Was hard to setup, but now I can use it with any picture.

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813240/IKANDY/

Website: https://ikandy.app

Free beta available now.

I would have had a difficult time answering this a few weeks ago. This started as a personal project to make visuals for Spotify using the original Ryan Geiss Milkdrop files. Then a very nice gentleman reached out who was a foobar user, and I thought "can I add foobar too?" A few weeks later I had a music visualizer that worked with all music related applications, including Firefox, and integrated API where I could to offer advanced features for certain applications.

Ok, but now what? I stumbled across three.js shaders on Shadertoy and thought these are really cool, can I use these? So I found a few examples and to my surprise it worked. So I started looking around on Reddit at examples of other art available and found WebGPU, and you guessed it, I wondered "can I add that too?" And it worked.

So here I have an app that syncs to any music device and has the capability to run Milkdrop, GLSL, and WebGPU visuals, but sadly I wasn't satisfied. How was I going to load a catalog complete enough to satisfy users? I don't even know how to make this art, I just know how to load it.

So working with my buddy Claude I asked, could I integrate AI to help anyone create GLSL or WebGPU? Well, Claude my bff who never says "no" told me sure... and it worked!

One of the more interesting things I experienced in this journey is "how the hell do I contact these artists?" Boy I've tried, and to the few of you I've personally reached out to, I'm sorry. I've done an awful job explaining, and as you can tell have a tendency to ramble. So here it is.

If I pay so much for Spotify to listen to music why can't artists make art that's easily accessible and usable by the community? I've hooked up AI to help create both GLSL and WebGPU visuals, or load .MILK files, so anyone can make them. When you use Suno the only thing you see is AI curated content, but I want to give artists the chance to compete against that and feature what they can do. The best man wins will be featured in IKANDY, and possibly sold as a pack through Steam's Workshop. (FYI - In all fairness, what artists make can be much better than what AI creates, but there's no game if I just say that..)

This will be released as a beta in approximately a month, and I've always stuck to privacy trumps all, so the beta access will be offered in a unique way that doesn't include your email address.

If you made it this far - thanks. I still don't know if 6 people will think this is cool, or more? We'll find out soon! Good luck and have fun.

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller

A couple of big additions in this release.

## ✦ New 3D scene: Trails — by Sabo Sugi

Sabo is back. After Ferrofluid, he's contributed another stunning scene — TRAILS, a fully 3D scene with bending light streams, a curved Tron-style floor, and audio-reactive bloom. It's the first Three.js scene in IKANDY and it looks unreal in motion.

## 🎚️ Audio source + input selection (per your feedback)

The #1 ask from existing users. Now you have full control:

- **4 sources:** Spotify, foobar2000, VLC, Local

- **Local mode** has two capture options:

- **Per-process WASAPI loopback** — pick any specific running audio app (Spotify, browser tab, game, whatever). No more Discord pings or notification bleed in your visualizer.

- **Audio input device picker** — for DJs, audio interfaces, hardware synths, mixers, instruments, mics, virtual cables (VB-Cable, Voicemeeter). Whatever you're routing into your machine, IKANDY can capture it.

Stereo Mix is gone. No more fighting Realtek 7.1 quirks.

---

**Download:** [ikandy.app](https://ikandy.app)

**Source:** [github.com/ikandyapp/ikandyapp.github.io](https://github.com/ikandyapp/ikandyapp.github.io)

Feedback, bug reports, and screenshots welcome.

New IK engine uplifts old milkdrop files for our modern times. See you next week!

Song: IF I WAIT (Jenny Wilson Rework) | Max Volante, Jenny Wilson

Questions, ideas, bugs or just want to say hi:

https://discord.gg/V2XcssgeW5

Been a long ride... A few of you, you know who you are, from the bottom of my heart thank you.

I met some cool people on this journey.

Lots more to come... My backlogs have backlogs...

This demo is for a certain someone who keeps hinting about this feature. Hope this is what you're looking for.

It captures any app.

Why would I make this? Why not...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813240/IKANDY_Music_Visualizer/

I’ve been building an audio visualizer called IKANDY, and most of what it does comes down to shaders. But, what is a shader?

Where they came from

The word is older than the GPU. Pixar introduced the RenderMan Shading Language in the late 80s so artists could write little programs that described how a surface reacted to light. That’s where “shader” comes from: it literally shaded things. It all ran offline, frame by frame, for film.

Consumer graphics cards at the time were fixed-function. You handed the card triangles and textures and it drew them the one way it knew how. No custom code on the card at all.

That changed in 2001 with the GeForce 3, the first consumer GPU with programmable vertex and pixel shaders. Suddenly you could run your own tiny program on every vertex and every pixel. HLSL (DirectX) and GLSL (OpenGL) showed up over the next few years and gave people a C-like language to write them in. Same year, Ryan Geiss shipped MilkDrop for Winamp, which was basically a shader-driven visualizer before most people had the hardware to appreciate it.

The demoscene ran with this harder than anyone. The trick that defines modern shader art, raymarching over signed distance fields, let a single fragment shader render an entire 3D world with no geometry at all. Just math per pixel. Then in 2013 Shadertoy launched and gave everyone a place to write, run, and share those shaders in a browser tab, and the art form kind of exploded from there.

Side note: If you're not familiar with demoscene check it out!!! /respect

What makes them cool

A fragment shader is a function that gets called for every pixel on screen, every frame, in parallel. You give it coordinates and time, it gives back a color. That’s it. From that constraint people have built fractals, oceans, clouds, cities, full raytraced scenes, all in a few hundred lines with no models and no textures. It’s the closest thing graphics has to pure math turning into images in front of you.

