A visualizer for Spotify on your Windows PC.

Spotify on Windows plays the music without drawing it. The desktop app, the Microsoft Store version and the web player have no visualizer, and Canvas, the short loop some artists attach to a track, is a video that looks the same whether the song is quiet or loud. LIQUIDWAVE fills that gap on your PC: it listens to what Spotify is playing and draws it, live, in 60+ scenes that were each composed by hand. The download is free.

Scenes made like pictures, not presets

Most visualizers generate their pictures: a preset engine mixes shapes and colors until something moves. LIQUIDWAVE's scenes are curated, not generated. Each one is a finished picture with its own palette, its own way of moving and its own idea of what the music means: a drawn waveform, a field of op-art rings, a sea in wireframe, a stage lit by lasers, a liquid chrome surface. They are grouped into ten styles, and every one of them runs on Windows exactly as it does on the Mac.

The care shows in the details. The kick, the snare and the hi-hats each move a different part of the picture, so a busy drum pattern reads as rhythm rather than flicker. The chrome and foil scenes let the sound shape the surface but never flash the light. Positions glide with the tempo instead of jumping on every beat.

How it hears Spotify

LIQUIDWAVE doesn't use Spotify's API, and it never asks for your Spotify login. It listens to your PC's default output device, the speakers or headphones Windows is playing through, so it works with the Spotify desktop app, the Microsoft Store version and the web player in a browser tab alike. Unplug the headphones and it follows Windows to the speakers.

There is no virtual audio cable to install, no Stereo Mix to enable and nothing to set up inside Spotify. System Audio is the source LIQUIDWAVE starts on. The audio is analyzed on your PC as it plays and discarded straight away: nothing is recorded unless you start a Scene Recording, nothing is uploaded, and there is no account.

Turn Spotify down, and the picture doesn't shrink

LIQUIDWAVE hears a player after its own volume slider. With Spotify at half volume the sound arrives far below full level, so it runs through a leveler first. The leveler only ever raises the level: quiet playback is brought up toward a steady level, full-volume playback passes through untouched, and the silence between tracks stays silent.

It reads the music, not just the volume

LIQUIDWAVE splits Spotify's output into seven frequency bands on every frame it draws, from the sub-bass under a kick drum to the air above the cymbals. It catches each beat as it lands, picks out the kick, the snare and the hi-hat, and locks to the tempo within a few bars. The Spectral scenes go further and read the music pitch by pitch.

Ten styles

• Line: waveforms, strings, contours and an oscilloscope.
• Graphic: Chladni figures, op-art rings, halftone dots and a hypnotic spiral.
• Wire: wireframe seas and rolling relief that rise with the bass.
• Raster: point clouds, particles and data drawn as an image.
• Lighting: lasers, sheets of light, god rays and haze.
• Chroma: auroras, curtains and slow fields of color.
• Cyber: neon grids and retro-futuristic horizons.
• Metal: liquid chrome, foil and iridescent film.
• Fluid: ferrofluid, a lava lamp, honey and slime.
• Spectral: the music pitch by pitch, in hairlines and fine points.

Wave is always free, and the first time you open the app you pick one more, also free and with no time limit. The rest unlock inside the app with one purchase.

The song, in the window

Spotify tells Windows what it is playing. LIQUIDWAVE reads that from the system's media controls and shows the track and its cover in a small Now Playing card at the top of the window, and in the sidebar. Nothing about the track leaves your PC.

Behind your icons, or full screen when you step away

The music doesn't need a window to be seen. Desktop Mode plays a scene behind your desktop icons while you work, and When you're away fills every screen once you leave the PC alone, then clears on the next key or move.

Set it up in three steps

1. Download LIQUIDWAVE for Windows and open LIQUIDWAVE-win-Setup.exe. It installs for your account, without administrator rights.
2. If Windows says "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway. The installer isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen asks first.
3. Press play in Spotify. The scene starts moving.

When it doesn't see Spotify

Spotify Connect is playing somewhere else. If Spotify on your PC is controlling a speaker, a phone or a TV, the music isn't coming out of the PC, so there is nothing for System Audio to hear. Switch to Listen Mode, which hears the room through the microphone, and LIQUIDWAVE follows the speaker instead.

The sound goes to another device. LIQUIDWAVE listens to the default output device. Windows can send one app to a device of its own (Settings → System → Sound → Volume mixer); if Spotify is set to one there, set it back to Default, or make that device the default.

Listen Mode hears nothing. Turn on Let desktop apps access your microphone in Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone. Support has the rest.