

  • Four new effects: X-Ray, Invert, Zoom and Blur. X-RAY inverts the picture to a high-contrast gray with glowing edges, INVERT makes a negative or flips only the brightness, BLUR softens the picture, and ZOOM magnifies it, about the middle of the frame or, inside tracking boxes, about each box's own middle. FX Rack

  • New box and line styles for TRACK. BOX STYLE draws the tracking boxes as brackets, a frame, an X-frame, a cross, a grid, marching dashes, a round scope, drifting particles or a tinted backdrop, with labels on solid tags if you like. Plexus lines can curve, snake, strike like lightning or march as dashes, HUB wires every point to the center, CONNECTION RATE thins the web, and SEPARATE colors split boxes, lines and labels. FX Rack

  • Effects inside tracking boxes. MASK gains BOXES: everything below it plays inside TRACK's boxes, and on CONTOURS TRACK now boxes up to 32 points (BOX COUNT, BOX SIZE), the blob-tracking look. DEAL: EACH gives every box its own effect (thermal in one, ASCII in the next, a dither in another), re-dealt on the beat if you like, and BLINK makes boxes drop out at random. The new BABY TRACK look (2 in Performer mode, replacing Kick Cam) sets it all up in one press. FX Rack

  • A thermal camera in the FX Rack. THERMAL turns any picture into thermal video with nine FLIR palettes: White Hot, Black Hot, Red Hot, Fusion, Ironbow, Arctic, Rainbow HC, Outdoor Alert and Sepia. People you track run hot against a cooler room, skin and lights read warm and a blue sky cold. Set the contrast, edge detail, softness and grain, and leave heat trails, heat-haze shimmer or a paper grain. FX Rack

  • Print-style tracking: grids, marks, meshes, a portrait window and dither inks. TRACK gains a GRID look (drafting, editorial blocks, broken picture fragments or labeled data modules that stay large on the subject) and a SHAPES look (marks on the most important points with a size hierarchy). PLEXUS joins points by proximity, a Delaunay mesh, an edge chain, radial stars, right-angle elbows or a hybrid, with line confidence and weight, and SCAN's curtain takes a direction, density and length. PORTRAIT WINDOW prints a halftone or engraving window that follows the face over a blurred backdrop. DITHER gains blue-noise and white-noise patterns, coarser pixels, threshold, contrast, edge preserve, motion and ink-on-paper palettes, and now prints in black and white by default (SOURCE COLORS keeps the picture's colors). FX Rack

  • Effects inside your face or between your hands. The new MASK keeps every effect below it in the FX Rack inside the outline of your face or the window your thumbs and index fingers make, so ASCII, a dither or a glitch plays only there while you stretch, tilt and twist the window; OUTSIDE turns it round. The new POP FRAME look (0 in Performer mode) brings the hand-frame trend in one press: the window between your hands printed in magenta, cyan and yellow inside a glowing magenta outline. FX Rack

  • ASCII art that draws the picture. The FX Rack's ASCII effect had been drawing the dotted BLOCKS shades instead of text. It now matches each cell to the character whose shape fits it best (MATCH: SHAPE), so outlines read as drawn lines, or by tone alone. Fifteen character sets, from the ten-level STANDARD and seventy-level DETAILED ramps to BRAILLE, drawn LINES and CROSS marks, or your own on CUSTOM; brightness, contrast, dither and invert; and color from the picture, the 16 or 256 terminal colors, or ink-on-paper palettes such as PHOSPHOR, NEWSPRINT and POCKET CAMERA. FX Rack

  • Step visualizers from a controller, quieter effect rows, and Screen Print's labels. Previous and next visualizer are now MIDI-learnable and have their own OSC addresses, like the preset step. In the FX Rack, the HIDE and HIT modulation icons stay out of sight until you hover a row, unless one is assigned. The Screen Print look's labels now flash technical words instead of reading CONTOURS on its own photograph. MIDI & OSC Integration · FX Rack

  • TRACK holds steady, or glitches on purpose. A new MOTION group: SMOOTH glides the tracked points so boxes, lines, targets and labels stop twitching on a live camera while still following movement, and JITTER knocks them off position at JITTER RATE for a glitch, on the beat if you route it there. The Trina · Hands example under SOURCE now loads. FX Rack

  • Every visualizer in Performer mode, and examples to start with. VISUALIZERS beside PRESETS opens the full visualizer list on the left, by category, so visualizers with no preset of their own play too; [ and ] step through them. SOURCE at the top of the FX Rack changes the picture under the effects in one place, with examples to try without a camera: Trina still, Trina raising her hands, and Van Gogh's Self-Portrait. A first visit opens on the Screen Print look, and its first-run tips, now one at a time, show where to change the picture. TRACK now always follows the picture on screen. FX Rack · Presets

  • Shaders play with your preset. A shader from the Shader Library now runs on a layer with the preset instead of replacing it: put it BEHIND the visualizer or IN FRONT, pick a blend such as SCREEN or OVERLAY, and fade it with OPACITY. It stays when you change presets, and the FX Rack processes both together. FX Rack

  • Each TRACK look fades and glows on its own. Boxes, Plexus, Constellation, Mosaic and Scan each gain OPACITY and GLOW, which you can put on the music like any slider; they start where the looks were. Constellation's ring now labels its diameter. FX Rack

  • TRACK labels in your words. LABEL TEXT switches TRACK's labels from the names it found to flashing HUD terms (TRACKING, PROCESSING, CONTOURS, DEPTH, ROTATION and the effects you have on) or to your own words, at the LABEL RATE you choose. The % beside a box or ring now shows its size in the frame, and the depth and rotation readouts follow the subject. FX Rack

  • HIDE and HIT follow the music. The activity icon beside each effect's HIDE and HIT opens the same Modulate with list the sliders use: an effect can blink out on every kick, or punch on every snare. HIDE also has its own OSC address, beside HIT's, and both learn to a MIDI pad or a key. FX Rack

  • TRACK's SCAN locks on, and every part is yours to play. Targets now lock onto the high-contrast points the scan line passes: each closes in from the line, shrinks onto its point and holds, leaving echo trails behind, as a HUD target, a circle, triangle, square, diamond, hexagon or a random mix. The scan line, the curtain, the targets and the labels each have their own amount you can fade, switch off or assign to the music, the curtain's hairlines rise and fall with the spectrum like a quiet meter, and the line can sweep on the beat or steadily. With no music playing the looks hold still instead of flickering. BOXES gains AIM: its crosshair at the center, on the thirds, on the golden-spiral point or dealt at random on every beat. FX Rack

  • Hand Frame: a color window between your hands. Hold up both hands with thumbs and index fingers spread and a window opens between them; inside it the picture turns to moving color picked from a cycling palette. Stretch and tilt it with your fingers, choose a palette, outline and smoothing, and play it from MIDI or OSC like any effect. The new HAND FRAME look (9 in Performer mode) brings your camera, the window and a thin trace over your face and hands in one press. FX Rack

  • TRACK follows a face and hands at once. Pick FACE + HANDS under FOLLOW and the looks draw over your face and both hands together; STATUS counts each, for example 1 FACE · 2 HANDS. FX Rack

  • Your camera is one click away in Presets. A Visual Source pill in Presets lists three camera presets, Camera, Camera Kick Zoom and Camera Mono Print, and picking one starts your camera. The family pills now follow the visualizer list's order, so Visual Source sits right after Core Analytics, and searching camera finds the presets too. Presets

  • Visual Source, a visualizer for your own picture. A new Visual Source category sits right under Core Analytics. Pick Camera, Screen or Video · Image in its settings and the picture fills the canvas, punched in by the bass, with fill, mirror, zoom, shake and color controls; until you pick one, a studio photograph stands in. Open Effects under its settings to put tracking looks and any other effect over it. Leaving it switches the camera off. Visual Source

  • Your camera, a screen, a video or an image under every effect, in Visualizer mode too. The FX Rack now opens from EFFECTS at the bottom of the Visualizer settings as well as in Performer mode. Its new VISUAL SOURCE puts a picture at the head of the list: press CAMERA, SCREEN or VIDEO · IMAGE, blend it over the visualizer with PICTURE, flash it in on the beat with HIT, and STOP releases it. FX Rack

  • TRACK draws a print, not just lines, and it works on any picture. Its looks now stack: MOSAIC cuts numbered tiles from the picture at the landmarks and re-deals them on every beat, with an inset of one eye and depth and rotation readouts; SCAN adds a curtain of hairlines, a scan line that sweeps on each beat with a chain of rings riding it, and coordinate ticks along the contours. RANDOMIZE re-deals the shapes, links and curtain on every beat or every fourth while the motion keeps running, and the looks move with the music before you assign anything. A new CONTOURS follow mode anchors on the strongest edges with no person needed, and FACE, HANDS and BODY settle on those contours whenever nothing is in view, so a profile or a landscape still gets the print. TRACK follows the visual source, or the picture itself when there is none. FX Rack

  • Screen Print rebuilt. The look now lays TRACK's print over the gray contour study: picture tiles, hairline links, a ring and a scan over the face, re-dealt on every beat, over grain. Recall it with 4 in Performer mode. FX Rack

  • TRACK: boxes and lines that follow you on camera. Add TRACK in the FX Rack and it watches your camera for faces, hands, a body or everyday objects, then draws over them: tracking boxes with labels and live coordinates, a plexus web between the points, or a constellation skeleton with joint markers. Show yourself under the lines or only the lines over the visualizer, pick the camera, flash the lines on the beat, and play every control from MIDI, OSC or the keyboard. FX Rack

  • Reactive Portrait gains a studio photo, and Screen Print becomes a contour study. Under Built-In Portrait, choose Studio Photo for a photograph instead of Van Gogh's Self-Portrait, and the new Studio Portrait preset holds it still and full-frame. The Screen Print FX look now turns that photograph gray with thin glowing contour lines along the face and body, scanlines and grain, and the lines flare on the beat. Recall it with 4 in Performer mode. Reactive Portrait · FX Rack

  • Ten more FX Rack effects, and Neon edges. Hex Mirror folds the picture into a honeycomb of six-way mirrors; Grid Tile repeats it in tiles that mirror, turn and overlap; Ripple, Pond Ripple, Water and Raindrops bend it like water and glass; Glitch breaks it into jumping lines and blocks; Tilt Shift makes the scene look like a miniature; Dither prints it with an ordered dot pattern; and CRT shows it on a curved tube screen. Edges gains a NEON style that draws glowing lines in one color, the picture's colors or a color for each direction. FX Rack

  • The FX Rack is easier to play live. Drag effects to reorder them. Click an effect's name to jump to its controls, which open right under the list. HIDE takes an effect out of the picture without losing its place or settings, a lock keeps it from being removed or dragged by accident, and × removes it. ADD AN EFFECT is sorted A to Z, and a star keeps your favorites at the top, still visible when the grid is folded. FX Rack

  • Looks on the number keys, and looks you can overwrite. In Performer mode, 1 to 9 and 0 recall FX looks 1 to 10, and pressing a lit look again, by key or click, turns it off. UPDATE saves the rack over the lit look, including the looks that come with the rack, and RESET brings an original back; Performer Settings → DISPLAY → FX LOOKS can reset all of them at once. FX Rack

  • Map keys on your keyboard like MIDI, and a MIDI / OSC strip in the FX Rack. With MIDI Learn on, click a Performer control and press a letter, number or symbol key; keys the app already uses are refused, with the shortcut that owns them. The new strip at the bottom of the FX Rack shows whether your MIDI controller and the OSC bridge are connected, starts LEARN, lists what's mapped to the rack and opens the full MIDI settings. MIDI & OSC Integration · Keyboard shortcuts

  • Audio Torus gains glass cores, trails and a kaleidoscope. Choose NACRE under CORE for a folded ring of oil-slick glass: bass widens it, mids fold its surface like liquid, highs tighten its rainbow film, the spectrum swells the glass around the ring and the live waveform bends it. FACET folds the same glass into a triangle lit by thin studio strips, and HYBRID morphs one loop between the ring and the triangle, swinging on its own, sending a wave of crystal around the loop with MORPH TRAVEL, or snapping on the kick. SOUND TRAVEL lets the last two seconds of sound flow around the glass, and BEAT TWIST spins it on every kick. On every core, TRAILS leave fading echoes that can fall into a TUNNEL, spiral and drift through color, and MIRROR reflects the picture into sides, a lake or a kaleidoscope. Twelve new looks, from Nacre and Deep Dive to Crystallize, Rabbit Hole and the slow Slow Tide, and eight Color presets recolor the glass. The torus's Bloom, Glow Intensity, Mid Intensity and Beat Pulse now respond across their whole range, and lowering Background Opacity leaves only the subject. Audio Torus

Studio

  • First-run tips in Studio. Your first visit walks through the five steps, the layers, the preview, the selected layer's controls and EXPORT, one tip at a time. Settings → SHORTCUTS → Show startup hints again replays them. Make Your First Video

Site & Account

  • Documentation search works again. Searching the docs showed no results for every query; results now appear as you type and open the matching section. Documentation

October 2, 2026

OSC-1

  • Live video recordings include your sound. EXPORT → VIDEO → RECORD LIVE INPUT saves the oscilloscope drawing and its playing audio together.
  • Hear and draw harmony experiments. The new Harmony Expression presets explore musical intervals, phase, tuning, harmonics, beats, and three- and four-note chords. Start with slow axis motions, raise SPEED to hear the notes, and compare the X/Y drawing with SCOPE and SWEEP. CONTINUOUS PHASE lets tuning differences evolve across drawing cycles. Hear and see harmony

