Shimmer fills the screen with a radial burst of light rays shooting out from a glowing center, an orange-red core fading to blue-cyan at the edges, and a stream of colored particles. With a microphone enabled, the bass, mid, and treble in nearby music drive the core's pulsing, the rays' shimmer, and how far the particles travel, so the whole screen moves with the track.
Before you start
- Microphone access. This is the effect's main input. Your browser will ask for permission the first time you enable it — allow it, or Shimmer stays on a slow idle animation with no reaction to sound.
- A working microphone and music playing near it. A laptop's built-in mic or a phone's mic both work. The effect listens to the room through the microphone, not to audio your browser or computer is already playing internally, so the sound source needs to be audible to the mic, not just running in another tab.
- A modern desktop or mobile browser that supports microphone access. If the browser or device has no microphone, or blocks microphone access entirely, the permission request will fail and Shimmer falls back to its idle animation.
Set it up
- Open the Shimmer effect.
- In the Controls panel, open the Audio group and turn on Music Reactive.
- Allow the microphone permission prompt if your browser shows one.
- Play music near your microphone, or turn up what's already playing so the mic can pick it up.
- Adjust Brightness in the settings panel if the effect looks too dim or too intense.
- Optional: select Go Fullscreen for a full-screen display; the controls fade out after five seconds of no mouse movement.
You'll know it worked when the switch stays on after the permission prompt, and the central core pulses in size with the bass while rays and particles shoot out faster and brighter on louder passages.
What each control does
| Control | Range | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Music Reactive | On/Off | Listens through your microphone so the rays, core, and particles move with the music. Turning it off stops the mic. |
| Brightness | 10–100 | Overall output of the rays, core, and particles. The main dial for a burst that reads as too dim or too washed out. |
There's no Color or Speed control on this effect's settings panel — Brightness is the only slider it exposes. The orange-red-to-blue-cyan gradient is fixed inside the effect.
Common setups
- Party or DJ backdrop. Brightness 85–100, phone or laptop mic close to a speaker or in the room with the music. The burst reads best loud and bright at a distance.
- Live stream background. Brightness 50–65, mic picking up your streaming audio at a moderate level. Keeps the reaction visible without overwhelming anything in front of it, like a webcam overlay or on-screen text.
- Quiet room or soft background music. Brightness 70–80, and position the microphone as close to the audio source as you can — quiet input is intentionally dampened so it doesn't need to fight room noise.
- Ambient loop with no music. Skip enabling the microphone. Shimmer's idle animation is slow and gentle on its own and works as a passive screen backdrop without needing a mic at all.
Troubleshooting
The microphone permission prompt never appears. Your browser may have already blocked or previously denied microphone access for this site. Check the microphone icon or permissions menu in your browser's address bar and set it to Allow, then turn Music Reactive on again.
I allowed the microphone but nothing reacts to my music. The input is likely too quiet — the effect deliberately damps very quiet audio so background hiss doesn't trigger false movement. Turn the music up, or move the microphone closer to the speaker, and confirm Music Reactive is still switched on rather than having reverted.
The effect only shows a slow idle motion and never picks up sound. Microphone access was likely never granted. Turn on Music Reactive and check for a permission prompt or a blocked-permission icon in the address bar; without permission, Shimmer runs its calm fallback animation indefinitely.
It reacts to my voice or typing instead of the music. The microphone is picking up whatever is loudest nearby. Move it closer to the music source, lower other noise in the room, or use an external microphone positioned near the speaker instead of a laptop's built-in mic.
The screen is blank or the canvas never loads. Shimmer is WebGL-based, so graphics acceleration needs to be on in your browser. Turn it on in your browser's settings and reload the effect page.
Next steps
For a different take on audio-reactive lighting, try Disco Mode for a 3D disco ball that reacts to bass and beats, or Wavy Shells for organic, flowing shapes driven by the same kind of frequency analysis.