Kymatra

Updates

What changed, and when.

Kymatra has no update check and makes no connections of its own, so this page is how you find out there is a new version. The download page always serves the newest one.

Kymatra 1.4.1

2026-09-30

  • A highlight adds light to the picture under it rather than painting over it. An eye keeps its own colors and lines, dark parts brighten and bright ones reach white without clipping, and the glow is as it was. A highlight set up to recolor something now brightens it in its own colors, with its color tinting the light.
  • The upright arrow stays out of the way on the Shape tab, where it covered the points being edited in Place and said nothing about the shape.
  • The first launch window has the same margin on its right as on its left; its text ran to the right edge.

Kymatra 1.4

2026-09-30

  • Add undo. Command-Z takes back the last drag, nudge, point edit or group move in Place, and a removed visualizer or highlight in Settings or Place; Shift-Command-Z puts it back. A line under the list says what was removed, with a Restore button, for as long as it can come back.
  • In Place, the arrow keys nudge the selected visualizer or highlight, or a whole group once its square handle is clicked, Shift ten times as far. A line at the bottom of the screen says what the handles do on the tab you are on.
  • Give every visualizer and highlight a glow of its own, Strength on its Color tab, at no extra cost to draw. How far the glow spreads is one setting for everything, Size under Glow in General. Your current glow is carried onto every layer as it was drawn.
  • Highlights have a Band menu, Kick, Bass, Low end, Mids, Highs or Everything, above Lowest and Highest note. The two notes can now go anywhere in the range and stop short of each other, so a highlight or the bars can answer the kick alone. Contrast reaches 8 and glow Size goes down to 0.2.
  • Allow up to twenty four highlights, up from sixteen.
  • Bring to Front and Send to Back in a layer's ⋯ menu move it to either end of the draw order in one step, and the Order list says which group each highlight is in.
  • The + button under Visualizers asks which mode to add, and the new one opens in it, rather than copying the mode of the one selected.
  • Right-click the mini visualizer to hide it or to open its settings.
  • The menu bar menu puts Show Mini Visualizer and Show Full Screen first, and has Send Feedback, with a choice of Bug Report, Suggestion or Something Else, beside Settings and Check for Updates.
  • The first launch window says Kymatra lives in the menu bar rather than the Dock, and offers to open it at login, left for you to tick.
  • The Colors menus show each list's colors beside its name, and picking Custom for a cycle or a gradient starts from the colors that were showing, so nothing changes until you edit them. A list you have edited or matched to your wallpaper is still what Custom comes back to.
  • Each mode in the mode menu says what it draws when you hover over it, so Polar's waveform ring and Radial Bass's spectrum ring are told apart.
  • Share settings with is now called Link with, and every linked visualizer or highlight shows a link beside its name in the list, its tooltip naming what it is linked with.
  • Linking two layers no longer moves one onto the other. A link shares how they look and move; each keeps its own position, size, rotation and flip, so a pair of eyes or of bars either side can be linked and stay apart. Copying between a highlight and a visualizer, or between the small window and the wallpaper, leaves the target's placement alone too, and the small window no longer gets a line and a bar count sized for a whole screen.
  • Visualizers and highlights you haven't named are numbered where they would otherwise read alike, Bass and Bass 2, so every list and menu can tell them apart. A name you give one always wins.
  • A closed group in the Highlights list names the highlight its settings are showing, such as BEAU ▸ B.
  • Duplicate makes its copy straight away, just after the original and in the same group, instead of asking for a name and putting it at the end.
  • A highlight added inside a group starts with the look of the member that was selected, its brightness, band, colors and edge, rather than at the defaults; it still gets its own place and its own shape.
  • Giving a group the name another group already has now asks before joining the two, rather than merging them without a word.
  • Start on idle no longer covers a video you are watching. It waits while anything is keeping the display on, which is what video players do.
  • Settings reopens on the section you left it on, and choosing Settings while it is already open brings it forward where you left it.
  • Command-A, C, V, X and Z now work in the fields and dialogs of Settings, and Command-W closes it.
  • Loading a configuration asks first when what is on screen is not saved in any configuration, and pressing Return on General no longer loads one.
  • Reset to Defaults is now Reset General Settings: it asks first, resets everything General shows, the mini visualizer's background and the settings window included, and no longer resets whichever visualizer or highlight was last selected. Reset a single layer from its own menu, with Reset <name>.
  • Setting a shortcut with only Command in it now asks first, since it takes that key from every app, and a shortcut another app already uses is marked in Settings instead of silently doing nothing.
  • Make an outline's Style its on and off switch: picking a style now shows the outline at once, and Thickness is grayed while it is None. Sync with fill, which could not be seen, is gone.
  • Mirror gradient has moved to the Color page, beside Reverse direction, and the fill and the outline each have their own. It shows whenever a color is a Gradient, where before a gradient on an unfolded trace was mirrored with no way to turn it off. Your setting comes across to both, so nothing looks different.
  • Move every size you can drag in Place to the Placement tab, beside the handles that change it: Height, Circle size, and a highlight's Width, Height and Size were on Shape.
  • The rows on the Color page and in General line up with the rest: each has a label and a help button, menus are one width, Open at login is a row like the others, and every slider has the same button back to its default. The color well beside a solid color's menu can be used straight away and shows the color being drawn.