Audio Visualizers

  • Background Opacity on every visualizer. Fourteen more visualizers gain a BACKGROUND OPACITY slider that fades the backdrop and leaves the subject over whatever sits behind the visualizer: Spectrum, Spectrum Sphere, Planetoidal Life, Background Liquid, Singularity, Solar System, Orbital Blob, Plasma Ball, Volumetric Light, Procedural Landscape, Nexus Lattice, Particle Equalizer, Strange Attractors and Lumin Thread. Wormhole's Geometric and Drift modes now fade with their existing slider. Spectrum Analyzer, Fracture, Silk, Angry Sphere and Fluid Simulation swap their TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND switch for the same slider, so you can set any level between solid and fully see-through. Strange Attractors loses its TRAIL LENGTH slider, which had no visible effect.
  • Five more FX Rack effects, two more looks, scenes that bring their own look, and video with effects. Mirror Fold folds the picture onto itself side to side, top to bottom, into four or across the diagonal; Row Tear breaks it up like a damaged video signal; Glow blooms the brightest parts; Lens Streaks stretches bright points into long anamorphic streaks; and Beat Flash washes lit parts toward a color on every kick. New looks Signal Loss and Prism Glow show them off. In the Scene Sequencer, each scene can now bring an FX look with it, or switch every effect off. And RENDER now works in Performer mode: the video includes every effect that is switched on, still following the music. FX Rack · Render to video
  • New Creative visualizer: Reflection Tree. Generate a branching sculpture over a mirrored floor, with cubes, spheres, crystals, tetrahedrons, rings, cones, or capsules. Shape the branching, curl, droop, and growth, generate new arrangements, and explore six presets with different structures and atmospheres. Bass sends outward waves, mids twist the branches, highs scatter the shapes, and the music can open the growing tips. Reflection Tree
  • Shared visualizer links show the visualizer filling the preview. When you share a visualizer or its guide, the link preview is now a full-width picture of the visualizer in motion, instead of a small thumbnail beside the name.
  • The preview at the top of every visualizer guide opens that visualizer. Click or tap the moving preview (look for OPEN in its corner) to launch the visualizer it shows; on the Audio Analysis Engine guide it opens the engine. Audio Visualizers
  • New Winamp Tribute visualizer: Emberflux. Rivers of light that tangle, swirl and weave to your music, in three looks you choose under CORE: EMBER, a turbulent rope of light twisting on a saddle; TIDE, currents circling dark wells; and LACE, crimped ribbons of fine strands woven across the frame. The lines sit on three planes at different depths, so bass, mids and highs each move their own layer. The music travels along every line: the waveform ripples it, each line brightens and thickens with its own part of the spectrum, every beat sends a ring of light outward from the center, and SPARKS race along the lines. When the music stops the field slows to a calm drift, set by IDLE SPEED, and picks up again when it starts. Drag the picture to orbit the planes in 3D and scroll to move closer. Start from ten presets across the three cores and ten Color Presets. Emberflux
  • Vector Echoes gains Mirage and Hybrid cores. Choose MIRAGE under CORE to mirror the spectrum about a glowing horizon and let its history trail behind it: bass stretches the trail, mids clap the mirror open and shut, highs flare the horizon, and BEAT SHOCK sends every beat traveling down the wake. Roll the horizon into a ring with AXIS SHAPE, twist the wake into a propeller or spiral with TWIST, and ripple the live waveform along the horizon with AXIS WAVE. HYBRID morphs between Mirage and Echoes, folding the mirrored horizon into the echo tunnel and back: set where it rests with MORPH, let it swing on its own with SWING, or let it travel down the wake with MORPH TRAVEL. Ten new presets show them off, from Mirage and Heat Haze to Shapeshifter and Kick Fold, and eight Color presets recolor any core without changing its shape. Vector Echoes
  • The FX Rack gains six effects and saved looks. Shake for camera shake, zoom pump and roll on the kick; Droste for an endless tunnel of the picture inside itself; Hex Tile for a hexagon mosaic; Slit-scan, which shows each strip of the frame a moment later than the last so motion bends across the screen; Duotone; and Posterize. Save the whole rack as a look, with every effect, setting and music assignment, and recall it in one press over any visualizer, optionally switching to the visualizer it was made over. Six looks come built in, from Infinite Tunnel to Riso. Step through looks with PREV and NEXT, learn them to MIDI pads, or recall them over OSC. FX Rack
  • The FX Rack now shows the picture the right way up, and every control does something. Stacked effects such as Kaleido then Barrel now combine instead of only the last one showing, HIT works on every effect even when its setting is at the top, Gradient Map keeps black backgrounds black, controls that only matter with another setting appear when they do, and effects that brighten the picture can no longer wash out the whole frame. Effects assigned to bass or mids now follow the music instead of switching fully on while it plays, and the beat drives them over every visualizer. FX Rack
  • New in Performer mode: the FX Rack. Twenty live effects over whatever visualizer or shader is showing: fisheye Barrel, Swirl, Polar, Kaleido, Concentric Tile, Pixelate, Radial Blur, Feedback trails, RGB Shift, Chromatic, Dot Screen, Halftone, ASCII, Edges, Gradient Map, Color Tone, Bleach Bypass, Sepia, Film Grain with scanlines and Vignette. Switch them on, put them in any order, and punch any of them with HIT. Every control can follow bass, mids, highs, the beat or an LFO, be learned to a MIDI knob or pad, or be played from fixed OSC addresses under /beamtracer/viz/fx/. FX Rack
  • Neon Orb becomes a breathing sphere that sound travels across. Neon Orb now opens on Photon Ring: a cage of glowing rings that grows and contracts with the music while each beat rolls across it as a wave, with the original neon shells pulsing inside. Choose NEON, PULSAR or MAGNETAR under CORE. Under WAVES, send the sound up from pole to pole, out from the equator, in from both poles, out from a wandering impact point or around in a spiral, and shape it with Wave Height, Spectrum Spread, Twist, Waveform Etch and Beat Shockwave. Shell Echo ripples each hit outward through the shells, Afterglow leaves light trails and Prism Kick splits the colors on the beat. Spikes raise a bristling fur, Petals swell smooth pointed lobes, Liquid turns the sphere into a shell of droplets that splash off the surface with the music, Echo leaves feedback trails that zoom, spin and mirror, and Lens folds the picture with Fisheye, Polar, Swirl or Kaleido views. Twenty-one new presets, from Photon Ring and Corona Storm to Thermal Urchin, Halo Lens, Polar Bloom, Tide Mandala and Hydrosphere, ten new palettes, and almost every slider can follow the music. The four original looks are still there. Neon Orb
  • Space keeps playing and pausing the music after you click a setting. Clicking a preset, button or slider in the settings panel no longer takes over the Space key, and the NOW PLAYING player, which fades out while music plays, comes back as soon as you move the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts
  • Phosphor Waterfall's Trace controls all show on screen, and its brightest settings stay safe. Columns, Seams and Seam Width now draw clear dividing lines through the light, Detail Loss softens the far traces and trailing curtains into haze, and Haze and Mid Plume visibly grow their light. Pushing every light, echo and mirror control to its maximum no longer fills the screen with glare: the scene keeps its color and dark gaps. Brightness and Trace Gain now top out at 1.5 and 6. Phosphor Waterfall
  • Phosphor Waterfall gains a Trace core, echo trails and a look cycle. Choose TRACE under CORE to stand three traces of the spectrum in the landscape, each with light rising off it: bass deepens the far trace, mids lengthen the middle light, highs crowd the near columns, and Curtains trails earlier spectra behind each trace so the light falls away into the distance. Either core can now leave an Echo trail that recedes toward the horizon, spins, drifts, ripples and shifts color; Mirror reflects the scene into sides, a lake or a kaleidoscope; Beat Hue turns every color on strong beats; and Look Cycle tours the presets by itself, blending on a timer or cutting on the beat. Ten new presets show it off, from Tracefall and Aurora Curtains to Kaleidotrace, Warp Drive and Auto Pilot. Phosphor Waterfall
  • New Winamp Tribute visualizer: Glasscoil. A lit, milky glass coil wound in three segments that shrink into the distance. Drag the picture to orbit it and see it from any side, and scroll to move closer. Each segment answers to its own part of the music: bass opens the far segment's winding, mids stretch the middle segment and highs thicken the near one. The waveform ripples along the winding and the spectrum swells the tube, and both travel down the coil with a glowing ring for every beat. Add rolling SEA SWELL with FOAM on the crests or streaks of GLASS FLOW racing along the tube, set MILKINESS from hard plastic to soft glass, and start from nine presets and eight Color Presets. Glasscoil
  • New Winamp Tribute visualizer: Dotwell. Fly into a 3D tunnel of glowing dots that spirals into a dark well. Head-on, rings of dots crowd toward the void; drag the picture to see the funnel from the side, or scroll to fly inside until the dots surround you. Each part of the music sends its own echo out of the well toward you, so the tunnel never changes all at once: bass swells the walls, mids bend the rings into turning lobes, highs make single dots sparkle and beats send bright rings, while the spectrum lights the wall and the waveform shapes each ring. Choose glowing dots or lit 3D BEADS, blur near dots into soft lens discs with DEFOCUS and FOCUS, add LENS STREAKS to the brightest highlights, and start from nine presets and eight Color Presets. Dotwell
  • Fractal Mosaic's Iris core gains feedback trails, a scope ring and a spectrum corona. Under FEEDBACK, each frame is drawn over a zoomed, twisted copy of the last, so the rings leave trails that rush through the tunnel and lunge on every kick: set how long they last with TRAILS, steer them with ZOOM, TWIST and LIQUID WARP, shift their color with COLOR DRIFT and fold them into a kaleidoscope with MIRROR. Under ACCENTS, a SCOPE RING draws the live waveform at the mouth of the tunnel and a SPECTRUM CORONA flares around the rim. The rings now ripple smoothly with the waveform and glow on a true black background, COLOR CYCLE turns the palette around the color wheel, and five new presets show it off: Milk Tunnel, Kaleido Bloom, Liquid Sun, Hyperspace and Acid Vortex. Fractal Mosaic
  • New Creative visualizer: Pillarfall. The spectrum rises as columns of glowing glass capsules, one column per band, in three ranks at different depths. Each rank answers its own part of the music: bass fattens the far rank, mids make the middle rank drift and highs brighten the near rank's rims. The waveform ripples along every rim and travels across the columns, each beat sends outlines rippling out from the capsules, and a glass sheen flares with the highs. Orbit and tilt the view or add perspective, and start from seven presets and eight Color Presets. Pillarfall
  • Fractal Mosaic gains an Iris core. Choose IRIS under CORE to draw two ring tunnels whose spacing differs slightly, so where they overlap the rings interfere into a shimmering lens. Each layer answers a different part of the music: bass rings tilt as the iris opens, mid rings sway and bend into lobes, high rings spin and shimmer, every beat sends an echo from ring to ring, and the waveform ripples outward through the rings. Seven new presets show it off, from Irisfold to Gyroscope, Sonar and Event Horizon, and eight Color Presets recolor either core without changing its shape. Fractal Mosaic
  • New Creative visualizer: Laser Show. A laser rig of beam fans in haze over a reflective stage, moving like a real beam show: fans spread open and close, tilt up and down, sweep from side to side and rotate, locked to the beat. A graphics projector that throws laser cues into the haze as cones of light. Sixteen cues are built in, and you can add your own ILDA files. Cues change on the beat, on a timer, from any modulator, or live from MIDI notes and OSC, and a CONSOLE section adds FLASH, STROBE, FREEZE and SPEED MASTER like a lighting desk. Every control can be learned to a MIDI controller in the Performer, and the AUDIO camera travels around the stage with the music. Start from fourteen presets. Laser Show
  • Interference Garden gains a Loom core. Choose LOOM under CORE to weave a flower of nested rounded contours out of a dark center. Bass opens the flower, mids swirl the back petals, highs stretch the colors, every ring swells with its own slice of the spectrum, and the waveform ripples outward through each petal. The petals sit on three planes that turn against one another, with LAYER SPREAD, LAYER WIDTH and DEPTH FADE to pull them apart, and DEPTH OF FIELD can rack focus from the front petals to the back. Nine new presets show it off, from Petalloom to Pinwheel, Origami and Gyro Loom, and eight Loom Color presets recolor the flower without changing its shape, with Original keeping the full rainbow. Interference Garden
  • Deep Space Feedback gains a Rayfan core. Choose RAYFAN under CORE to fan tapered rays of light out of an off-center hub. Every ray answers its own slice of the spectrum and carries a bright dash, the waveform bends each ray, bass reaches the far rays out, mids open and close the fan, highs widen the near rays, and beats flare the fan and throw its dashes outward. The rays share the void with the stars, so ZOOM, SPIN and PERSISTENCE turn them into trails on the Void, Dome or Tunnel. New options mirror the fan into two or four (SYMMETRY), walk its hub across the frame (HUB ORBIT) and throw sparks from the dashes along the star paths (DASH SPARKS). Eight new presets show it off, from Rayfan to Sunburst, Twin Searchlights, Kaleidofan and Ray Tunnel. Deep Space Feedback

October 1, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • Spectrum Analyzer gains a 3D echo. Choose the ECHO 3D style, or turn on 3D ECHO TRAIL, and the bars become a 3D field: each earlier moment of the spectrum trails behind the live row and fades into the distance. Set how many rows trail, how deep and fast the trail runs and how soon it fades. It works with Line band slicing too, as a 3D trail of spectrum curves, and OUTLINE MODE draws the bars and lines as see-through outlines with their own OUTLINE OPACITY. Drag the visualizer to orbit all the way around it, and use Assign modulation on any echo slider to let the music move it. Spectrum Analyzer
  • Feedback Dream gains a Wake form. Choose WAKE under SPATIAL FORM to fly down a tunnel of glowing waveform rings: each ring is a moment of the music, shaped by its frequencies, swollen by hits, and carried away from you as new rings arrive. Bass opens the tunnel’s throat, the mid-range rolls its rings and high notes thicken them, each with its own slider under WAKE. Two new presets show it off: Neon Wake and Ember Wake. Feedback Dream
  • New Winamp Tribute visualizer: Filament. Glowing strands braid into one rope that carries the music from its waist out to both ends: the waveform bends the rope like a wave on a string, each strand flares when its part of the spectrum peaks, and bass, mid and high notes send bulges, knots and thicker strokes running along it. Set how fast the music travels with SIGNAL TRAVEL, and start from six presets. Filament
  • New Winamp Tribute visualizer: Lightwell. Glowing spectral rays burst out from a bright center and reach for the edges of the frame as the music builds, or rise as the original narrow fountain in COLUMN form. Four groups of rays move to different parts of the music: long rays surge on the bass, others curl into spiral arms with the mids, fine threads swing in wide waves with the highs, and short rays carry bright pulses outward on sudden hits. Choose WAVY or SHIMMER threads, set how far the rays spread with RADIAL SPREAD, and start from six presets. Lightwell
  • New Winamp Tribute visualizer: Lensfield. A glowing hexagonal lattice, a glass lens that bends and splits light into color, and a mirror-chrome core nest inside a larger glowing hexagonal sphere, with real depth as you orbit around them. Each layer answers a different part of the music: bass sends shockwaves rippling through the outer hex shell, the mid range twists neighboring lattice belts in opposite directions, high attacks briefly flick and flash the inner lens, and sudden hits flash the small core. Start from six presets. Lensfield
  • Dot Matrix gains Wake and Fusion forms. Choose WAKE under FORM to turn the dot grid into an LED panel crossed by folded sheets of light: each sheet has a bright crease and a soft glow, the waveform ripples along each fold, and lit dots grow and change color. FUSION runs the classic breathing waves and the sheets together, with the sheets pushing the dots aside as they pass. Bass, mid range and highs each drive a different part of every form, and four new presets show them off. Dot Matrix

Site & Account

  • Documentation pages end with related guides. A Related guides list links to neighboring pages in the same section, such as other visualizers in the same category.
  • Every blog post ends with related reading. A Keep reading list links to the closest guides and tutorials, chosen by shared apps and topics.

