Open Karaoke
Sing anything. Sound incredible.
Free, open-source karaoke for your computer. Search any song, press start, and sing over the instrumental with synced lyrics and a real-time autotune.
Install · Features · Screenshots · How it works · Build from source · FAQ
✨ Why Open Karaoke?
Most karaoke apps are subscription services with a limited catalogue, and the free ones mostly play a lyric video. Open Karaoke takes a different approach:
- 🔎 Any song, one click. An on-device AI pulls the vocals out of the original recording, so you sing over the real instrumental with lyrics that line up perfectly.
- 🎤 Real autotune, live. Written from scratch in Rust, it corrects your pitch with a round-trip delay of about 10 ms plus your audio buffer.
- 🧪 A Voice Lab. Build and save your sound before you sing.
- 🌐 Nothing to set up. No account, no API keys, no plugins. All you need is an internet connection.
- 💸 Free and open source under the MIT license.
⬇ Install
Install with one command. It downloads the latest version, installs it and opens it, with no "unverified developer" warnings.
macOS: open Terminal (⌘ Space → "Terminal") and run:
curl -fsSL https://osmanahmadxai.github.io/open-karaoke/install.sh | bash
Windows: open PowerShell (Windows key → "PowerShell") and run:
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osmanahmadxai/open-karaoke/main/docs/install.ps1 | iex
Linux: in a terminal, run the same command as macOS. Open Karaoke is added to your app menu.
Run the same command again any time to update to the newest version. The installers are short, readable scripts: install.sh · install.ps1.
Why a command instead of a download button? macOS and Windows warn about any app downloaded through a browser unless it's signed with a paid developer certificate. Installing from the command line avoids that while keeping the project free. On first launch Open Karaoke downloads what it needs, once (about 190 MB): yt-dlp, Deno and the AI vocal-separation model.
System requirements
| Minimum | Recommended |
|---|
| OS | macOS 11, Windows 10 (64-bit), or 64-bit Linux from 2024 or newer (glibc 2.39+: Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 40, Debian 13…) | Latest version |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM |
| CPU | Any 64-bit dual-core from the last ~8 years | 4+ cores (separation runs 5–15× faster than real time) |
| Disk | ~300 MB, plus up to 6 GB of cache (cleaned automatically) | SSD |
| Audio | Any microphone and speakers | Headphones and a USB microphone |
On Intel Macs everything works except AI separation, because ONNX Runtime doesn't ship for that platform yet; songs use the basic vocal remover instead. Every Apple Silicon Mac (M1 and newer) gets the full AI.
🖼 Screenshots
Screenshots use demo data with placeholder artwork. The lyrics shown are from "Jingle Bells" (James Lord Pierpont, 1857), which is in the public domain. In the app, lyrics for any song load live from LRCLIB.
🎛 Features
🎵 Songs & lyrics
- Search anything. The catalogue comes from the iTunes Search API, with Deezer as a fallback.
- AI vocal separation, on your computer. Open Karaoke finds the original recording on YouTube and splits it into instrumental and vocals with UVR's MDX-Net Inst HQ 3 model, running locally on ONNX Runtime. Nothing is uploaded, and it works for any song, even ones nobody has made a karaoke version of.
- Sing within seconds. Separation streams: once the first 30 s are ready you can start, and the rest finishes while you sing (5–15× faster than real time on typical machines). On slower computers it waits for a bigger head start so you never catch up. Finished songs are cached, so next time they start instantly.
- Lyrics in perfect sync. The instrumental is cut from the same recording the lyrics are timed to, so they line up by construction. You can fine-tune with
[ / ].
- Pick the recording. The Song tab lists every version found. Choose another if the first has a long intro or is a live cut. A basic centre-channel vocal remover is there as an instant fallback.
- Time-synced lyrics from LRCLIB, with a smooth word-by-word wipe, countdown dots before each verse, and support for word-timed ("enhanced") LRC.
- Guide vocal. Mix in the isolated original singer, with no instruments, while you learn a song.
- Key & tempo change. Shift the music ±6 semitones or play it at 70–130 % speed using Signalsmith Stretch. The autotune key follows automatically.
🎤 Real-time autotune
| Control | What it does |
|---|
| Key & scale | Detected automatically for every song, or chosen from 12 scales: major, minor, harmonic/melodic minor, modes, pentatonics, blues, chromatic |
| Retune speed | From instant (the classic hard-tune effect) to slow and natural |
| Humanize | Loosens correction on sustained notes so long notes keep their life |
| Flex-tune | Leaves small expressive deviations alone and only fixes real misses |
| Amount | How far toward the note your voice is pulled |
| Vibrato | Adds synthetic vibrato that fades in on held notes, with depth and rate controls |
| Pitch & formant | Independent pitch shift and formant shift, from chipmunk to monster |
| Harmonizer | Two extra voices at diatonic intervals (3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, octaves), always in key, with stereo spread |
| Doubler | Two detuned, delayed copies for a thick, stacked vocal |
| Presets | Natural, Pop polish, Hard tune, Choir, Diva, Chipmunk, Monster, plus your own |
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
