App

Lyric Player

Play your songs with lyrics that light up word by word, the way Apple Music shows them, or follow along with Spotify and Apple Music.

Word by wordLyrics light up as they’re sung, with romanized lines for Japanese and Korean.

Animated coversMoving album covers from Apple Music, beside the lyrics or full screen.

Lyric cards and clipsShare a few lines as an image or a short video.

Overview

Drop a song onto the window and Lyric Player finds its lyrics, its cover and, when the album has one, its moving cover. The background takes its colours from the cover and moves with the bass. On a PC it can also show the lyrics for whatever Spotify, Apple Music or your browser is playing.

Topics

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Getting started

Install the app, play a song and load its lyrics.

Install

• Windows: download the installer or the portable version from the download page. The installer adds a Start menu entry; the portable version runs from wherever you put it.
• In a browser: open files.ruytha.dev. Everything except the desktop extras (following other apps, floating lyrics, the tray, Discord) works there.
• Mac: the Mac download appears on the download page once it's ready.

The app updates itself. New versions download in the background and are used from the next start (Settings, About).

Open this documentation from the app with ••• › Lyric Player Help, the Help link at the foot of Settings, or F1.

Play a song

Drop an audio file (MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG, WAV and more) onto the window, or use ••• › Open › Load New Song…. Lyric Player reads the title, artist and cover from the file and looks for lyrics on its own.

Click any lyric line to jump to it. The buttons under the controls are, from left: lyrics on or off, AirPlay or Cast (when your device offers it), and the library. Settings and Full Screen are in the ••• menu, or press Ctrl + , and F.

Load lyrics yourself

Lyric Player reads TTML files, the format Apple Music uses for word-synced lyrics. Drop a .ttml file on the window or use ••• › Open › Load Lyrics File…. The lyrics are saved with the song, so they're there next time.

Reference

Keyboard shortcuts

Every key the player listens for, plus the global shortcuts on desktop.

In the player

Global shortcuts (desktop)

These work from any app, even when Lyric Player is in the tray. Turn them on or off in Settings › App › Global shortcuts. On a Mac, use ⌘ instead of Ctrl.

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Finding lyrics

Where lyrics come from, how the best match is picked, and how to choose different ones.

Automatic lyrics

When a song has no lyrics, Lyric Player searches every source and uses the best match: the right title and artist, about the same length, and word-synced lyrics before line-synced ones. Turn this off in Settings › Lyrics › Find lyrics automatically.

The sources, best first:

1. Apple Music, from your own subscription when you sign in (desktop app).
2. AMLL TTML DB, a community library of word-synced lyrics.
3. BiniLyrics, NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music.
4. LRCLIB, line-synced lyrics.

If the best match fails to load, the next one is tried.

Choose different lyrics

Press / or use ••• › Find Other Lyrics…. Each result says whether it is word-synced or line-synced, where it comes from and how long the song is, so you can pick the version that matches yours.

Apple Music lyrics

In the desktop app, open Settings › Apple Music and sign in on Apple's own page. Lyric Player never sees your password. Lyrics then come from your account's country, the same lyrics the Apple Music app shows.

Where the lyrics came from

After the last line, the player shows who wrote the song and where the lyrics came from. When the lyrics don't name the songwriters, they're looked up on MusicBrainz (Settings › Lyrics › Find songwriters online).

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Fixing lyric timing

Shift lyrics that run early or late, fix single lines, or time lyrics yourself.

Shift all lyrics

When every line is a little early or late, press [ or ] to move the lyrics 50 ms at a time, or use the Lyric Offset stepper under ••• › Lyrics Tools. Click the number to reset it.

Edit single lines

Press E (••• › Lyrics Tools › Edit Lyric Timing…). Play the song and tap T as each selected line starts, or nudge a line by 50 ms with [ and ]. Save keeps the changes with the song; Export .ttml saves a file.

Time lyrics from scratch

For plain lyrics with no timing, use ••• › Lyrics Tools › Tap to Sync Lyrics…: paste the words, play the song and tap (or press Space) as each line starts. The result is a line-synced TTML file you can keep.