September 30, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • Reset one section at a time. Restore a section’s controls without changing the rest of the look. Audioreactive Logo groups finer Zigzag tuning under ADVANCED.
  • Reset to Defaults restores the view and effects. Reset clears dragged camera positions, motion and effect history while keeping your uploaded artwork and entered text. Settings group related particle, material and motion options together.
  • Controls match their effects. Circle Wave's dot color, Super Black Hole's automatic rotation, Clock Braun's VU hue speed and Flip Clock's metallic finish and roughness now respond to their controls. Unsupported controls have been removed.
  • Audioreactive Logo moves in depth. Explore rotating logo forms, logo-shaped particles, frequency regions, continuous emission, particle trails, curl return and fire.

Studio

  • Add branding to a blank canvas. Turn on TITLE or ARTIST to add the line. Optional FIT TO FRAME keeps long text within the available horizontal space while preserving SIZE as its maximum.
  • Start a vertical logo video. REEL LOGO ORBIT and REEL LOGO PARTICLES provide a 9:16 layout with a logo, title and artist while keeping your current track and cut. Template files now retain their frame and platform.
  • Use PNG and SVG logos in Audioreactive Logo. Your artwork stays with the project and appears from the opening frame of the finished video.
  • Visualizer settings are visible before Play. Paused visualizer layers show your current source and settings. Reset applies to the selected layer, and VU style controls and Protostar's color swap work in the layer settings.

Site & Account

  • Choose a music-video starter. The music-video page shows two logo looks and explains how to continue on a desktop computer.

September 29, 2026

BT Laser Studio

  • TRANSFORMS follows the playhead. In Animation Studio, POSITION, SCALE and ROTATE under TRANSFORMS kept showing the last values you typed while the timeline played. They now show the layer as it is at the playhead, during playback and between keyframes. Typing into a property that has keyframes adds a keyframe at the playhead, or updates the one there, even when the number matches an earlier setting. Values controlled by a motion path are read-only, with a note directing you to MOTION PATH. Timeline & Keyframes

Site & Account

  • Checkout problems are explained in plain words. If starting a checkout fails, for example because your previous billing request is still finishing, the message now says so instead of showing a technical code.

September 27, 2026

OSC-1

  • Generated drawings keep gaps between strokes. Text, SVGs, Tektronix patterns and imported 3D drawings no longer draw their pen-up travel on the live scope display. Audio and file exports are unchanged. Text Tools
  • WRITE follows the letters cleanly. Leading dots no longer add diagonal lines between strokes in Text Tools. TRACER keeps its comet trails.

BT Laser Studio

  • Laser tools fit phone screens. The preview keeps its width while source and settings panels open from bottom tabs. Swipe the tool row to switch tools. Live video tracing stacks its previews with the audio player below them.

Audio Visualizers

  • More room for visuals on phones. Open Visualizers or Settings from the bottom bar, with Audio and Render alongside them. Performer presets use larger tiles and its controls wrap below the preview.

Site & Account

  • Choose a Winamp-style visualizer for your workflow. The browser comparison covers classic playback, editable visuals, preset compatibility, and video export.

  • Make a visualizer follow your music. The Winamp-style modulation tutorial shows Bass, LFO color movement, and Spectral flux shaping, then saving, sharing, and video export.

  • Winamp news and listening setup, explained. Read the comeback update and the Spotify/YouTube visualizer guide.

  • Find the right audio visualizer setup. The Audio Visualizers overview now explains audio-file and tab-capture choices, video editing, free export limits, and phone compatibility.

September 26, 2026

All apps

  • Dialogs fit shorter screens. Titles and close buttons stay below the app header while long content scrolls.

  • Get updates from the feedback window. Subscribe to tips or product news with a separate email confirmation, or open blog posts for the app you are using. Sending feedback does not subscribe you.

OSC-1

  • Keyboard shortcuts live in Settings. Open Settings → SHORTCUTS or press Ctrl/Cmd+/. The duplicate header button is removed, and the reference now includes Save Project, middle-button panning and the canvas menu.

  • ANALYSIS | PERFORMANCE is one switch. The visualizer strip and Settings → VISUALIZERS now show both modes side by side, with the current one lit and the other grayed, instead of a single button whose label changed. UI Modes

  • Star Wars DROIDS draws the right way up. The Tektronix 4051 Quick Presets entry played upside down; the other quick presets and the demo files were already correct.

  • Write text on the scope. A new TEXT TOOLS section in SOURCES (Creator mode) draws the words you type in any of 1500+ Google Fonts, 32 Hershey single-stroke faces or the HANDWRITING alphabet, with the same LETTER STYLE choices as Text to Laser: FONT OUTLINE, CENTER TRACE and HANDWRITING. WRITE, TRACER and GLITCH under ANIMATION animate the words, on the scope and on a connected laser. Handwriting moves here from SHAPE MORPH. Text Tools

  • Trace a PNG or JPG onto the scope. SVG / ICONS now accepts PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF images and traces them into beam outlines, with Image to Laser's IMAGE TRACE controls: Trace style, Center line width, Background, Colors, Curve tolerance and Remove speckles. SVG / Icons

  • Bloom stays off where it flickers. On Modern Digital, Tektronix 465, HP 1740A and Hitachi V-650F, Beam Bloom / Glow stayed hidden only until you moved a slider, then came back and could be switched on. It now stays hidden for those looks, and the preset guide says what each look really does. Scope Presets

  • Beam Effects on Basic Green. The Beam Effects panel disappeared on Basic Green while effects you had turned on kept applying; it now shows on every preset. Beam Effects

  • The XY display keeps its size with everything open. In Creator mode with the synth keys shown and all five monitors on, the display could shrink to nothing. It now keeps a usable height, the column scrolls, and the synth and transport stay at the bottom. UI Modes

  • 3D CAMERA moves to the Expression generator. It only ever steered 3D expressions, but it appeared for imported 3D models, where it did nothing. It now appears in the Expression generator while its z = field is filled in; imported models use View Controls. 3D Camera

  • The Mixer says why a layer was not added. Choosing a source in + ADD LAYER before it is running now tells you what to start first, and a shape drawn in Shape Synth reads "Drawn shape" in the audio source card instead of an internal id. Performance Mode

  • Every OSC-1 docs page now shows what it describes. Each section of the OSC-1 guide has a picture, and a short loop you can hover to play wherever something moves: all 15 beam effects side by side, the eight scope presets on the same figure, every generator, the synth, triggering, the laser output preview and more. OSC-1 docs

  • New video: what audio effects look like on an oscilloscope. The guide now opens with the walkthrough: sweep the synth's low-pass filter and watch the corners round off, add Delay and Phaser, then Crush the beam to change the picture without changing the sound. Watch it in the guide.

  • SCOPE and SWEEP follow the signal right away. When a channel stopped or a sound restarted, such as turning the oscillator's X channel off and on, the SCOPE panels could keep showing the moment of the change for about half a second. Both displays now lock only to the most recent audio, so the picture follows the signal immediately. Visualizer Strip

BT Laser Studio

  • The Settings gear closes any tab. Press it again after opening SHORTCUTS or another settings tab to return to your work.

  • Animation Studio shortcuts are back in Settings. The SHORTCUTS tab includes transport, keyframe, editing and canvas controls, including Delete / Backspace for selected keyframes or layers.

  • Glowing video exports render about 15 times faster. With GLOW EFFECT on, Export for Projection Mapping could take around five minutes for a 10-second 1080p video. The same video now renders in about 20 seconds and looks the same. Export for Projection Mapping

  • 4K video exports keep the line weight. With GLOW EFFECT off, lines in a 4K (UHD) export were half as thick in the frame as in HD (1080p). They now match. Export for Projection Mapping

  • Clearer labels in the export dialog. The free-plan notice quotes the exact watermark the video carries, "made with BeamTracer.com". WebM (VP9) reads For the web instead of promising a speed it did not deliver, and LASER OUTPUT LAYERS no longer calls a layer "static" while reactions or Edge Wave move it. Export for Projection Mapping

  • New guide: send your laser look as an MP4. Turn an Animation Studio look into a 1080p or 4K video with its soundtrack, for a client or a social post, with no projector: PROJECTION MAPPING → EXPORT FOR PROJECTION MAPPING, with a drag-to-compare view of GLOW EFFECT off and on. Read the guide

  • Image to Laser downloads the fitted file by default. POINTS now opens on FIT 30 FPS (the label follows TARGET FRAME RATE), the same scanner-safe choice Animation Studio and OSC-1 start with, so a trace that reads OVER LIMIT no longer downloads over the limit unless you choose KEEP ORIGINAL. Image to Laser

  • SVG layers keep their colors in Animation Studio. An SVG that names its colors — a logo sent from Image to Laser with PRESERVE SOURCE COLORS on, a multi-color SVG dropped on SOURCE, a colored icon — now draws in those colors on the canvas, on the laser and in DOWNLOAD ILDA, as Lottie layers already did. COLOR offers Preserve source colors for these layers; pick a palette color to draw the whole layer in one color. Animation Studio

  • SPLIT TO PATHS keeps every part visible, in its own colors. Split parts used to be redrawn as solid one-color shapes, which hid parts of a traced logo on the canvas, the bolt under its own fill, and dropped the file's colors. Each part now keeps its colors, strokes and position, in the merged last layer too. Animation Studio

  • New guide: PNG or JPG logo to ILDA. Trace the logo file you actually have in Image to Laser, with no SVG and nothing to install: set COLORS to the colors the logo really has to clean up a JPG, switch Trace style to Center line for a line drawing, read POINT BUDGET and choose between FIT 30 FPS and KEEP ORIGINAL, check the file in the ILDA Viewer, and stack traced parts as their own layers in Animation Studio. Read the guide

  • Rotation turns the same way on the canvas and on the laser. In Animation Studio, a positive ROTATE value turned shapes, SVG and Lottie layers, generators and oscilloscope layers counter-clockwise on the laser and in exported files while the canvas showed them turning clockwise. Rotation keyframes, auto-orient on a motion path and audio Rotation reactions now turn every layer type clockwise, matching the canvas and imported SVG and Lottie files. Transform Origin & Pivot Point

  • Onion skin no longer flickers during playback. With ONION SKINNING on, the ghost frames could vanish for a few frames at a time while the timeline played, and the whole trail disappeared each time a looping timeline started over. The ghosts now stay on screen as the playhead moves, and with Toggle Loop on they continue from the end of the timeline. Timeline Settings & Onion Skin

  • Path Preview shows the Figure 8. In Animation Studio's MOTION PATH section, choosing Figure 8 drew a short straight line in Path Preview while the layer traced a figure eight. The preview now draws the path the layer follows, for every preset. Motion Paths

  • The Animation Studio guide shows keyframes, motion paths and audio reactions moving. Hover the new loops to watch a layer keyed across the timeline, a triangle following Figure 8, and a circle swelling with the bass of the MUSIC demo. Animation Studio docs

  • SVGs with curves inside moved or scaled groups trace correctly. In an SVG whose shapes sit inside a group that is moved, scaled or rotated, as many logo files exported from Inkscape or Illustrator are, the curved parts of each letter used to be drawn in the wrong place, so Image to Laser showed long streaks across the frame and a skewed outline. Curves now follow the group the same way straight lines do. The same fix applies to logos in the Audioreactive Logo visualizer. Image to Laser

Audio Visualizers

  • John Whitney lines weave into moving fans. Choose DANCING LINES → LINE DYNAMICS → LINKED CURVES for colored line bundles with glowing leading edges. Music speeds up their movement. The same scene controls are available in Studio. Watch the tutorial.

  • John Whitney’s ELEMENTS control updates the visible points immediately. Reducing or increasing the count now changes the current scene without switching away, including when trails are enabled.

  • Updated walkthroughs. See current controls and short demonstrations for audio, modulation, presets, scene changes, custom models, and video export. Audio Visualizers guide

  • Video exports follow the selected track. Switching tracks before rendering now uses the current music and duration instead of the previous track.

  • Choose channels in each visualizer. The ineffective global STEREO SEPARATION switch is removed. Channel controls remain available in supported visualizers and use consistent routing in live view, Studio, and rendered video.

  • Audio Earth keeps a glowing sun. Beat-driven color changes no longer turn the sun into a flat magenta disk.

  • Beat pulse appears where it works. Modulation pickers hide Beat pulse for visualizers that do not support it.

  • LFO motion keeps its speed in rendered videos. LFO A and LFO B follow the selected rate and tempo in Viz and Studio exports.

  • GIF Matrix can play much slower. Set Speed down to 0.01×, enter an exact value, and see the effective rate after audio modulation. Beat stepping now explains when beats control frame timing.

  • Keyboard controls respect dialogs and typing. Visualizer keys leave text fields and open dialogs alone, and Studio keeps selected layers when you press Delete or Backspace in a dialog.

  • Shortcut help includes visualizer controls. Settings → SHORTCUTS now lists the active visualizer’s pause, camera, alarm, zoom, swim or arcade keys where available.

  • Browsing Performer presets leaves Undo alone. Opening PRESETS, searching or filtering the list no longer creates an undo step. Your custom preset order remains undoable.

