Lyrimuse

Desktop lyrics, reimagined for the Mac.

Language / 语言 / 語言: English | 简体中文 | 繁體中文

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/88b951ee-4ecf-4985-b1cb-eee6afdd5510

Lyrimuse is an open-source desktop lyrics app for macOS. It lives in the menu bar and highlights lyrics word by word as the song plays: floating always on top of your windows, in the menu bar, in a Dynamic-Island-style capsule under the notch, on the Touch Bar, or in a full lyrics window. It works with eleven players, including Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music and the YouTube Music app Kaset, plus web players in your browser, and picks the best match from fourteen lyrics sources, with translation and romanization when you want them. It also keeps a Last.fm listening profile and scrobbles your plays.

Coming from LyricsX? It hasn't had a new release since April 2022. Lyrimuse covers what it did, keeps getting updates, and adds support for Chinese-language players, KKBOX, Amazon Music, Kaset, reAMP and web players. For the details, see the fact-checked comparison with LyricsX and Lyric Fever.

Install with Homebrew, on Apple Silicon or Intel. It also clears the first-launch Gatekeeper warning for you. Prefer to download it yourself? Grab the latest release and see Getting Started.

brew tap yudaotor/lyrimuse
brew trust --cask yudaotor/lyrimuse/lyrimuse   # one-time: Homebrew asks you to trust non-official taps
brew install --cask lyrimuse

Features

Where every feature lives in Settings, and whether it is on or off after you install: see the feature list.

Word-by-word synced lyrics, matched automatically

• Word-by-word highlighting that keeps up with the song as it plays.
• Fourteen lyrics sources, searched for you: NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo, Migu, Musixmatch, LRCLIB, LyricFind (through YouTube Music), Deezer, AMLL (a hand-curated word-by-word lyrics database), Soda Music (its own word-by-word timing), VIBE and Genie (both strong on Korean songs), and Apple Music's lyrics if you connect your account in Settings. Apple Music's lyrics need a subscription, and many of its tracks have word timing. You never have to search yourself.
• Translation and romanization under the original lyrics. If the source has a community translation, you get that. If not, turn on System Fallback Translation in Settings (it's off by default) and your Mac translates the lyrics with Apple's Translation framework, so they never leave your computer, with an online translator stepping in when that can't. There are 17 target languages. Romanization is decided line by line: a Chinese song with one Japanese line gets a reading on that line only, not pinyin all over the rest. Cantonese songs get Jyutping that understands whole words.
• Duets split by singer. When the source (or an AMLL entry) marks who sings which line, each part is shown on its own instead of two voices mashed into one block.
• The Apple Music touches in the Lyrics Window: background vocals on their own line under the main one, overlapping duet lines lit up together until both finish, and long held English words that swell and glow the way Apple Music does it.
• Simplified or Traditional Chinese for the lyrics, set separately from the app's own language.
• Lyrics Manager, for when you want to tidy up. Browse, edit, delete or search again for any song, delete many at once, and clear out the empty entries that ads and podcasts leave behind. If one song's timing is off, shift just that song. One button retries every song that still has no lyrics, and a full rescan re-picks your whole library with the current matching rules. Anything you fixed by hand is left alone.
• One song, one set of lyrics. The same song played in different players or from different releases is recognized as one: its entries share the lyrics and your hand edits, and their play counts are added up. Entries for This Song in Lyrics Manager compares them line by line and splits off one that was matched by mistake.
• Fix lyrics right from the Lyrics Window. Search for other lyrics, re-match the song, or edit it in your own text editor. Editing word-by-word lyrics changes only the words, so every word keeps its timing.
• Works offline for any song whose lyrics are already cached.