Lyrics you timed or loaded yourself can be shared with everyone through ••• › Lyrics Tools › Send to AMLL TTML DB…. It saves the file and opens the database's submission form (a GitHub account is needed).

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Translation and romanization

Show a translation under each line, translate lyrics that have none, and read Japanese and Korean lyrics in Latin letters.

Translations

When the lyrics include a translation, turn it on with ••• › Show Translation. For lyrics without one, ••• › Translate Lyrics translates them into the language set in Settings › Lyrics › Translate lyrics to, using the translator built into your browser when it has one.

Romanization

Korean and Japanese kana are romanized by the app itself. Lines with kanji or Chinese characters borrow the romanization NetEase or QQ Music has for the same song. Turn it on or off in Settings › Lyrics › Romanization.

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Library and queue

Keep songs in the app, add music folders, build playlists and choose what plays next.

Press Q to open the library. It has three tabs:

• Up Next: what's playing and what plays after it, with shuffle and repeat.
• Songs: every song you've played, newest first. The search box finds songs by title, artist or a line of their lyrics.
• Playlists: your own lists of songs.

Music folders (desktop)

Add music folder… adds a folder from your PC. New files are added and deleted ones disappear on their own. A .ttml file next to a song, with the same name, is used as its lyrics.

Smart shuffle

With Settings › Playback › Smart shuffle on, shuffle plays songs you haven't heard lately first and keeps the same artist from playing twice in a row.

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Following Spotify and Apple Music

Show synced lyrics for music playing in another app on your PC.

When Spotify, Apple Music, a browser or another app plays and Lyric Player doesn't, the desktop app shows that song's title, cover and synced lyrics. It reads what's playing from the system's media controls, the same information as the volume flyout. Turn it on or off in Settings › On This PC.

The play, pause, next and seek buttons control the other app.

If the lyrics drift

Apps report their position only now and then, and Lyric Player counts on from the last report. If the lyrics are early or late for a particular app, shift them with [ and ]; the offset is remembered for that song.

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Searching Apple Music

Find any song in Apple Music, hear a preview, and get its synced lyrics.

Open ••• › Open › Search Apple Music… and type a song and artist. Pick a result to see its cover (animated when the album has one), album, year and genre.

• Preview plays Apple’s 30-second preview. The player pauses while it plays. Press Enter to play or stop the preview of the selected song, and the arrow keys to move through the results.
• Open in Apple Music opens the song there, to play it or save it to your Apple Music library.
• Buy on iTunes opens the song in the iTunes Store, with its price. Songs you buy there are normal files: add their folder to the Library and they play like your other songs, with Karaoke, AutoMix and lyric clips with sound.
• Get Lyrics finds the best synced lyrics for the song. Save .ttml saves them as a file, ready to drop onto the player with the song.

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AutoMix, crossfade and the equalizer

Blend songs together on the beat, shape the sound, and even out the volume.

These settings work on your own song files, in Settings › Playback.

AutoMix

Like Apple Music's AutoMix: the blend starts on the first beat of a bar, the next song comes in on its own first bar, sped up or slowed down a little to match the tempo, the bass swaps halfway through, and its speed eases back to normal afterwards. When a song fades out slowly, the blend starts as the fade begins. With synced lyrics, AutoMix waits for the last sung line to finish, so the next song never plays over the singing. AutoMix replaces Crossfade when both are on.

Crossfade

Fades each song into the next one, over up to 12 seconds.

Equalizer

Ten bands from 32 Hz to 16 kHz, with presets such as Bass Booster, Vocal Booster, Late Night and Rock. Open it from ••• › Equalizer….

More sound settings

• Even out volume: quiet songs are turned up and loud ones down.
• Karaoke: takes the lead voice out and keeps the bass, drums and cymbals, in stereo. It works when the voice is in the middle of the mix; some echo of it stays, and on mono songs it can't take the voice out (Lyric Player tells you). Settings › Playback › Voice in Karaoke keeps some of the singer as a guide.
• Sleep timer: in the ••• menu. Each tap steps through 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes and the end of the current song; the music fades out when it stops.

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Apple Music Mode and Now Playing

A phone-shaped player like the iPhone's, its Now Playing screen, and animated covers.