  • Settings that are a share of something, such as Softness, Follow picture, Resting brightness, Bar width and Dim wallpaper, read as percentages, and numbers counted in something say so: notes in Hz, the custom angle in degrees, a line's thickness in points.
  • Curve is grayed on Polygon and Line, which have no smooth points for it to round, and Mirror edits on Point, which shows no points to drag. The mini visualizer no longer offers Relative to, and its help speaks of the window.
  • In Place, a corner point has a square handle and a smooth point a round one, the other way round from before.
  • Rename settings so their names say what they do. Mirror sideways and the ring's Mirror are Fold, a polygon's Points is Sides, the bars' Show is Grow, and Mirror edits' All is Scale. A cycle's own list and speed are Custom colors and Speed, as a gradient's are. The color style that turns an outline off or leaves a fill hollow is None rather than Transparent. The mini visualizer's Solid is Solid color, General's Screen saver section is Full screen, the Settings window row offers Solid or Glass rather than Off or On, and Vertical's middle is Center, as Horizontal's is. Settings spells color, center, gray and neighbor one way throughout.
  • A highlight's Smoothness reads 0 to 100 like a visualizer's and means the same thing. Values you set are converted, so nothing changes on screen.
  • A new install draws over your desktop picture rather than over black. An existing install keeps the background it already has.
  • A bug report lists every visualizer and how many highlights you have, rather than the one visualizer selected.
  • Make Settings quicker to switch between layers and sections: a click that took about a seventh of a second takes about a twentieth.
  • Make dragging in Place lighter: drawing the handles costs about a third of what it did, and the wallpaper under Place is no longer redrawn for every movement.
  • Draw highlights more cheaply: the glow is gathered in one pass rather than one per layer, and a highlight no longer reads its settings every frame.
  • Use less processor time while only some windows are drawing: a hidden small window's visualizer is no longer analysed, and the small window drawing over a covered wallpaper no longer analyses the wallpaper's layers too.
  • Make Smoothness, and the spectrum modes' rise and fall, work the same on a 60 Hz display as on a 120 Hz one. They ran at half speed on a slower display, so one setup behaved differently docked.
  • Fix the mini visualizer jumping away when a drag paused before letting go, and it can no longer end up under the Dock, out of reach.
  • Fix a color swatch in Place opening the Colors window behind the wallpaper.
  • Fix colors picked in the Colors window, left open after moving to another layer, landing on that layer without its controls showing the change.
  • Fix Settings cutting off the bottom of a page taller than the screen, which hid General's Reset button on a laptop display and the front of the list in Order once there were many layers. A page that tall now scrolls.
  • Fix About's Support section appearing empty when Settings opened straight onto About.
  • Fix removing the Mini entry in Settings leaving the mini visualizer's window up and empty. The mini visualizer is shown and hidden from the menu bar, and − no longer offers to remove it.
  • Fix the add, remove and ⋯ buttons calling a highlight a visualizer, and the rename dialog telling a highlight it would go back to being called Bass.
  • Fix the layer menu offering only Copy everything to. Copy Color to and from, and the same for every other tab, are back, and Copy Color carries glow Strength with the colors.
  • Fix edits that did not reach linked layers: points drawn in Place, the undo beside a setting, and a Response preset, which put its name on a linked layer without its values.
  • Fix three Shape menu faults on highlights: undoing Shape left a dragged shape drawn under Ellipse, picking Custom by hand turned a line or polygon into a circle, and picking Line left a linked highlight as thick as it was tall.
  • Fix a linked highlight's shape jumping in Place when a point drag ended or a point was removed on the highlight it is linked to.
  • Fix turning a shape in Place stopping at upright when it started from a rotation past 180 degrees.
  • Fix a highlight brighter than 1 cutting a dark notch into the glow of anything it crossed. Its own glow looks the same.
  • Fix the end of a bent highlight line going undrawn when the line had enough smooth points to pass the most the shader draws.
  • Fix saved configurations leaving out highlights' colors. Loading one kept each highlight in whatever colors it already had; configurations saved from now on bring them back.
  • Fix a visualizer or highlight added in place of a removed one coming up with the removed one's outline.
  • Fix every visualizer after the first placing its frequency bands for a 48 kHz device whatever the output actually ran at, off by nearly a tenth on a 44.1 kHz device.
  • Fix the first visualizer reacting twice as fast, and smoothing half as much, while a highlight sat behind it in Order.
  • Fix drawing continuing in silence after a display was plugged in or out, and after the small window snapped to an edge or its background changed.
  • Fix audio capture staying off until Kymatra was relaunched when rebuilding it after a stall failed. It retries every five seconds, as a failed start already did.
  • Fix Kymatra never asking for the audio permission when the first launch window was closed with its close button rather than Continue.
  • Fix both keyboard shortcuts staying off until relaunch after Settings was closed while a shortcut field was waiting for a key. A value half typed into a field is kept when Settings closes.
  • Fix the menu bar showing a garbled key for a shortcut on Space, Return, Tab, an arrow or a key without a name.
  • Fix the Cycle speed number not moving with its slider, and make glow Size, Dim wallpaper, outline Thickness and the color speeds keep exactly the value their number shows.
  • Fix the small window keeping its old shape when a loaded configuration turned its visualizer into a ring or stood it on end, and coming out a few points taller or shorter after being dragged from the notch to a display with a different menu bar height.
  • Show the upright marker on the small window, in Place and on a newly connected display when they open while Settings is already open.
  • Correct help that pointed at a Layout tab that no longer exists, and that described a highlight's position and Circle size as fractions of the screen.