  • Switching visualizers no longer builds up memory. In a long session, moving between visualizers could leave earlier ones held in memory, most often the 3D scenes you can drag to orbit. Each one is now fully released when you move on.

  • Render Audioreactive Logo to video. RENDER VIDEO now works for Audioreactive Logo in Audio Visualizers and in Studio, frame by frame at your chosen size and frame rate. In Studio, lowering its Background Opacity lets the backdrop show around the logo in the finished video. Video Export

  • White Holes guide and previews match the current look. The search preview and link cards now show today's gray particle field instead of an older, washed-out capture. The guide shows Base Hue in degrees, as the panel does, and describes what each control changes on screen. White Holes

  • White Holes Splat Strength works across its whole range. Splat Strength in AUDIO SPLAT now sets how hard each splat pushes the particles, from gentle at 0.1 to twice the standard push at 2. Before, anything at 0.5 or below stopped splats entirely and higher values all looked the same. White Holes

  • Turning off Enable Mouse only turns off the pointer. In White Holes, switching off ENABLE MOUSE used to freeze the whole field, stopping FORCE ALWAYS ON and AUDIO SPLAT too. They now keep working, and MODE, STRENGTH and RADIUS stay visible because they shape every force point. The Paint mode, which behaved exactly like Attractor, is gone. White Holes

  • The settings panel names the visualizer. The line under VISUALIZER SETTINGS now reads the name shown in the visualizer list, such as MODE: WHITE HOLES instead of MODE: WHITEHOLES.

Studio

  • More illustrated guides. Studio workflows now include updated settings pictures and short demonstrations of layers, lyrics, timers, visualizers, and exports. Studio guide

  • Meter titles stay complete in exported video. The Loudness Meter title keeps the same lettering as the preview.

  • Loudness graphs fit their selection boxes. Loudness, Loudness Range, Loudness Radar, Loudness Dynamics and Loudness Meter now occupy the expected area of the preview when you place or resize them. Newly added tall graphs also start fully inside the canvas.

  • Studio starts with interface decorations off. Screen effects no longer turn on by default when you open Studio; your saved appearance choices still apply.

Site & Account

  • Follow the blog and changelog via RSS. Use Subscribe via RSS on either page to add its feed to your reader.

  • Blog previews play on the first hover. On the blog index, a post's preview clip only started the second time you pointed at its card. It now plays the first time.

  • Pages load faster. The two typefaces used across the site now download at about a third of their previous size, so pages show their text sooner on a slow connection, with nothing changed in how the text looks.

September 25, 2026

OSC-1

  • The OSC-1 circle no longer flickers. A steady figure, such as the oscillator's circle, could flash a tilted copy of itself for a moment, most often when the computer was busy. The display now reads the left and right channels from the same instant, and the laser output and the STEREO phase meter are fixed the same way.
  • TIME works with live sources. With the oscillator, the synth, a microphone or tab audio playing, TIME now rolls the live signal (LIVE // WAVEFORM) instead of showing an empty strip. Visualizer Strip
  • Choose OSC-1's screen color. Settings → APPEARANCE → Scope background offers BLACK, GRAPHITE, NAVY, AUTO (a dark shade that follows the beam color) and PAPER (black ink on white). Settings → Appearance
  • GONIO and upsampling on every OSC-1 preset. GONIO in the Beam Transformer now works on the default Vector Display and Amber CRT as well as the other presets. 4x Upsampling, Interpolation and Auto Gain move to a new Signal section that every preset shows. Before, those three were hidden on the two default looks while still in effect. Scope Presets → Signal
  • Cap OSC-1's frame rate, and trails no longer depend on your monitor. A new FRAME RATE setting (MAX, 60, 30) lightens the load on your computer. Phosphor trails used to fade twice as fast on a 120 Hz screen as on a 60 Hz one, and faded differently in exported video. They now last the same time on any screen, at any frame rate and in any export. Settings
  • SCOPE histograms. With MEAS on, each SCOPE panel shows an amplitude histogram along its right edge, lined up with the trace, so you can see at a glance where a signal spends its time. Visualizer Strip
  • Explain controls in OSC-1. Click the new ? button in the header, then point at any control to see its name and what it does, in a card that stays readable. Press Esc to finish. Explain Controls
  • Export a frame for printing. Right-click the OSC-1 display and choose Export Frame (Print) to save the picture as black ink on white, ready for a lab write-up or handout. Canvas Menu
  • Full screen shows only the display. In OSC-1 full screen the V and H cursor buttons no longer sit over the picture. Cursors you have placed stay. Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Measurements on SWEEP and SCOPE. A MEAS button on each display adds automatic frequency, peak and RMS readouts, and on SCOPE how many degrees RIGHT lags LEFT. SWEEP also gains time and level cursors that read in ms, samples, Hz and dBFS. Triggering → Measurements
  • SCOPE can overlay LEFT and RIGHT, in colors you choose. A new Layout setting draws both channels on one panel (OVERLAY) instead of two (STACKED), from the same trigger, so the phase between them reads at a glance. Click either channel's color dot to change its trace color. SWEEP gains its own Color too. Visualizer Strip
  • Zoom SWEEP and SCOPE in time with the mouse wheel. Scroll over either display to zoom in or out, as far as 10 µs per division on SWEEP and anywhere from 0.5 ms to 500 ms across SCOPE. Each shows its current timebase. Time/Div is now a continuous slider instead of ten fixed steps, SWEEP gains a SAMPLES unit, and SCOPE gets a Time slider of its own. Long windows keep every peak, so even a one-sample spike still shows. Triggering, Visualizer Strip
  • SWEEP's CYCLES follows your reference frequency. In CYCLES, each division now spans wavelengths of the REF frequency set under POSITION → CYC, as described. Before, it always used 440 Hz. Triggering
  • The OSC-1 graticule sits on the trace, and the cursors measure what they show. The G graticule used to stretch across the whole display, so its grid did not line up with the trace; it is now a square laid exactly over it. The MEASUREMENTS readout for the V and H cursors now gives positions and distances in grid divisions. It used to show a time, a frequency and volts that the XY display cannot measure. The cursor tabs also now sit on their lines. Graticule and Measurement Cursors
  • SWEEP gains AUTO, NORMAL and SINGLE. Under a new Advanced Trigger section, NORMAL waits for a trigger instead of running free, and SINGLE captures one event and holds it, with an ARM button on the SWEEP display to catch the next hit or impulse. Hysteresis and Holdoff are adjustable there too. Trigger Level now reaches below the center line (−100% to +100%), and the sweep redraws every frame instead of about 20 times a second. Triggering
  • OSC-1's right-click menu works, and right-click no longer undoes. Right-clicking the XY display used to undo your last edit as it opened the menu, and the menu could be cut off at the panel's edge. It now opens fully on screen and does only what you pick. Freeze Display, Export Frame (PNG), Export Frame (ILDA) and Copy to Clipboard all work, and Home resets the view again. Canvas Menu
  • FREEZE holds every trace, including live input. Freeze and frame-step now work with the microphone and the oscillator, and freezing holds SWEEP, SCOPE, SPECTRUM and WAVE along with the XY display while the audio plays on. Beam Transformer
  • Steady tones hold still in SWEEP and SCOPE. A steady tone in OSC-1 now draws as a still trace. Before, a sine or square wave slid across the LEFT and RIGHT traces in SCOPE and jittered in SWEEP, most at low pitches. SCOPE now triggers both traces from the same rising edge. SWEEP holds a full window at every Time/Div and keeps its time scale fixed. Triggering
  • Oscillator channel toggles keep your frequency. In OSC-1's Oscillator generator, switching the X or Y channel off or on no longer resets the tone to 250 Hz; it keeps the frequency the Frequency slider shows. Audio Sources

BT Laser Studio

  • Edge Deform keeps shapes on the canvas. Animation Studio's Edge Deform no longer throws a shape far off the canvas or draws stray lines between the parts of a logo: each outline deforms on its own, the spikes grow with how loud the track is, and silence rests on the clean outline. Audio-Reactive Features
  • Oscilloscope layers are kept between visits. A session with an Oscilloscope layer no longer reports that it is too large to save automatically; the layer and its samples come back when you return. Edge Wave and the other 4 GEOMETRY effects now show on an Oscilloscope layer's preview too.
  • Effects switch freely on Oscilloscope layers. Choosing a 4 GEOMETRY effect, adding a reaction set to All layers, or adding keyframes to an Oscilloscope or Stereo XY layer no longer stops the preview with an error. The layer is drawn like any other vector layer with the change applied, and returns to its exact XY samples when you remove it. Oscilloscope Music
  • Edge Wave: the waveform runs along a shape's edges. Animation Studio's 4 GEOMETRY on the AUDIO tab has a new Edge Wave mode: the playing waveform ripples along the layer's own edges like an oscilloscope trace, in patches that travel around the shape while the corners hold still. Patches, Patch Width, Drift and Corner Hold set where and how it moves, silence leaves the clean outline, and an imported logo's strokes move as single lines. Audio-Reactive Features, and the new section in Audio-Reactive Laser Logo
  • New guide: laser banding on camera. Why laser beams look wavy, bent or broken on video but not to the eye, the redraw-rate math behind it, and how to freeze or drift the bands by matching FRAME RATE under LASER OUTPUT to your camera, with the ILDA Viewer's FILE HEALTH giving a file's redraw rate. Also covers camera settings, phones, and keeping the beam out of the lens. Read the guide
  • PREVIEW SPEED slows to 0.01×. The galvo preview's PREVIEW SPEED slider in the ILDA Viewer, Video to Laser and every LASER OUTPUT preview now goes down to a hundredth of real time, in steps of 0.01×, instead of stopping at 0.05×. Slow a 30,000 pps file to 0.01× and the beam draws 300 points a second, so you can watch it take every corner. The scan rate and hardware output are unchanged. ILDA Viewer
  • HEX VIEW shows every column. The ILDA Viewer's HEX VIEW dump now lays out eight bytes a row, so the offset, every byte and the ASCII column fit inside the panel instead of stopping at the sixth byte. Scroll the dump to read further into the frame. ILDA Viewer

Audio Visualizers

  • Audioreactive Logo: place the spectrum bars anywhere. The BARS layout ROW replaces BELOW and adds ROW POSITION (ABOVE / BELOW), and every bar layout gains FLIP VERTICAL, FLIP HORIZONTAL, ROTATION, OFFSET X and OFFSET Y, so an equalizer can sit on top of the logo, hang upside down underneath, or turn on its side; the view reframes to keep the bars in shot. The EQ STAGE preset now puts its equalizer above the logo in the line's own colors. Audioreactive Logo
  • New visualizer: Audioreactive Logo. Drop in your logo as a PNG, JPG or SVG and it plays as glowing outlines in its own colors that zigzag with the music while the corners hold steady. Choose where the motion lives, from traveling segments to a rotating sweep or whole letters lighting on the beat, and color it with a flowing rainbow, cycling hues or heat. Add spectrum bars that grow out of the logo's outermost edge, echoes that pulse outward behind it on the beat, and sparks thrown off wherever the outline moves. Without a logo, the BeamTracer mark plays. Find it in Creative. Audioreactive Logo

Site & Account

  • Reading picked from your welcome answers. After the welcome questions, You're all set. now lists the blog posts that match what you came for, each with a thumbnail: every oscilloscope post for oscilloscope music, every laser post for laser shows, visualizer posts for visuals, and a short tour of all three apps for Just exploring. Beginner guides lead for first-timers. Posts open in a new tab so you can still Jump in →. Getting Started

September 24, 2026

All apps

  • Quieter workspaces. Laser, Scope, and Viz start with the animated canvas border and Plexus background off. Both remain optional in Settings.

OSC-1

  • The OSC-1 output preview catches back up after a burst. When a passage sends more points than the point rate can play, the LASER OUTPUT preview used to stay a quarter second behind for the rest of the session and keep reporting skipped samples. It now returns to real time within about a second once the content fits again. Hardware output is unchanged. LASER OUTPUT
  • SVG and Lottie shapes in OSC-1 reach the laser as unbroken lines. A curve built from many short pieces, such as the ring in the Lottie STAR example, used to arrive broken at every piece, drawing a dashed line with a bright dot at each joint. Touching pieces now play as one continuous stroke, and the beam only lifts between separate shapes. OSC-1 hardware