Apple Music Mode

Press M or use ••• › Apple Music Mode. The window becomes a portrait player like the iPhone's lyrics view; the controls slide up when you move the pointer and hide again when you stop.

Animated covers

When an album has a moving cover on Apple Music, Lyric Player plays it in place of the still one. Find covers in Settings › Artwork, or choose one yourself with C. Results marked Animated have a moving cover. ••• › Open › Use Still Cover switches back for one song.

Animated cover beside the lyrics

With Settings › Artwork › Animated cover beside the lyrics on, a wide window shows the tall animated cover on the left with the title and controls at its foot, and the lyrics on the right, like Apple Music on iPad.

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Customizing the lyrics

Change the size, font, colour, glow and background of the lyrics.

Press S for Settings. Changes show up straight away behind the panel.

Lyrics

• Size, Weight, Letter spacing: the shape of the text.
• Bloom: the glow around the line being sung.
• Sweep softness: how soft the edge is as words light up.
• Focus position: how far down the screen the current line sits.
• Font and Colour: including a colour taken from the album cover.
• Blur other lines, Zoom current line, Spring motion, Hide sung lines.

Background

Choose the background style, how fast it flows, how strongly it reacts to the bass and kick drum, and how dim it is. Still background and a lower Render quality save power on laptops.

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Lyric cards and clips

Share a few lines as an image, or a short video of the lyrics moving.

Lyric cards

Open ••• › Card, pick up to six lines and a style (Dark, Bright or Lyricify), then Save image or Copy.

Lyric clips

••• › Clip records a short video of the lyrics moving over the cover, as a 9:16 story, a square or a 16:9 video. It records in real time while the song plays.

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Discord and Last.fm

Show what you're playing on your Discord profile and scrobble to Last.fm.

Discord Rich Presence

1. Create an application at discord.com/developers/applications. Its name is what Discord shows, as in "Listening to Lyric Player".
2. Paste its Application ID into Settings › Discord and turn on Discord Rich Presence.
3. Choose the two lines of text using {title}, {artist} and {album}, and whether the cover is animated, still or hidden.

The Discord app must be open. Animated covers show as a looping GIF made by the Lyric Player website.

Last.fm

Create an API account at last.fm/api, paste its API key and shared secret into Settings › Last.fm, connect your account and turn on Scrobble to Last.fm. Songs are added once you've heard half of them, or 4 minutes.

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Desktop extras

Floating lyrics, the mini player, the tray, the phone remote and the fun extras.

Floating lyrics and mini player

Floating lyrics (K, or Ctrl Alt L from anywhere) shows the current line in a bar that stays on top of other windows. The mini player (I) is a small window with the cover and the current line.

The tray

With Settings › App › Keep running in the tray on, closing the window leaves Lyric Player running by the clock, still following your music. Quit from its menu there. It can also open when you sign in, and start in the tray.

Phone remote

Turn on Settings › Phone remote and scan the QR code with your phone. The phone shows the cover and lyrics and controls the music, over your home Wi-Fi.

Just for fun

• Your stats: what you've listened to most.
• Lyrics quiz: a word disappears from the next line; type it before the line is over.
• Emoji reactions (Settings › Fun): emoji float up when words like love, fire or dance are sung. Add your own words as word=emoji.

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Troubleshooting

Fixes for the problems people run into, and how to report one.

A new version doesn't show up

Updates download in the background and are used from the next start. Quit Lyric Player completely (from the tray menu if it's there) and open it again. Settings › About shows the version and can use a downloaded update right away.

Apple Music lyrics don't load

Check that you're signed in under Settings › Apple Music and that your subscription is active. Some songs only have lyrics in some countries. When Apple Music has none, the next source is used.

Lyrics are early or late

Shift them with [ and ], or fix single lines with E. See Fixing lyric timing.

The background is slow or the laptop runs warm

Lower Settings › Background › Render quality or Frame rate, or turn on Still background.

Report a problem

Open Settings › About › Copy diagnostics. It copies a report with the versions, your settings (without passwords or keys) and recent errors, ready to paste into a message.