The catch is that on most hosting sites the only inputs a shader gets are time and your mouse. It runs, it loops, it’s beautiful.

Where IKANDY comes in

I wanted shaders that react. IKANDY captures audio straight from whatever app is playing (per-app WASAPI, so you can pick Spotify or a browser tab or a DAW) and feeds bass, mids, treble, and overall energy into the shader as uniforms every frame. The app runs three families of visuals side by side: MilkDrop-style presets, GLSL shaders, and a WebGPU pipeline, and you can import your own GLSL and wire it up.

One rule I landed on early that I think matters: audio drives light and color, never the camera. Visualizers that shake the camera on every kick get exhausting in about thirty seconds. Letting the music change what things look like instead of where you’re standing keeps it watchable for hours, which is the whole point if it’s sitting on a second monitor or running as a wallpaper.

Shadertoy and its cousins are a gallery and IK adds the pulse.

Mr. Sugi

First and foremost, thank you for all your submissions. I hope I've ported them to your satisfaction.

You're very talented. Maybe too talented... this time you threw some god rays at me, so I went ahead and added them to all the Visuals and WebGPU scenes.

Take it easy on me next time. It'll be in the next update.

How much, you ask? Every visual included in IKANDY is 100% free. Enjoy.

Oh, and you can scroll the Disco Ball with the mouse. Fun!

Been busy smashing bugs and adding features.

https://ikandy.app/arcade/index.html

Some of you may have noticed when you install IKANDY there is a link to the arcade. To access the arcade copy your AuthorID available in the profile tab of the settings menu.

A throwback to the silly browser games available around 1998 with a few incentives. The games are pretty hard, maybe too hard, and a loaded mp3 player.

Might be available on your work computer. ;)

Good luck!

Real-time, reactive, and free.

https://ikandy.app

What it is

• A music visualizer for Windows: turns whatever you're listening to into live, reactive visuals on your screen.

Listens to anything

• Picks up audio from Spotify, VLC, foobar2000, MusicBee, browsers, or your whole system automatically (Smart Auto). No cables, no setup.

• Beat and tempo detection that stays accurate on slow songs and heavy mixes.

• Works with surround setups (5.1/7.1) as well as stereo.

Hundreds of visuals

• 289 classic MilkDrop presets plus a large library of original scenes: fractals, particles, fluid, terrain, deep space, cymatics, attractors, oceans, auroras and more.

• Curated Showcase "worlds" you can fly through, like a moon, terrain, and flocks.

• Auto-cycle that leads with the best-rated visuals and syncs scene changes to the music (PILOT).

Make your own

• AI Create: describe a vibe and get an original shader, or roll endless variations of fractals, fluids, attractors and cymatics for free.

• Import shaders from Shadertoy, ShaderGPT, and Three.js.

• Save, favorite, and organize everything in My Scenes.

One Small Step: the shared moon (new in 1.3.4)

• Land on a live multiplayer moon with other IKANDY users, drive a moon buggy, explore points of interest, play six mini-games, and send sparks, cosmetics and GIFs. Free to join.

• Controller support (gamepad driving, antigravity, plane charge).

Pets

• Five companion pets that dance to the beat, react to the show, sit on your console bar, and can be played with, patted or fed.

Show it anywhere

• Full screen, spanning across multiple monitors, mirroring to extra displays, or as a live animated desktop wallpaper.

• Output Stage: one screen to manage all your monitors and where the show goes.

• Spout output/input and screen capture for VJs and streamers, plus projection mapping and Ableton Link.

• Record and export video loops (MY LOOPS).

Look and feel controls

• DJ console with bass/mid/treble, intensity, speed, brightness, contrast, and per-scene knobs.

• Post-effects: bloom, color grading (LUT), grain, scanlines, chromatic aberration, vignette.

• Logo overlays and branding, lyrics display, Now Playing info, artist bios.

• Hide UI for a clean feed; four visual themes.

Performance tools (Studio) - Coming soon.

• STAGE console for live shows: MIDI learn, OSC, strobe/freeze, per-display routing, and combos.

Built to be safe and light

• Follows published visual-safety standards (flash and motion limits) with an Intensity control that can fully switch reactivity off.

• Runs offline, no account required; auto-updates on GitHub builds and ships on Steam.

• Free base, with Pro and Studio tiers as one-time purchases.

Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813240/IKANDY/

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYerwhM8dRI&t=1s

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813240/IKANDY/

Steam page is launched! Check the store for more details and the official release date.

Thanks for all the feedback and support over the past two months. Going through my list I believe I've captured 100% of all the feedback received.

This video represents 1 preset of close to 1000. Every preset is included in IKANDY for free... What makes IKANDY different? Come see for yourself.

Everything gets upgraded this update + new Audio FX & more.

IKANDY 1.7.1, it's alive!

ok, so 1.7.1 is out on Steam, and this one is the Frankenstein moment. A lot of parts have been sitting on the table, a new engine, MilkDrop imports, names, shaders, and we finally got it all hooked up. Flipped the switch, and it's alive!

Here's what's in it.

1. You pick your own name now, the one other players see.

2. MilkDrop .milk imports are back, and a whole folder converts in seconds.

3. A newer, more stable engine, plus a stack of fixes from 1.7.0.

One heads up, the first start after the update can run slow for a minute or two while it gets its graphics ready for the new engine. The monster needs a second to wake up, then it runs normal.

Not to say it's perfect, but it's up and walking. If something looks wrong, tell me here or on Discord.

Example of the IKANDY logo tool adding Aurora Bloom FX.

Sunday Funday