BT Laser Studio

  • PPS GRAPH counts every point, like FILE HEALTH. The ILDA Viewer's PPS GRAPH bars used to count only lit points, so a frame that FILE HEALTH rated OVER LIMIT could still show green. Both readouts now count every stored point, blanked ones included. ILDA Viewer
  • Cinema opens with lighter fog so the beams read clearly. The ILDA Viewer's Cinema beam mode and Video to Laser's CINEMA preview now start at Fog 0.2 and Smoke 0.3 instead of a room-filling haze; raise Fog and Smoke for a denser room. The ILDA Viewer guide's 3D videos now show Cinema and Haze. 3D Beam Viewer
  • The Bloom slider is gone. A laser is never out of focus, so the 3D beam modes now draw every beam sharp with no glow control. The Bloom slider has left the ILDA Viewer's Scene panel and Video to Laser's ATMOSPHERE; in five of the seven beam modes it never changed the picture, and in HD and Cinema it only ever hazed the frame. Beam thickness is still Width in HD and Translucent, and the atmosphere is still Fog, Smoke and Cone in Cinema. Getting the Beam Look
  • TEST SUITE lists the still test patterns first. MOON and DOLPHIN, the two animations, now sit at the bottom, after RAMPS and COLOR SHIFT. ILDA Viewer
  • BT Laser Studio uses one typeface and one set of labels. The ILDA Viewer, every laser tool and the shared LASER OUTPUT panel now render in the same monospace face on every computer, with one style for section titles, one for control labels (now in caps — MIRRORS, SCANNER, BEAT SYNC, FLOOR) and one for readouts. Buttons share one text style, switches look like switches, and verdicts such as VALID or WITHIN are badges rather than buttons. FLOOR in the 3D scene offers GRID and REFLECT side by side, the 2D | 3D control shows both views, the scanner-class buttons no longer clip their names, and LASER OUTPUT is titled once. See the ILDA Viewer and 3D Beam Viewer guides.
  • 3D Galvo, Haze and Cinema stay bright at a long TRAIL. At a high TRAIL, a pattern that is lit almost everywhere drew noticeably dimmer than its design. It now keeps its full brightness at any TRAIL. 3D Beam Viewer
  • The ILDA Viewer opens on the essentials. With a file loaded, the Viewer now shows FILE INFO, FILE HEALTH, the TEST SUITE, PLAYBACK CONTROLS, GALVO SIMULATION, SCANNER PATH, STRESS HEAT MAP, LASER OUTPUT and EXPORT ILDA. The deeper instruments — HEX VIEW, DENSITY and the POINT DENSITY map, POINT CLASSIFICATION, POINT DETAILS, STABILITY, WAVEFORM, PPS GRAPH, METADATA, EXPORT WAV and DOWNLOAD JSON — are off by default and each has its own switch, with a note on what it is for, under the new ADVANCED tab of LASER SETTINGS. A tool you switch on stays on until you switch it off; one that is off is gone from the panels entirely, so the numbers that matter are never buried. Advanced tools
  • The ILDA Viewer switches files without flashing. Loading a file or a TEST SUITE pattern keeps the current file on screen until the new one is ready, instead of flashing the empty viewer in between. ILDA Viewer
  • Output previews keep up when the screen repaints slowly. A LASER OUTPUT preview that fell behind used to skip incoming samples and draw a broken, dashed trace. It now catches up on the next repaint, so the trace stays unbroken. LASER OUTPUT
  • Two new TEST SUITE patterns in the ILDA Viewer. RAMPS draws red, green, blue and white rows that step down from 100 to 10 percent brightness, so you can see where each diode stops lasing and whether the colors dim evenly. COLOR SHIFT draws a white center line and a pair of horizontal lines per color, lit only on the right of it; a color that switches late shows a gap on one line and an overrun on the other. Both load in one click beside the existing patterns. ILDA Viewer
  • Haze and Cinema follow the same scanner as Galvo. The ILDA Viewer's Haze and Cinema beam modes and Video to Laser's HAZE and CINEMA previews now draw from the same simulated scanner as the 2D galvo simulation and the 3D Galvo beam, with the same TRAIL, PREVIEW SPEED, Mirrors and Scanner controls. Their separate galvo toggle and speed slider are gone. These four settings are now one choice across every galvo preview — the ILDA Viewer, Video to Laser and every LASER OUTPUT preview — so a scanner class picked in one tool is the one you see in the next. TRAIL at 0% replaces the old persistence toggle and its P shortcut. 3D Beam Viewer
  • Galvo previews open on IDEAL. Every galvo preview now starts on the design as drawn. Choose PHYSICS under Mirrors to see the simulated scanner.
  • LASER OUTPUT previews use the same scanner controls as the ILDA Viewer. The DESIGN and GALVO SIM buttons and the SCANNER dropdown are replaced by Mirrors (IDEAL or PHYSICS), Scanner, SCAN ANGLE, TRAIL and PREVIEW SPEED, and IDEAL now shows the scan moving as it does in the Viewer. LASER OUTPUT
  • New SCAN ANGLE control. With PHYSICS on, SCAN ANGLE (5° to 60°, default 40°) sets the optical angle your projector draws the full pattern at. The drawing stays full size while the simulated mirrors move that far, so you can judge a scanner at the angle you will actually run it. The ILDA 30K test pattern is rated at 8°. 3D Beam Viewer
  • TRAIL no longer brightens Haze and Cinema. A longer TRAIL keeps light on screen longer without washing the fog out.
  • Sharper laser previews. The ILDA Viewer, Image to Laser, Animation Studio and every LASER OUTPUT preview now draw at your display's full resolution, so lines stay crisp on high-density screens.
  • Still frames report their redraw rate. A single-frame file in the ILDA Viewer, such as the bundled test pattern, now shows how many times per second it redraws at the selected rate, for example Redraws 25 times/sec at 30 kpps, instead of an OVER LIMIT judged against 30 FPS. ILDA Viewer
  • ILDA files follow the format rules more closely. A blanked point in a true-color file now reads as dark whatever color it stores, and the Viewer no longer flags reserved header bytes or the -32768 coordinate, both of which the ILDA format allows.
  • 2D and 3D line up. Switching the ILDA Viewer between 2D and 3D keeps the pattern at the same size and position, and 3D Galvo uses the same TRAIL, PREVIEW SPEED, Mirrors and Scanner controls as the 2D galvo simulation. Static previews are sharp too, with no glow around the lines. ILDA Viewer
  • Video to Laser's SCAN preview uses TRAIL and PREVIEW SPEED. It shows the same scanner simulation as the ILDA Viewer, drawn at your output point rate. Video to Laser
  • Galvo previews draw sharp lines. The scanning previews in the ILDA Viewer, Image to Laser, Text to Laser, Video to Laser and Animation Studio no longer draw a soft glow around every line. Beams are thin and sharp in their own colors, and a long TRAIL no longer swells them into thick white strokes. In the ILDA Viewer, the DENSITY and WAVEFORM overlays now line up with the drawn lines.
  • 3D Galvo shows real mirrors at any speed. A new Mirrors switch chooses IDEAL, the file's exact lines, or PHYSICS, an estimate of what the mirrors draw at your file's scan rate. Slowing the preview down now only changes how fast you watch, so it no longer smooths out the corners. 3D Beam Viewer
  • The ILDA Viewer opens on your design. The 2D view now shows every frame whole, exactly as the file stores it. Switch on GALVO SIMULATION under ANALYSIS TOOLS to watch the scanner draw it point by point. ILDA Viewer
  • Continuous XY previews follow incoming samples in order. Galvo previews no longer repeat the last chunk or skip chunks between screen refreshes. Slow motion reports when preview samples are skipped to keep up; hardware output is unchanged.
  • Cleaner single-stroke video traces. Convert mode follows the center of line drawings without drawing both edges of each stroke. Open ends, closed loops, and gaps between separate strokes are preserved. Video to Laser
  • Clearer point-budget reports. Laser tools now show WITHIN, NEAR LIMIT, or OVER LIMIT against the selected point rate. The report distinguishes stored point counts from measured scanner stress and laser safety.
  • Audio-matched animations no longer end on a blank blink. In Animation Studio, EXTEND TIMELINE TO and MATCH LAYER TO TRACK used to round the timeline up to the next whole second while the layer stopped with the track, so a looping export ended in empty frames. Both now size the timeline to the track to the nearest frame, such as 16.57S, and TRIM TO LAYERS does the same, so every frame of the file is drawn. Animation Studio
  • SPLIT TO PATHS stays inside the 10-layer limit. A logo with more paths than fit gives the first paths a layer each and merges the rest into the last layer, and a note under LAYER TOOLS says how many were merged. A traced logo with 95 pieces becomes 9 single-path layers and one layer holding the other 86. Audio-Reactive Logo recipe
  • Cleaner starts between laser frames. ILDA exports include a blanked settling pause before each frame starts drawing. Animated galvo previews also avoid stray connections when frames change.
  • Trace line drawings as single strokes. Image to Laser now offers Center line — line drawings alongside its filled-artwork outlines. Adjust Center line width to keep wider shapes outlined. Image to Laser
  • Clearer laser previews and analysis. The ILDA Viewer and Live previews offer trail and slow-motion controls. Viewer playback controls are easier to find, expert diagnostics are grouped, and point geometry no longer receives a misleading optimization score. Center Line tracing also keeps connected strokes together with fewer breaks.
  • Image to Laser can fit a trace to your target FPS. Compare the fitted point count and preview with KEEP ORIGINAL before exporting. Overloaded traces also preserve broad curves more faithfully in Video to Laser and Animation Studio. Image to Laser
  • JPEG logos trace more cleanly. Pale backgrounds and soft edges no longer turn into hundreds of tiny outlines. Dark lettering stays visible in the laser preview, while downloaded SVG artwork keeps its original colors. Image to Laser
  • Image to Laser no longer crashes on detailed images. A photo or JPG logo traced with many colors could make a frame too big for an ILDA file, and the page stopped with "Something went wrong". Such a frame is now fitted to your scanner, so it previews, plays and downloads. Image to Laser

Audio Visualizers

  • Resonate's FAN layout keeps its colors. FAN used to fuse into a white blob, even with no music playing. Its loops, trails and glow are now balanced so the fanned loops show their colors and edges. In every LAYOUT and preset, the brightest parts of loud passages now soften before they turn white. Resonate
  • Constellation Lattice's LINK WIDTH stays in proportion. With a source assigned on LINK WIDTH, links now widen to at most 1.4 times the slider value instead of doubling. The brightest part of the web also keeps its color, so SIGNAL STORM glows green at the emitter even with every INK control on the music. Constellation Lattice
  • Spectrum Starburst has a new default look. Loud frequencies now fold their arcs in toward the center of the tunnel, giving the opening a ragged, living edge, and the contours glow brighter in a pink-to-violet sweep. RIDGE DIRECTION starts on INWARD; choose TOWARD YOU for the previous shape. The other presets look as before, and the guide has a fresh preview. Spectrum Starburst

September 23, 2026

All apps

  • One OSC bridge for every app. OSC-1 now listens to the same OSC bridge, on the same port (8765 by default), as the laser tools and Audio Visualizers, so one bridge program works everywhere. Settings → OSC in OSC-1 has the same BRIDGE PORT, CONNECT and status line as the laser tools and Performer Settings → OSC, says honestly whether the bridge is answering, and reconnects on its own when the bridge comes back. Setting up OSC
  • MIDI Learn accepts OSC in every app. Click a control, then move a fader or press a button in TouchOSC, TouchDesigner, QLab or any OSC software, and the control follows it — in OSC-1, the Audio Visualizers Performer, and the laser tools' LASER BLACKOUT and LASER STOP. The range sets itself from the values your software sends, and you can type one. MIDI and OSC mappings share one LEARNED MAPPINGS list, which now also appears in each app's OSC settings. OSC messages
  • One Output scale for every laser tool. OSC-1, Text to Laser, Image to Laser, AI Beam Creator, Animation Studio, the ILDA Viewer and Video to Laser now share one Output scale slider in the Laser Output panel's OUTPUT section: 25–100%, starting at 100%. Set it once and every tool, and both lasers in Video to Laser, draws at that size; it is remembered across reloads. OSC-1 used to start at 80% and stop at 50%, and Video to Laser had no output scale. Output controls
  • Esc blacks out the laser in every laser tool. While a laser or the DAC Simulator is connected, Esc does what BLACKOUT does in OSC-1, Text to Laser, Image to Laser, AI Beam Creator, Animation Studio, the ILDA Viewer and Video to Laser, including while you type in a field, with a dialog open, during MIDI LEARN and in fullscreen. Pressing it again keeps the blackout on; click RELEASE BLACKOUT, then START, to resume. Ctrl+B (⌘B on Mac) does the same. Keyboard control
  • Arm and start a laser from the keyboard. Ctrl+A (⌘A) presses ARM and Ctrl+S (⌘S) presses START, and the buttons show their keys while a laser is connected. ⌘S starts only when START is available and never stops output, and neither key acts while you type in a field. In OSC-1, ⌘S still saves your project except while a laser is armed and ready to start. Keyboard control
  • Black out a laser over OSC. Show-control software such as QLab or TouchOSC can send /beamtracer/laser/blackout or /beamtracer/laser/stop to every laser tool and OSC-1 through an OSC bridge; Video to Laser adds /beamtracer/laser/b/blackout and /beamtracer/laser/b/stop for Laser B. In the laser tools, connect the bridge under Laser Output → ADVANCED → OSC, which says whether OSC can reach the laser right now; in OSC-1, use Settings → OSC. A blackout holds until you click RELEASE BLACKOUT, and START is still needed after. OSC can only turn a laser off — it never arms, starts or changes power. OSC blackout
  • The MIDI LEARN status line stays true. After you remove a mapping from LEARNED MAPPINGS or clear them all, Settings → MIDI in OSC-1 and Performer Settings → MIDI in the Performer no longer keep saying Mapped … for a mapping that is gone. MIDI Integration
  • Black out a laser from a MIDI pad. Every laser tool and OSC-1 can map a MIDI pad or fader to LASER BLACKOUT or LASER STOP; in the laser tools, open Laser Output → ADVANCED → START MIDI LEARN. A blackout from the pad holds until you click RELEASE BLACKOUT, and START is still needed after. MIDI can only turn a laser off — it never arms, starts or changes power. MIDI blackout
  • Switch presets from your MIDI controller with Program Change. In OSC-1, Program Change 0 selects the first scope preset. In the Visualizers Performer, it selects the first tile in the PRESETS panel, in the order the panel shows. A higher program number selects the preset at that position, and a number past the end selects the last preset. Choose All channels, a single channel or Off under Settings → MIDI → Program Change in OSC-1, or Performer Settings → MIDI → PROGRAM CHANGE in the Performer. MIDI Setup