Last.fm listening profile and scrobbling

• A full listening profile. Connect Last.fm in one click from the Accounts section (no token to copy and paste) and you get today, last-7-days and all-time totals, a live "now scrobbling" indicator, and your recent plays with covers, each with a heart for loving it (or taking the love back) on Last.fm. By default each play is sent as the matching track in Last.fm's catalogue, so duet credits, Simplified / Traditional spellings and tails like " - Single" or "(Remastered)" land on the real track page; switch to Raw in Settings to send exactly what the player reported. ListenBrainz always gets the original tags (how scrobbling works).
• Top artists, albums and tracks for the last 7 days, 30 days, year or all time, each with how far it moved since the previous period. Click an artist to see the songs of theirs you play most.
• Footprint, a tab of its own. It opens with your running totals: how many days since your first scrobble, how many of them had plays and the daily average, your biggest day, your current and longest streak, this year so far against the same stretch of an earlier year, and how far you are from the next round-number milestone. Below that come a GitHub-style heatmap of the year (click a day to see what you played most), when you listen by hour and weekday, where your top artists are from, and "On This Day", with what you played on this date in years past.
• Every play is saved on your Mac first, even before you connect Last.fm. Connect later and send the last two weeks or so with one click (Last.fm doesn't accept older plays).
• You decide when a play counts: at 50% like Last.fm's default, at 75% or 90%, or only when the song actually finishes. ListenBrainz isn't affected. You can also keep a player out of Last.fm completely, so its plays never show up in your history.
• The same history shows up in the Lyrics Window when nothing's playing, so you get an overview instead of a blank screen (more on that below).

Floating overlay, menu bar lyrics, Dynamic Island, Touch Bar, or a full lyrics window

• Use several players, or let it pick. Apple Music, Spotify and Kaset are read with Automation access. QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou Music, Soda Music, KKBOX, Amazon Music and LX Music are read through macOS's MediaRemote and need no permission. Turn on any mix in Settings, or leave it on auto-detect and it follows whatever macOS shows as Now Playing.
• Apple Music radio works too. The lyrics keep up with each song on a station. While the host is talking you see the station's name and logo, not the song before. Radio gets its own timing offset, so you can fix a station once and forget about it.
• So do players in your browser. Pair your browser once and YouTube Music or Spotify Web works like any other player, with lyrics synced to the page's own progress bar. A one-click test tells you up front whether the browser can be controlled at all. During an ad the capsule turns black and shows how long is left and which ad of how many this is. YouTube Music ads get a skip button, or can be skipped automatically.
• Pick how you want to see it, any combination or none at all:
  • a desktop overlay you can drag anywhere, or pin to the top center or just above the Dock;
  • a Dynamic-Island-style capsule at the top of the screen, which can show the album art and blur it behind the capsule;
  • the Touch Bar on a MacBook Pro that has one, with the line scrolling along as it's sung, plus the album art and playback controls if you want them;
  • a resizable Lyrics Window modelled on Apple Music's lyrics page, with two columns, a blurred cover in the background, the whole song scrolling along to the current line, and moving album art when Apple Music has a motion cover for the record. Words fill in as they're sung, with your own weight, sung color and alignment, and HDR Highlight can light the sung part past white on an HDR display.
• Menu bar lyrics (text mode). The current line sits right in the menu bar. Long lines scroll instead of getting cut off halfway (you can switch back to cutting them off). A second row can show the next line, the translation or the romanization, and the capsule can do the same.
• Drag the progress bar to seek, in the Lyrics Window and in the capsule.
• Shuffle, repeat, Favorite and volume right in the Lyrics Window, wherever the player allows it: Apple Music, Spotify, Kaset, QQ Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music in the browser each support some or all of them, and NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou Music, Soda Music and LX Music have Favorite. Favorite is in the expanded capsule too, and can have a shortcut.
• Open the song where it lives from the "⋯" menu or the info panel. Apple Music opens in the app, Spotify jumps to the track that's playing, and KKBOX opens the song, album or artist in its own app. QQ Music, Soda Music, Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube Music (when you play it in Kaset) open the song, album or artist page on the web, and NetEase Cloud Music opens the song page. Lyrimuse found the link while fetching lyrics or read it from the player's own data on your Mac, so there's nothing to search.

Everyday details

• Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English, and switching takes effect right away, no restart.
• Liquid Glass on macOS 26. Settings, the menu bar panel, the Lyrics Window, Lyrics Manager and the setup guide are built with it, and most of them can stay light or dark instead of following the system.
• Keyboard shortcuts for every action, from hiding all lyrics to liking the song. None are set out of the box, so you pick the keys. Every action also has a lyrimuse:// link you can call from Shortcuts, Raycast or Alfred, and from Shortcuts a link can hand back the song that's playing (URL Scheme).
• Search in Settings. Type in the sidebar and it scrolls to the matching row and highlights it, opening a collapsed group if it needs to.
• Updates itself. It checks on its own, or when you ask from the menu bar. Updates install from the Software Update page in Settings, with the release notes and progress right there, and you can opt in to beta builds.
• Start together with your players, set per player and in either direction: open them when Lyrimuse opens, open Lyrimuse when they open, and if you like, quit Lyrimuse once all the players it follows have quit.
• Launch Silently if you'd rather it start with no windows at all, just the menu bar icon.
• Moving to a new Mac? Export your whole setup and import it there. If something goes wrong, there's also a one-click diagnostics export.