Kymatra 1.3

2026-09-17

  • Add highlights: a shape on the wallpaper that brightens with the music rather than deforming with it, for a picture with eyes, a lamp or a word you want lit. Up to sixteen, each with its own band, color, brightness and softness, and each aimed at the picture rather than the screen so it lands on the same feature on any display. The light lands where the picture is already bright, so an eye glows and the eyelid does not.
  • Shape a highlight by hand: Ellipse, Polygon, Line and Point to start from, then drag any point in Place, right-click a point to make it a corner or smooth, and right-click the curve to add one. Corners rounds a polygon or squares a line's ends, Curve sets how much a smooth point rounds.
  • Group highlights. A group is one entry in the strip that opens into its members, and in Place it has a box of its own that moves, scales and turns every member together while each keeps its own settings.
  • Add Place: press it in Settings and the wallpaper comes up full screen with a handle on every visualizer and highlight, to be dragged, resized and turned where you want it. The rows follow the drag and a typed value moves the handle.
  • A highlight belongs to the wallpaper it was placed on. Change the desktop picture and it is kept, marked in the list, and not drawn until that wallpaper is back, so one set of highlights per picture needs nothing set up. The layer menu moves one to the current wallpaper or shows it on every wallpaper.
  • Add an Order section, the whole wallpaper in draw order across visualizers and highlights, with a swap button between each neighbouring pair.
  • Give every visualizer an outline: a second color source drawn as a band inside the shape's edge, with its own style, palette and thickness, and Transparent as a fourth color style so a fill can be hollow or an outline off.
  • Add Flip: mirror a visualizer left to right, top to bottom or both about its own centre, at any rotation.
  • Split the panel into sections, Visualizers, Highlights, Images, Order, General and About, with Placement and Shape as separate tabs. Images holds a place for animated pictures, which are next.
  • Say what a saved configuration would replace, by name and by kind, so saving over one is a decision rather than a formality.
  • Fix a color edit that only landed once something else redrew, and a color popup that read White after switching tabs while the wallpaper drew the stored color.