OSC-1

  • OSC-1's ILDA frames fit your scanner. EXPORT → ILDA has a new POINTS choice. SCANNER-SAFE, the default, saves the figure on screen as a frame your scanner can draw — 699 points at 30,000 pps and 30 FPS, which the ILDA Viewer's FILE HEALTH rates SAFE — with its corners in place and the jumps between strokes blanked. KEEP ORIGINAL saves every point the scope is holding, as before, and warns you first that a scanner would need far more speed to draw it. Each button shows how many points it saves. Export
  • New guide: oscilloscope music on a laser projector. Stream a track from OSC-1 to a Helios, Ether Dream, LaserCube or IDN receiver, rehearse it on the free DAC Simulator, and see what changes between a scope and a laser: rounded corners side by side and in a drag-to-compare view, the point rate, idle blanking, blackout, and checking an ILDA export in FILE HEALTH. Read the guide
  • New guide: an audio-reactive LaserCube without loopback software. Share a browser tab's music with OSC-1, preview the scan in GALVO SIM with the free DAC Simulator, then send it to a Wicked Lasers LaserCube. Read the guide.
  • One learn button per OSC-1 control. The separate O buttons are gone: each control's M button learns a MIDI control or an OSC message and shows OSC once it follows an address, and Export and Import save both kinds. OSC mappings learned with the old O buttons are cleared, so learn them again. OSC Learn
  • OSC-1 starts at 80% Output scale. Until you set Output scale, OSC-1 draws at 80% so a full-size figure keeps room at the edges of the field; the other laser tools start at 100%. Once you move it in any tool, every tool uses that value. Output controls
  • OSC-1 draws every Lottie frame whole. A new frame now waits for the one on the scope to finish, so the scope, a connected laser and GALVO SIM no longer show part of one frame and part of the next at any TRACE SPEED. Slower trace speeds draw fewer frames, each complete; FAST stays the default. Shape Tools
  • OSC-1's laser output follows SWAP, INV X and INV Y. Swapping or inverting the channels in the Beam Transformer now turns and mirrors the projection and the GALVO SIM preview along with the scope, instead of flipping only the screen. Orientation follows the screen
  • OSC-1's on-screen keyboard works on a phone. In Creator and Perform mode every key is now its own fingertip-sized target; the black keys no longer merge into one dark block over the white keys. The keyboard opens on middle C, and the arrows beside the octave name move it one octave at a time. OSC-1 on a Phone
  • A tap on an OSC-1 keyboard key plays its note once. On a phone or a touchscreen each tap used to sound the note twice. Each finger now holds its own note, and sliding a finger along the keys plays each key it crosses. OSC-1 on a Phone
  • PLAY A DEMO no longer covers the watermark on a phone. On an empty OSC-1 scope the free-plan watermark sits under the corner buttons, and the hint and PLAY A DEMO sit under the idle dot, clear of STATUS. The hint's second line, such as "sounds best with high-sample-rate oscilloscope music", shows again where there is room. OSC-1 on a Phone
  • OSC-1's LEVELS meter drops back when playback stops. After Stop or Pause the bars fall to rest, as they do for silence, instead of holding the last level on screen.
  • The synth's preset list says what to press. Before the synth starts, the list reads Press INITIALIZE instead of "Loading presets...". Synthesizer
  • OSC-1 stays below its header. Bringing a control into view could push the whole app up behind the header and leave a black band along the bottom. The layout now stays put.
  • OSC-1's laser output relights when you load a track. If you started the laser before playing a track, including the demo tracks, it could stay dark with Beam blanked: signal idle until you reloaded the page. It now lights as soon as the track plays. When you stop or pause the source, GALVO SIM goes dark and Beam blanked: signal idle appears, matching the laser. When the signal stops
  • OSC-1 works on a phone. On screens 900 pixels wide or narrower the scope sits on top as a square face with the transport and a SCOPE · CREATOR · PERFORM · EXPORT mode row under it, and SOURCES, BEAM and LASER tabs along the bottom open each panel as a sheet. Buttons, MIDI learn badges, sliders and synth knobs are sized for a fingertip, and the laser safety dock with BLACKOUT stays pinned to the bottom edge. OSC-1 on a Phone
  • Map several OSC-1 controls in one go. Settings → MIDI → START MIDI LEARN outlines every M button; click one, move a knob or press a pad, and the bar at the top names the new mapping, such as Mapped CC 21 ch 1 → XY Hue. Keep going until you click DONE or press Esc. Hardware Control
  • See and remove every OSC-1 MIDI mapping in one list. Settings → MIDI → LEARNED MAPPINGS shows each mapping as its knob and control, with a remove button per row and CLEAR ALL, which asks in place before removing anything. Hardware Control
  • OSC-1 knobs no longer make controls jump. After you move a control on screen or load a preset, a mapped knob waits until it reaches the control's value before it takes over. Hardware Control
  • A pad mapped to an OSC-1 control does only that job. The sampler, the step sequencer and the on-screen keyboard no longer react to it as well. Hardware Control
  • Saved OSC-1 mappings work as soon as the page loads. If you have already allowed MIDI for the site, mapped knobs respond without opening Settings first. MIDI Setup
  • OSC-1 turns the laser off when the signal goes idle. A connected laser no longer holds a dot on one spot. A paused or stopped source goes dark right away; a signal that keeps running but stops moving, such as silence or a steady offset, fades after about 1.5 seconds and is dark by about 2 seconds. Either way it relights as soon as the signal moves. Beam blanked: signal idle shows in the laser panel and the safety dock while it is dark. The on-screen scope still shows its idle dot. When the signal stops
  • The laser motion guard also catches a dot that trembles in place. A stationary dot with slight jitter, such as a live input at rest, now fades to dark like a perfectly still one, in OSC-1 and in every other laser tool. Laser DAC Output
  • Play Lottie animations on OSC-1. IMPORT SHAPES → LOTTIE plays a .json or .lottie animation as the beam, with play, frame scrubbing, speed and trace speed controls and two built-in examples. It reaches a connected laser like any other source. Shape Tools
  • The OSC-1 guide shows how to put your oscilloscope on a laser. A new section walks through the three routes: live output from LASER OUTPUT to a Helios, Ether Dream, LaserCube or IDN projector, an EXPORT ILDA FRAME file for your laser software, and a full ILDA animation from a recording in BT Laser Studio. It includes a clip of the GALVO SIM preview and what each route needs on your plan. The OSC-1 FAQ now lists IDN among the supported outputs. Show OSC-1 on a laser projector
  • Export OSC-1 video in 16:9, 1:1 or 9:16. The Export dialog's Video tab now has SHAPE and RESOLUTION choices that apply to both RENDER VIDEO and RECORD LIVE INPUT, at 1080p or 4K. The trace stays round and centered in every shape, and free videos keep their watermark inside the frame. Export
  • Record OSC-1 with a transparent background. Lower Background Opacity in Beam Properties to fade the screen, tube face and graticule; at 0% only the trace and its glow remain, over a checkerboard. RECORD LIVE INPUT then saves a WebM with a real alpha channel in Chrome and Edge. The Export dialog says when a recording or an MP4 render will have a black background instead. Transparent background

BT Laser Studio

  • New guide: audio-reactive laser logos. Split an SVG logo into its parts in Animation Studio with SPLIT TO PATHS, give each part its own reaction to the track — the whole logo kicking on the beat, a letter rocking with the melody, an accent flashing — then export with DOWNLOAD ILDA and check it in the ILDA Viewer, with a drag-to-compare example. Read the guide
  • New guide: Lottie to laser. Turn a Lottie animation into an ILDA file in Animation Studio or play it on OSC-1: which After Effects features come through, keeping the file's colors, preparing a Lottie so it draws cleanly, SCANNER-SAFE against KEEP ORIGINAL with a drag-to-compare example, and where to find Lottie files you're allowed to project. Read the guide
  • New video: laser show safety, the US rules in 3 minutes. The safety guide now opens with a walkthrough of the FDA variance, the 3 m and 2.5 m separation rule, beam termination, E-stop and scan-fail, then previews the clearance zones free in the ILDA Viewer. Watch it in the guide.
  • SCANNER-SAFE ILDA files keep every corner. In Animation Studio, a busy frame fitted with SCANNER-SAFE could lose most of its corners, so a ring of spiky stars came out as rough octagons. Every corner is now kept, the remaining points are spread along the lines between them, and artwork outside the canvas is left out of the file instead of being pressed onto the edge of the scan. When a frame has more corners than your scanner can draw at your frame rate, the POINTS panel says so and suggests a lower frame rate, less detail, or KEEP ORIGINAL. Video to Laser's Convert fits frames the same way: with Point Reduction on Detail, overloaded frames keep their corners too. Oscilloscope figures saved with SCANNER-SAFE, in Animation Studio and from OSC-1, also close cleanly where each loop starts. Animation Studio · Video to Laser
  • AI Beam Creator's tagline no longer hides under the CONVERT/LIVE switch. "Describe a shape. AI generates a laser beam." now sits just below the switch, where Image to Laser and Video to Laser already show theirs. AI Beam Creator
  • Safety readouts no longer round a light file down to zero. A small load used to read "Required: 0 kpps" in SAFETY CHECK (Image to Laser, Video to Laser), the ILDA Viewer's FILE HEALTH and Animation Studio's Safety Lane. Below 10 kpps the figure now keeps one decimal, such as "Required: 0.4 kpps", and a load under 0.1 kpps reads "< 0.1". Image to Laser
  • Animation Studio's ILDA files fit your scanner. A new POINTS choice under SAFETY → ILDA FILES sets what Download ILDA, Open in ILDA Viewer →, and Projection Mapping save. SCANNER-SAFE, the default, fits each frame to your Device profile and frame rate: 699 points at Standard 30k and 30 FPS, which the ILDA Viewer's FILE HEALTH rates SAFE. The shape keeps its corners, the jumps stay blanked, and an Oscilloscope layer draws one loop of its figure per frame. KEEP ORIGINAL saves every point as composed, as before. If that is more than your scanner can draw, a notice says so first. Projection Mapping now exports Oscilloscope layers at any Device profile. Animation Studio
  • Image to Laser's empty canvas reads cleanly. The line "Turn images into colored laser contours." now sits below the CONVERT / LIVE switch instead of underneath it. The pictures and clips in the SVG to ILDA, oscilloscope music, oscilloscope harmony and brightness, and audio visualizer guides, and on the Audio Controls, Audio Modulation, ILDA Test Pattern, Stress Heat Map and Viktor NV-1 pages, are fresh captures of the current app. Image to Laser
  • New guide: LaserOS alternatives. The programs that drive a LaserCube directly, what each runs on, what driving the cube costs, and what each one is best at, from each vendor's own pages. Read the guide.
  • New guide: audio-reactive laser shows as ILDA files. Tie a shape to your track's bass in Animation Studio, export the result with DOWNLOAD ILDA, check it in the ILDA Viewer, and keep it in sync with the music at the show, with a drag-to-compare example. Read the guide
  • The Beat reaction source moves shapes on the beat. In Animation Studio, a reaction set to Beat did nothing in the preview or the exported ILDA file. It now fires on each beat of the grid shown under 2 ANALYSIS, including after ÷2, ×2 or a tempo you type in. Audio-Reactive Features
  • FILE HEALTH no longer calls a long animation a filled shape. The ILDA Viewer judged point density across all of a file's frames at once, so a long animation of a simple outline showed "Very high point density … likely filled shape". It now judges one frame at a time. ILDA Viewer
  • The ILDA Viewer's FPS menu shows the whole rate. PLAYBACK CONTROLS → FPS read "30 fp"; it now reads "30 fps".
  • Lottie layers draw in the file's own colors. In Animation Studio a new Lottie layer draws each shape in its stroke, fill or first gradient color at full laser brightness, with black and gray drawn white, and the laser, DOWNLOAD ILDA and the ILDA Viewer get the same colors. Pick a color under COLOR to draw the whole layer in it; Preserve source colors switches back. Animation Studio
  • Multi-color laser files no longer read as color strobing. The color change rate in Animation Studio's SAFETY tab and the ILDA Viewer's FILE HEALTH is now per second of playback. A long file with a few colors in each frame used to show "Extreme color strobing detected" when it was not strobing. ILDA Viewer
  • The ILDA Viewer reads frame and company names the way the ILDA standard does. A name now ends at its first zero byte, so a file that leaves stray characters after that byte shows the name its author wrote instead of the characters run together. ILDA files you export follow the same rule. ILDA File Format
  • The laser show safety guide shows each rule in the ILDA Viewer. It opens on the DOLPHIN test file in Orbit Mode with the 3 m and 2.5 m clearance zones around a dancing figure, and adds drag-to-compare views of a screen below and above 3 m and of beams with the screen on and off, a what-not-to-do view of audience scanning, and the Laser Output panel's Power limit, BLACKOUT and Beam blanked: output not moving. Read the guide
  • The ILDA Viewer's 3D galvo simulation starts at 2000 pts. Switching to 3D or loading a file in 3D now sets GALVO SIMULATION → Speed to 2000 pts in every beam mode, so the whole frame draws at once; drag the slider down to watch the scan. 3D Beam Viewer
  • Every laser tool tells you when it blanks a parked beam. Text to Laser, Image to Laser, AI Beam Creator, Animation Studio, the ILDA Viewer and Video to Laser Live now show Beam blanked: output not moving in amber under ARM in the Laser Output panel, or in the safety dock, while the motion guard holds a dot that stopped moving dark. Hover it for the reason; it clears the moment the output moves. Video to Laser's separate MOTION GUARD label is replaced by the same notice. Laser DAC Output
  • GALVO SIM shows a parked beam as a dot. A beam that holds still used to leave the scanner preview black; it now draws as a bright dot, brighter the longer it dwells, and disappears when the motion guard blanks it. Output preview
  • Try the laser tools' output with the DAC Simulator. Text to Laser, Image to Laser, AI Beam Creator, Animation Studio and the ILDA Viewer now offer SIMULATOR in the Laser Output panel's DEVICE zone, as OSC-1 does. It is free on every plan, never uses a DAC session, and runs ARM, START, the scanner preview and the motion guard with no hardware attached. DAC Simulator
  • Import Lottie animations into Animation Studio. Drop a Lottie .json or .lottie file on SOURCE, or click LOTTIE STAR or LOTTIE BALL, and it becomes a layer that plays on the timeline at the file's own frame rate and exports to ILDA like any other layer. Shape layers, trim paths and repeaters are drawn; images, text and effects are not, and the layer's LOTTIE panel lists anything it skips. Animation Studio
  • New guide: LaserCube setup. Wire a Wicked Lasers LaserCube to your network, put it in LAN client mode, find it with the BeamTracer Bridge, and send the ILDA Viewer's orientation pattern as a first frame. Read the guide.
  • New guide: LaserCube point rate. What the 35,000 pps ceiling means, what the cube does with a higher or much lower setting, and how to check a file against it in the ILDA Viewer, with a drag-to-compare example. Read the guide.