Optional extras

All of these are off until you turn them on in Settings:

• Scrobble to ListenBrainz as well. Every play goes to both services from the same read of your player, so the two histories stay in step. Plays from your iPhone (recorded through Last.fm) get copied into ListenBrainz too, so you end up with one history across both devices instead of two.
• A public "now playing" page you can share: live playback, history, a guestbook, reactions, a visitor counter, a top-10 artists board, a vinyl record look, light and dark themes, and proper link previews in chat apps. The Web Features Guide walks through it with screenshots.
• Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly listening digests, pushed to as many channels as you like: Bark, ntfy, ServerChan, Feishu, DingTalk, WeCom, Telegram, Discord, Slack or a generic webhook. Each channel can send a test, and a delivery history shows what arrived.
• Show what you're listening to on Discord. Your profile and friends list show the player you're using, the song, the artist, the album art and a progress bar, and the song title and artist link to their pages on that player's site. The album line can show the line being sung, and you can add up to two buttons. A small Lyrimuse or player badge sits on the cover corner (or none), and a paused song can stay up with a pause icon. You choose which players count, can show only the player without naming the song, and can hide it for a while.

ListenBrainz, Web Push and Push Alerts are under Labs in the Settings sidebar, and Discord has its own entry near the top. Each card comes with its own setup steps: where to get an API key or token, how to connect an account, how to get a webhook URL for your push service. The web page is the only one with a separate guide, and you don't need all of it. With just ListenBrainz set up, the page already shows live playback and history, no Cloudflare Worker needed. Deploy one if you also want the guestbook, reactions, visitor counter, top-10 board and faster updates; the guide covers that.

Getting Started

Releases are signed with the project's own certificate, not an Apple Developer ID, so none of the options below involve an Apple Developer account. The catch is that the first time you open the app, Gatekeeper says it's "from an unidentified developer". Homebrew (Option A) clears that for you. With the other options it's expected, not a bug, and Option B shows how to get past it once.

Option 0: Hand the install to an AI

Running an AI agent that can use the terminal on your Mac (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, …)? Paste the block below into it as-is, and it will do everything in Options A/B for you. The instructions only let it install this one app. It won't use sudo or touch system-wide security settings:

Please install Lyrimuse — an open-source macOS menu-bar lyrics app
(https://github.com/Yudaotor/lyrimuse) — on this Mac, following these rules exactly:

1. Preferred path (if `brew` exists):
     brew tap yudaotor/lyrimuse
     brew trust --cask yudaotor/lyrimuse/lyrimuse
     brew install --cask lyrimuse
   If this Homebrew doesn't know the `trust` subcommand, skip that line — older
   versions don't need it.
2. If Homebrew is not installed, do NOT install Homebrew. Instead: check the CPU
   with `uname -m`, download the latest release asset from
   https://github.com/Yudaotor/lyrimuse/releases — `Lyrimuse-v<version>-macos.zip`
   for arm64, `Lyrimuse-v<version>-macos-intel.zip` for x86_64 — verify it against
   its `.sha256` file (`shasum -c`), unzip, move `Lyrimuse.app` into
   /Applications, then clear the Gatekeeper quarantine flag on that one app only:
     xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Lyrimuse.app
3. Safety rails: no `sudo` anywhere (nothing here needs it); never run
   `spctl --master-disable` or otherwise weaken Gatekeeper system-wide; never
   remove the quarantine flag from anything except /Applications/Lyrimuse.app.
4. Do not build from source unless I explicitly ask.
5. Launch it (`open -a Lyrimuse`) and verify it is running (`pgrep -x Lyrimuse`
   prints a PID).
6. A first-run wizard will appear — that part is mine to click through. Tell me
   it will ask me to pick a music player, to grant Automation access to
   Music.app and/or Spotify (only if I pick them), and to enable the background
   lyrics engine — then hand control back to me.
Finally, report what you did and anything that failed.