Kymatra 1.2.1

2026-09-02

  • Stop the wallpaper's background painting over the small window. With Background set to a solid color, the small window drew that color across itself and its own Solid, Glass or Transparent setting did nothing.
  • Show the ground that belongs to what you are editing. Selecting the small visualizer offered the wallpaper's background and dim, which cannot act on it; its own background and color now sit there instead, under Color rather than General.
  • Rename Glass background to Settings window, that being the window it applies to rather than anything a visualizer is drawn on.
  • Apply the wallpaper dim to a display plugged in after it was set, which previously drew undimmed until the slider was touched again.

Kymatra 1.2

2026-09-02

  • Show a small visualizer that stays above your other windows, from the menu bar or ⌥⌘M. Drag it anywhere, resize it from its edges, and it settles against the screen edges, the menu bar and the notch.
  • It draws a visualizer of its own rather than a copy of the wallpaper, seeded from one already there, so its color and response come across and its position and size are its own.
  • Give the small window its own background: a solid color you can match to your desktop picture, the glass macOS uses for floating panels, or transparent.
  • Merge it with the notch. On a display without one it takes the same place in the middle of the menu bar.
  • Stop drawing the wallpaper while something covers it. With a window over it the visualizer now costs no frames and about 74 MB less, and comes back about a second after you can see the desktop again.
  • Show the visualizer on its own, above the menu bar and the Dock, from the menu bar or ⌥⌘K. Your wallpaper stays behind it, and Escape, any key or a click leaves.
  • Choose the shortcut for it, under Screen saver. Delete turns it off.
  • Start the full screen visualizer on its own after a set time with no keyboard or mouse. Off by default, and it does not start while nothing is playing.
  • Keep the display awake while the full screen visualizer is up.
  • Lock the Mac when leaving the full screen visualizer, off by default, so it can be left up while you are away.
  • Put back a visualizer you did not mean to remove, from the visualizer menu. Removing one no longer throws away how it was tuned.
  • Stop the Polar ring crossing over itself when Reach was set past Circle size. Its Reach now starts at a value that cannot invert the ring.
  • Mirror the color gradient around the Polar ring.
  • Load a configuration's visualizers, not just its settings. Loading a two visualizer configuration over three now gives you two.
  • Bring a configuration's colors back with it. Changing palette and then loading a configuration no longer left the colors behind.
  • Load a configuration exactly as it was saved. A setting changed afterwards no longer survives loading it back.
  • Open every visualizer in the mode it was left in. Quitting after loading a configuration could bring one back as a different mode.
  • Say what replacing a configuration is about to throw away, naming both what it holds and what is on screen, since saving captures what is on screen now.
  • Start the save field on the configuration you are looking at, so replacing one does not mean retyping its name.
  • Stop rebuilding the audio tap during quiet passages, which it was doing roughly every time music stopped.
  • Retune the Punchy response preset, which now reacts harder on both spectrum modes.
  • Say when macOS will not report your desktop picture, which it does for anything set through Wallpaper settings, and offer to read the image file directly instead of leaving Match wallpaper at a dead end.

Kymatra 1.1

2026-08-26

  • Explain every setting. Each row has a help button saying what the control does and which direction it moves.
  • Height means height. It now sets how far the trace reaches, and Sensitivity is how loud the music has to be to get there. The old Height only ever fed a soft clip, so most of its range did nothing.
  • Undo a setting from the row it sits on, shown only where a value is not at its default.
  • A new icon and wordmark, drawn as one letter rather than a letter over a wave.

Kymatra 1.0

2026-08-22

  • First release. A live oscilloscope behind your desktop icons, drawn from the sound your Mac is already playing.
  • Five modes: Bass, Dual, Polar, Radial Bass and Bars.
  • Up to five visualizers at once, each with its own mode, position and colors.
  • Match colors to your desktop picture.
  • Named configurations, saved and restored.
  • Free, signed and notarized.