Audio Visualizers

  • Signal Storm no longer washes the screen white. In Constellation Lattice, nodes and links that pass close to the camera now thin out and fade instead of sweeping bright bars across the frame, in every VIEW. The PHOSPHOR palette is a deeper green, so the SIGNAL STORM look glows green where it used to burn white. Constellation Lattice
  • Spectrum Starburst looks like itself again. The tunnel had broken into flat red, blue and teal wedges; the soft violet-to-blue gradient and the lit, stacked ridges are back. The same fix restores the colors and shading of Spiral Bloom, Particle Ribbons, Pixel Cascade, Angular CRT, Spectrum Sphere, Chromatic Contours, Electric Ink, Fractal Mosaic, Phosphor Waterfall, Interference Garden, Orbit Loom, Magnetic Lattice, Neon Rain and Radial Machines. Spectrum Starburst
  • Spirals draws FLOWER and CIRCLE again. Both modes had collapsed into a single smear. Spirals
  • Resonate's TUNNEL and SWARM layouts are back. TUNNEL showed an empty screen and SWARM one small clump; both spread their loops again. Resonate
  • Every INK control in Constellation Lattice can follow the music. LABELS, NODE SIZE, LINK WIDTH and GLOW now have Assign modulation, like CONNECTOR LENGTH. With a source assigned, the nodes swell, the links thicken, the bloom brightens and captions stay longer and brighter as the music rises. In quiet passages each control returns to its slider value, and none goes past the top of its slider. Constellation Lattice
  • Bright cores keep their color. Wrinkle in Time, Galaxy, Shape Morph and Strange Attractors no longer burn their densest areas to flat white on loud passages: the fold, the galactic core, a collapsing shape and the attractor's spine keep their hue and inner detail, with every preset. Galaxy's default also stops hazing the whole frame on each bass hit. Wrinkle in Time · Galaxy · Shape Morph · Strange Attractors
  • Clearer default views. Daft Time's clock sits closer and orbits more slowly, so the time fills the frame. Wave Grid is seen from above instead of edge-on, with larger points, and its PERSPECTIVE slider now tilts the grid as you drag it. John Whitney's music box draws larger points. Daft Time · Wave Grid · John Whitney
  • Text Particles' BASS DROP stays readable. The glow swells less on the bass, so the words no longer melt into one bar that washes the screen. Text Particles
  • Fresh previews for the GIF Matrix, Daft Time, Wave Grid, John Whitney, Wrinkle in Time, Galaxy, Shape Morph and Strange Attractors guides.
  • Text Particles reads as text. The default look keeps BEAM TRACER legible with music playing: finer particles that drift less, a lighter glow, and the words hold longer before the wipe and come straight back after it. BASS DROP and MINIMAL glow less, so their letters stay apart. Text Particles
  • Strange Attractors keeps its shape on the beat. The default no longer ties PARAM MORPH to the bass, which collapsed the swarm into two bright points on loud passages, and the swarm starts dimmer so its dense core keeps its color. PARAM MORPH now bends each attractor in proportion to its own setting. Strange Attractors
  • Poly Sonic's default is brighter. VOID PULSE keeps its violet look with brighter grid points and floor lines, so the scene no longer reads as a black screen. Poly Sonic
  • Fresh previews in every visualizer guide. The stray badge in the corner and the MADE WITH BEAMTRACER mark are gone from the pictures and hover videos of the remaining visualizer guides. On the home page, the Laser Studio gallery's ILDA VIEWER 3D tile now shows the 3D viewer's beams in fog instead of repeating the SAFETY GUIDE picture, and the same view opens the 3D Beam Viewer guide. Visualizers · 3D Beam Viewer
  • Control the Performer and its camera from TouchDesigner. Send OSC to fixed addresses such as /beamtracer/viz/camera/orbit, /beamtracer/viz/preset/next and /beamtracer/viz/blackout, and they work without any learning. The camera addresses orbit, raise, zoom, pan and spin the view of 3D visualizers like Audio Earth. MIDI Learn now lists CAMERA ORBIT, CAMERA ELEVATION, CAMERA ZOOM, CAMERA PAN X, CAMERA PAN Y, CAMERA FOV, CAMERA AUTO-ROTATE SPEED and CAMERA RESET, so you can map your own OSC channels or knobs to them instead. Control BeamTracer from TouchDesigner
  • Camera controls glide instead of jumping. Camera controls now move smoothly toward each new OSC or MIDI value, so tracking data does not jitter the view. CAMERA SMOOTHING, under LEARNED MAPPINGS, sets how much, and OFF jumps as before. This covers the Performer's camera, the visualizers' own camera sliders, and OSC-1's 3D view and 3D CAMERA sliders, which now all have M buttons. OSC Learn in OSC-1
  • Ether Weave, Background Discs and Time Displacement keep drawing when the layout changes. Collapsing the side panels or going fullscreen used to leave these visualizers blank; they now fill the new canvas size and keep playing. Ether Weave
  • Fluidic Time's liquid clock moves again. The water, its ripples and the blurred floor reflection now update every frame; before, the picture held its first frame. Fluidic Time
  • Background Opacity for Landscape, Background Discs and Fluidic Time. A new BACKGROUND OPACITY slider (Landscape: CORE; Background Discs: BACKDROP; Fluidic Time: MATERIAL & PALETTE) fades each scene's background toward a transparent canvas, so the subject can sit over another layer in Studio: Landscape keeps the fabric and the sphere, Background Discs keeps the ring stack, and Fluidic Time keeps the liquid clock. At 1 each looks exactly as before. Landscape · Background Discs · Fluidic Time
  • MIDI Learn tags no longer hide slider values. While MIDI Learn is on in the Performer, each control's MIDI tag sits on the top edge of its outline, so slider values and switches stay readable. MIDI Integration
  • The Performer's watermark stays clear of open panels. On the Free plan, MADE WITH BEAMTRACER moves to the left edge while Customize, the Scene Sequencer or the Shader Library is open, and to the top while Presets is open, so it never covers a control. The Customize panel's header is also solid now, so settings no longer show through it as you scroll.
  • MIDI Learn for every visualizer control in the Performer. Open Performer Settings → MIDI and click START MIDI LEARN: every slider, toggle and button in the visualizer's settings is outlined, so you click one, turn a knob or hit a pad, and it is mapped. The bar at the top names each mapping, such as Mapped CC 21 ch 1 → NEON ORB · SPHERE SEPARATION, and a mapped knob keeps working with the settings panel closed. MIDI Integration
  • Map OUTPUT LEVEL, BLACKOUT, NEXT PRESET, PREVIOUS PRESET and TAP TEMPO. They are buttons in the MIDI LEARN bar, so an APC Mini MK2 fader can fade the picture and a pad can black it out. MIDI Integration
  • See and remove Performer MIDI mappings. Performer Settings → MIDI → LEARNED MAPPINGS lists each mapping with a remove button and CLEAR ALL, which asks in place first. It replaces the old CLEAR MAPPINGS button. MIDI Integration
  • Scene Sequencer transport buttons learn knobs as well as pads. The M buttons beside Play/Stop, Loop, Shuffle and BPM sync now take a CC or a note, no longer time out, and BPM sync from a pad converts scene timings like the BPM button does. Scene Sequencer
  • Neon Orb's settings open in the Performer. Selecting the Neon Orb preset and opening its settings no longer shows an error page.
  • The Performer's MIDI device list shows your controller the first time you open it. Performer Settings → MIDI → CONNECTED DEVICES used to read "No MIDI devices detected" on first open until you pressed REFRESH. It now lists connected controllers straight away and updates by itself when you plug one in or unplug it, so the REFRESH button is gone. MIDI Integration
  • A bookmarked link to the old pop-out VJ controls window opens the Performer. It used to show an error page. For a separate controls window, use Detach controls in the Performer control bar. Detached Controls

Site & Account

  • Blog is in the home page menu. The main menu at the top of beamtracer.com now has BLOG, after DOCS, on desktop and in the phone menu. Blog
  • Fresh previews on the home page and visualizer guides. The Visualizers and Laser Studio cards, the showcase videos and the visualizer gallery show the current app. A stray badge in the corner and the MADE WITH BEAMTRACER mark are gone from 21 visualizer guide previews, and the Laser Studio card now shows Text to Laser writing BEAMTRACER. Visualizers
  • Header buttons no longer slide under MENU on a phone. On screens 480 pixels wide or narrower MENU shows only its icon, and when an app has more buttons than fit, they scroll sideways instead of covering it. This applies in OSC-1, Visualizers, the laser tools and the docs. OSC-1 on a Phone
  • The account page no longer has a MIDI tab. Its preferred device, default channel and APC Mini MK2 settings did not change how any app behaves, so they are gone. You set up controllers inside each app: OSC-1 under Settings → MIDI, Audio Visualizers under Performer Settings → MIDI. A link to the old MIDI tab opens the Account tab. Account & Settings
  • FAQ answers are no longer cut off on phones. On the home page and the Oscilloscope, Oscilloscope to Laser and Video to Laser pages, a long answer could lose its last lines and its link on a narrow screen. Opening a question now shows the whole answer at any width. Oscilloscope to Laser
  • Account settings are easier to use on a phone. The section you are in is underlined in the tab bar, the bar fades at its edge when more sections are off-screen, and opening a section scrolls its tab into view. The Update Answers button in About you no longer cuts off its label.
  • Let us follow up on your feedback. Share Feedback now has a You can contact me about this report box under your message. It starts unticked; tick it and add your email (filled in for you when you're signed in) if you're happy for us to ask follow-up questions about a bug or idea. We use it only for that report. Feedback

September 22, 2026

All apps

  • IDN receivers are now a laser output. Pick IDN in the DEVICE zone of OSC-1, Text to Laser, Video to Laser Live and the other laser tools to send frames to any ILDA Digital Network receiver on your network through BeamTracer Bridge, which lists every receiver it finds so you choose the unit. Laser DAC Output

OSC-1

  • Mesh Detail in 3D Import chooses its simplifications differently. Below 100%, the trace now keeps the edges that matter most to the model's shading and texture seams, so low-detail traces come out different from before. Read about Mesh Detail

BT Laser Studio

  • AI File Diagnostics reports the file header accurately. The signature, format and record count in the analysis now come from the ILDA Viewer's own parser, so they always match the error shown above them, and the written diagnosis names the right frame. AI-Powered Tools
  • The AI Tools guide shows Ask Gemini at work. A clip shows it read a video frame and retune the tracer, with every preview retracing. AI-Powered Tools
  • Cleaner bitmap traces. Image to Laser no longer turns the anti-aliased steps along a curved edge into dozens of stray laser contours. A flat-color image now traces to far fewer shapes and a much lower scanner load, and small marks you meant to keep still survive. Image to Laser
  • The Sound-Card WAV dialog shows two rates. Animation rate is how many distinct frames play per second; Redraw rate is how often the scanner draws a frame, repeats included. ILDA Viewer
  • Icon search in Text to Laser starts on All. Searching for an icon no longer comes up empty because a single category was preselected. Text to Laser
  • The header fits at every desktop width. Animation Studio's Templates and Save buttons no longer overlap the site navigation between about 1400 and 1600 pixels wide.
  • The Animation Studio guide gains four clips. Drawing layers with the quick tools, a multi-layer spirograph preset, NEON INK on a layer, and the canvas grid and background controls. Animation Studio
  • The ILDA Viewer guide shows the viewer in motion. The page opens on a file circling in 3D beams, the Test Suite loads each reference file in turn, the 3D section tours the camera views, and Exporting shows both export dialogs. ILDA Viewer
  • The Video to Laser guide shows Convert and Live in motion. Every section now has a screenshot and a hover clip: NOT A MOON traced four ways as you scrub, the tracing methods side by side, the Pipeline graph, a full conversion to the Safety Check, and Live tracing a dancer and a music visualizer in real time. Video to Laser
  • The Text to Laser guide shows every step in motion. Each section now has a screenshot and a clip that plays on hover: a word written live with NEON INK, the font, Hershey and icon libraries, the three letter styles and six Quick Starts side by side, Spotlights, Sweep and Laser Cannon, and the ILDA Viewer's safety check. Text to Laser
  • The Image to Laser guide shows every step in motion. Each section now has a screenshot and a clip that plays when you hover it: the six Quick Starts side by side, a bitmap tracing cleanly as Remove speckles rises, recoloring from the palette, the hand-off to Animation Studio, and the result as 3D beams in the ILDA Viewer. Image to Laser
  • New guide: LaserCube. How to drive a Wicked Lasers LaserCube from BeamTracer over your network — the cube settings, first light, why red disappears at low power, the 35,000 pps ceiling, firmware 2.0, and what the cube does when the stream stops, all measured on a 7.5W Ultra Mk2. LaserCube
  • Trace Reveal keeps the laser trace by default. Adding Trace Reveal in Image to Laser, Text to Laser, Video to Laser or Animation Studio now draws the completed outline behind the leading dot from the start; turn Keep laser trace off when only the dot should reach the laser. Image to Laser modifiers
  • Nine more visualizers can drive Video to Laser Live. Particle Man, Dot Matrix and the MATRIX LED family (Spectra Bars, Digital Rain, Spin Daddy, Light Rays, Club Strobe, Pitch Stream, GIF Matrix) now appear in the Visualizer source list behind Show hard to trace, with their measured trace figures on record. When a visualizer runs as a laser source it no longer moves the level meters or reacts to the keyboard on the page. Video to Laser Live

Studio

  • Post Impressionist, Wire Ripple 2 and Warp Tunnel can now be rendered to video. Studio and the visualizer's Render dialog now offer all three, and every render of the same project produces the same frames. Video to Laser lists them under hard-to-trace sources. See Post Impressionist, Wire Ripple 2 and Warp Tunnel.

Site & Account

  • Get BeamTracer updates by email without an account. Subscribe from step 3 of the blog's Browse panel, at the end of any blog post, or on the Contact page: enter your email and tick Tips & tricks, Product updates, or both. We email you a link to confirm first, and every email has an unsubscribe link.
  • Choose which emails you get. Sign-up and Account → Email updates now offer two separate opt-ins: Tips & tricks for new blog posts and YouTube tutorials, and Product updates for new features and improvements from this changelog. Both stay off unless you tick them, together they send at most one email a day and three a week, and Unsubscribe from all turns both off at once. Account settings
  • The welcome questions ask where you heard about BeamTracer. A single dropdown now follows the hardware question, with an optional short note when you pick Other. You can skip it without losing your other answers, and the signed-up onboarding uses the same list. Getting Started

September 21, 2026

All apps

  • Exported ILDA files are labeled BeamTracer. Every .ild file you export now carries BeamTracer in the company field of its header, which other laser software shows when it lists a file's details.

OSC-1

  • New video: three copies is a chord. Drawing a shape twice on an oscilloscope is an octave. The walkthrough raises Copies, reads the interval, then sets the Lissajous ratio. Watch it in the guide.
  • New video: how to draw two things at once on an oscilloscope. The guide now includes the walkthrough — open Creator, raise Copies, set Layout and Spread, and export an ILDA frame. Watch it in the guide.

BT Laser Studio

  • New guide: fixing ghost lines between laser letters. How to tell a blanking problem in the file from a timing problem at the projector, with a drag-to-compare example. Read the guide.

Audio Visualizers

  • Constellation Lattice joins Wire. A wandering splat releases glowing nodes that link to their neighbors and drift through a dark room. The music moves the splat and sets how many nodes it releases, beats fire bursts, the waveform runs along each chain, and when a frequency hits, a caption naming that frequency and its level attaches to an outer node, points outward on a connector that reaches with the highs, and fades. Nine looks range from a warm chart to an electric UV web and a view inside a phosphor storm, with moving cameras. Guide: Constellation Lattice.
  • Winamp Tribute cameras explore more of the scene. Interior and fly-through views move through the surrounding layers. Electric Ink keeps its filaments in view, and Reactive Portrait keeps the painted face visible from elevated and angled views.
  • Neon Rain carries musical bends down its threads. Choose distinct wide, overhead, interior and approaching views, then adjust Scene Depth to change the perspective. Explore Neon Rain.

September 20, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • Reactive Portrait joins the Winamp Tribute. Upload a photo or take a camera snapshot, then bend it with music in six looks—from gentle ripples to split colors and striped effects. Save the portrait in your Studio project and layer it over a backdrop. Guide: Reactive Portrait.
  • Electric Ink joins the Winamp Tribute. Flowing filaments bend with your music in six looks, from colored etchings on black to dark ink on white paper. Fade the paper to layer the ink in Studio. Guide: Electric Ink.
  • Radial Machines joins the Winamp Tribute. Concentric toothed rings turn in opposite directions and flex with your music. Six looks range from quiet clockwork to broad petals and deep mechanisms, with adjustable steps and a transparent Studio background. Guide: Radial Machines.
  • Interference Garden joins the Winamp Tribute. Overlapping waves become glowing bands, fine moire rings and scattered pearls. Choose six looks, bend the pattern with music, or reveal a Studio backdrop through its dark gaps. Guide: Interference Garden.
  • Phosphor Waterfall joins the Winamp Tribute. Your music becomes a moving landscape of spectrum ridges. Six looks reveal bass canyons, icy peaks and quiet amber histories, with adjustable depth, curvature and a transparent Studio background. Guide: Phosphor Waterfall.
  • Neon Rain joins the Winamp Tribute. Music bends falling streaks into colorful trails. Six looks range from sparse copper drizzle to dense storms and violet comets, with adjustable wind, depth and a transparent Studio background. Guide: Neon Rain.
  • Chromatic Contours joins the Winamp Tribute. Music reshapes a flowing map of colored ridges. Six looks range from fine icy lines to broad warm bands, with adjustable trails and a transparent background for Studio. Guide: Chromatic Contours.
  • Fractal Mosaic joins the Winamp Tribute. Repeating squares, diamonds and rings fold into music-driven patterns. Choose six looks, adjust the detail and colors, and reveal a Studio backdrop through the gaps. Guide: Fractal Mosaic.
  • Magnetic Lattice joins the Winamp Tribute. Layered woven sails, coils and halos fold through a field of stars while music bends their threads. Seven looks include an immersive Inner Current view, with pearly, metallic and neon finishes and a transparent background for Studio layers. Guide: Magnetic Lattice.
  • Orbit Loom joins the Winamp Tribute. Bands of fine threads fold through depth into knots, petals and orbital braids. Traveling highlights, pearly and metallic finishes, glow and light rays accompany the music. Start with seven looks, including Thread Flight from inside the bands, adjust the weave and camera, or layer the threads over a backdrop in Studio. Guide: Orbit Loom.

September 17, 2026

OSC-1

  • Watch why your oscilloscope image is blurry. The sample-rate guide now includes a video walkthrough: load the same drawing at 44.1, 96 and 192 kHz in OSC-1, read the loaded rate on the Current Source card, slow the drawing frequency, and check the export sample rate.

BT Laser Studio

  • Image to Laser color controls live in Properties. Preserve source colors and Outline SVG are now switches at the bottom of the TRACE section, and a COLOR section below it shows the palette when source colors are off or the per-color Recolor pickers when they are on. Download SVG sits beside Download ILDA under the preview. Guide: Image to Laser.

Audio Visualizers

  • Deep Space Feedback joins the Winamp Tribute. Stars are born on a ring drawn by the playing waveform and their trails rush, spin and fold back through an endless void; loud moments flood it with a burst of new stars. Send them on a Streak, Spiral or Weave, hang the field as a flat Void, a Dome that wraps around you or a Tunnel you look down, and start from eight looks such as Hyperdrive, Nebula Fold, Phosphor Void and Crystal Orbit. It sits in the WINAMP TRIBUTE category and on the Winamp Tribute page. Guide: Deep Space Feedback.
  • Dream Wallpaper joins the Winamp Tribute. A patterned print melts through drifting swirls while the playing waveform ridges the pattern around each one, and loud moments stamp the fresh print back in. Choose a Blossom, Lattice, Marble or Tiles motif, hang it on a Wall, a Curve that wraps around you or a Tunnel, and start from eight looks such as Velvet Melt, Lava Lamp, Neon Linoleum and Kaleido Loom. It sits in the WINAMP TRIBUTE category and on the Winamp Tribute page. Guide: Dream Wallpaper.
  • Two new Vector Echoes looks. Aurora Weave mirrors the waveform history under a starfield with colors that ripple along every line and slowly turn; Ember Signal is a warm tunnel whose loud beats travel down the bore as cooler rings. Both are in the PRESETS grid and on the Winamp Tribute page. Guide: Vector Echoes.
  • Vector Echoes gets color that moves. Two new controls in COLORS for the Phosphor finish: Color Flow lays Echo Colors across the contours Per Echo, Along Line (a seamless sweep along every contour) or With Level (each echo takes a color from how hard the music was hitting when it was captured), and Color Drift walks the whole palette around the wheel over time. Phosphor Tunnel now opens as a full-spectrum corridor that slowly turns; the other presets keep their colors. Guide: Vector Echoes.
  • Vector Echoes holds steady. Each contour now locks to the waveform's rising edge and settles smoothly between frames, and every echo keeps the shape it was born with as it travels through depth, so the corridor no longer shimmers or flickers. Response (Audio) also sets how gently the live contour settles. Guide: Vector Echoes.
  • The Winamp Tribute collection page previews every visualizer in motion. Each card on /winamp-visualizer now loops a short clip of the visualizer playing the demo track, with a still image when your system asks for reduced motion.
  • Spectrum Starburst gets an Emitter Brightness control. In Contour Tunnel, Emitter Brightness (Surface) sets how brightly the white emitter ring glows without changing how it lights the contours, and it follows the RMS level by default so the ring pulses from dark to full with the music. Every modulation route also gains an Up to slider anchor: the audio level sweeps a control from its minimum up to the slider value instead of multiplying the slider. A new Ridge Direction control (Structure) chooses how a loud frequency shapes the ring as it grows toward you: Toward You curls the ridge in until it reaches the tunnel opening, Inward folds it toward the center and Outward bulges it away. A new Contour Glow control (Surface) lets the traveling contours glow along their whole length independent of the emitter light. Wire Tunnel's beat shockwave ring is now a thin hoop that follows the Glow control. Guide: Spectrum Starburst.

Site & Account

  • Privacy Policy update: cookieless page-view counts. BeamTracer now counts page views with Vercel Web Analytics, which sets no cookie and does not tie a page view to your IP address. The Product Analytics switch in Account → Privacy & Data turns this off together with the first-party product events, and the Privacy Policy describes exactly what is counted.

September 16, 2026

OSC-1

  • OSC-1's Sources panel starts with an audio source. A new AUDIO SOURCE section sits at the top of the Sources panel in every mode, so Oscilloscope mode no longer opens on an empty panel. Drop or pick an audio file, click SHARE TAB AUDIO, or click ALL SOURCES to open Settings → Audio straight on the source chooser for demo tracks, microphone and virtual devices. Once something is playing the section names it, with CHANGE and, for live inputs, DISCONNECT. Guide: Audio sources.
  • Oscilloscope to laser. A new guide at /oscilloscope-to-laser walks from XY oscilloscope music to a Helios in Chrome or Edge, Ether Dream or LaserCube through the macOS Bridge, or an ILDA file.

BT Laser Studio

  • Video to Laser. A new guide at /video-to-laser covers converting a file to ILDA frames or tracing a camera or screen live, then sending a Helios in Chrome or Edge or using the macOS Bridge.

Audio Visualizers

  • Visualizer settings start collapsed and remember what you open. Every section in the VISUALIZER SETTINGS panel is closed the first time you open a visualizer, and any section you expand or collapse stays that way for that visualizer, across reloads. The − and + buttons at the top of the panel still collapse or expand everything at once, and REMEMBER SETTINGS STATE in Settings → Display can turn the memory off. Spectrum Analyzer's tribute looks now sit at the top of its PRESETS section.
  • Winamp Tribute is a complete collection. Spiral Bloom, Spectrum Starburst, Feedback Dream, Vector Echoes, Liquid Drift, Prism Cathedral, Pixel Cascade and Particle Ribbons join tribute presets in Spectrum Analyzer, Oscilloscope Glow, Terrain Mesh and Wire Tunnel, with factory and personal look links for sharing. The collection has its own category at the end of the visualizer picker. Vector Echoes now opens in Phosphor Tunnel, where the live waveform glows at the vanishing point and its echoes grow toward you, and Feedback Dream's vortex fills the frame with a new Vortex Taper control. Guide: Winamp Tribute.

Studio

  • Watch how to add a stopwatch overlay to a video. The stopwatch overlay guide now includes a video walkthrough: put your clip behind the clock, add the UP timer and a progress ring, set the length with Trim for Export, and render an MP4 for any editor.

September 13, 2026

Audio Visualizers

  • Winamp Tribute adds two nostalgic visualizers. Feedback Dream and Vector Echoes bring swirling trails, glowing waveform paths, and twelve presets to the visualizer picker. Adjust their audio modulation or layer their transparent backgrounds in Studio. Guide: Visualizer categories.
  • Modulation patches keep your route settings. Save, load, and share patches with their amount, shaping, envelope, and enabled state intact. Previously cleared assignments also stay cleared when loaded. Guide: Modulation patches.

September 11, 2026

BT Laser Studio

  • Image to Laser accepts bitmap images. Trace PNG, JPEG, WebP, and other supported images, preserve or recolor their colors, and download SVG artwork, SVG outlines, or ILDA files. Preview your logo and inspect scanner load before export.

September 10, 2026

Site & Account

  • Watch how to add a timer to a video in CapCut. The CapCut timer guide now includes a video walkthrough covering text clips, countdown stickers, and a rendered timer with a progress ring.

September 9, 2026

Site & Account

  • The BeamTracer wordmark replaces the typed name in the home page header and footer.
  • Frosted panels are frosted again. Panels, headers, and the home page's sticky bar are meant to blur whatever sits behind them, and in recent versions of Chrome they had stopped doing it — which is why the sticky bar was hard to read over the pricing table. The blur is back everywhere it belongs.

September 8, 2026

OSC-1

  • 3D models no longer trip a React error while rotating. In OSC-1, loading a 3D model and turning it with AUTO ROTATE, the rotation sliders, the animation presets, or by dragging the preview could raise "Maximum update depth exceeded" in the console after a few seconds. Each rotation step re-traces the model without a chain of React state updates now, so the error is gone and the sliders, the point budget readout, and the preview follow the model as before.

Audio Visualizers

  • Warp Tunnel joins Space. Fly through translucent plasma sheets with curling folds and passing wisps that brighten, bend, and change color with your music. Nine presets offer distinct palettes and folds, with calmer forward motion, complementary highlight colors, and separate controls for travel and turning.
  • Post Impressionist paints your music, or your photo, in living brushstrokes. A new Creative visualizer paints a tropical beach as swirling, shimmering, swaying brushstrokes that answer the music, with nine looks from Tropical Dawn to Fine Dabs. In the Photo section, Upload Photo paints your own picture the same way: strokes follow its edges and each area moves the way its subject would. Analyze with AI plans the strokes for a photo with one AI Frame Analysis try on the Free plan. Guide: Post Impressionist.

September 7, 2026

BT Laser Studio

  • Video to Laser previews follow the scrubber. The trace panes update while you drag the frame slider instead of waiting for release, and each frame traces in a fraction of the time it took before. The Dance Silhouette example now traces the dancer's outline rather than the background around her, and the SVG Parser preview no longer draws a rectangle around the frame. The point previews no longer draw a stray line from the center of the canvas to the first point of a frame.
  • BeamTracer Bridge has a download page. /download carries the macOS disk image, its requirements, and a checksum. The "BeamTracer Bridge is not running on this Mac" notice in every laser panel now links there.

Audio Visualizers

  • Timeline works with internet radio and live inputs. Choosing Timeline while a station, microphone, or tab audio was playing left a blank canvas with an error in the console. The waveform now rolls in live from the right edge for any source that has no end, and the decoded full-track view is unchanged for the demo track and audio files.
  • Timeline color modes and presets. The old Frequency Colors blend is gone. Color Mode now offers Solid, Wave Color (amplitude-density bands, hot in the core and cool at the peaks, with Heat, Neon, Aurora, Ember and Waveform Color palettes) and EQ Color (the DJ-deck tint: bass, mids and highs each in their own color, mixing where they overlap, from a real band split of the audio). A STYLE grid of twelve complete looks sits at the top of the settings panel.

Studio

  • Spotify Canvas renders are always silent. Choosing the Spotify Canvas preset on the Frame step and then rendering could still include the track's audio; the render dialog now keeps INCLUDE AUDIO off for Canvas.

Site & Account

  • Docs navigation sized to its contents. On wide screens the sidebar panel no longer stretches across the empty space to the left of the page, and the collapsed-sidebar toolbar sits below the header instead of behind it.

September 6, 2026

Studio

  • Spotify Canvas exports always render at 608 × 1080. The 4K option is disabled for the Spotify Canvas preset, because Spotify rejects a Canvas taller than 1080 pixels.

September 5, 2026

Initial release