Option A: Install via Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap yudaotor/lyrimuse
brew trust --cask yudaotor/lyrimuse/lyrimuse   # one-time: Homebrew asks you to trust non-official taps
brew install --cask lyrimuse

This clears the one-time Gatekeeper quarantine automatically as part of installing, so there's no follow-up step. Open Lyrimuse from /Applications (or Spotlight) right after brew install finishes. brew upgrade --cask lyrimuse picks up new releases the same way.

Option B: Download a pre-built release manually

1. Grab it from the Releases page. Check which Mac you have first ( → About This Mac → "Chip": Apple M… is Apple Silicon, Intel Core… is Intel):

   Your Mac	Download
   Apple Silicon (M1 and later)	Lyrimuse-*-macos.dmg or .zip
   Intel	Lyrimuse-*-macos-intel.dmg or .zip

   With the dmg, double-click to mount and drag Lyrimuse.app onto the Applications shortcut next to it; with the zip, unzip and drag Lyrimuse.app into /Applications. Both formats install exactly the same app, and the zip comes with a .sha256 if you want to verify the download (shasum -c Lyrimuse-*.zip.sha256 from the same folder).

   The only difference between the two downloads is architecture: the one without a suffix is Apple Silicon only, while -intel carries both Intel and Apple Silicon code. -intel does run on Apple Silicon, but there's no reason to use it there: it's twice the size, and macOS 27 and later will warn that the app "needs to be updated" because it contains Intel code (Apple is removing Rosetta in macOS 28; nothing is actually wrong with the app).

   Both architectures get in-app auto-updates. The feed lists two entries for the same version, one per architecture: Apple Silicon is served the unsuffixed build, Intel is served the -intel one, and Sparkle picks per machine on its own. (v1.4.0 and earlier served Apple Silicon only; Intel users had to come back here by hand.)

2. On first launch, macOS will refuse to open it, with "Lyrimuse can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software" or "is from an unidentified developer." Clear it once, with whichever of these you're more comfortable with:

   • Terminal (recommended, always works):

     xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Lyrimuse.app
     

     Then open the app normally. You only need to do this once per download.
   • Right-click → Open: In Finder, right-click (or Control-click) Lyrimuse.app and choose Open, then confirm Open again in the dialog. It doesn't work on every macOS version for every kind of warning, so if the warning stays, use the Terminal command above.

Option C: Build from source

One-time prerequisites (skip anything you already have):

xcode-select --install   # Xcode Command Line Tools, for Swift — skip if `swift --version` already works
brew install go          # any Go ≥ 1.21 — build.sh switches to 1.24.4 automatically via GOTOOLCHAIN

Then build.sh builds both the app and its lyrics engine (the background process named lyrimuse-engine) in one shot:

git clone https://github.com/Yudaotor/lyrimuse.git
cd lyrimuse/lyrimuse
./build.sh              # this machine's architecture
./build.sh --universal  # arm64 + x86_64 (the compatibility build shipped for Intel)

build.sh ends by listing the architectures of every binary in the bundle and flags anything that doesn't match the target, whether a slice is missing or there's an extra one. Don't assemble release assets by hand: ./package.sh builds each architecture once and produces a zip + sha256 + dmg for each, refusing to package if the architectures are wrong.

QQ Music / NetEase Cloud Music / Kugou Music / Soda Music / KKBOX / Amazon Music / LX Music / Spotify / Kaset / auto-detect support additionally needs ungive/media-control. build.sh installs it via Homebrew automatically if it's missing, so this isn't a step you need to do yourself either.

After any option

Open Lyrimuse from /Applications. The first-run wizard walks you through picking a player (Apple Music, QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou Music, Soda Music, KKBOX, Amazon Music, Spotify, Kaset, reAMP, LX Music, or auto-detect), granting Automation access if you picked Apple Music, Spotify or Kaset (the others need no permission to read basic track information), and enabling its lyrics engine (so lyrics/artwork keep resolving even when the window's closed). Complete the wizard and lyrics will appear right away (see lyrimuse/README.md for more build options).

That's all you need for lyrics. The optional extras can be set up later from Settings, whenever you want them.

FAQ

How do I get floating Apple Music lyrics on my Mac desktop, always on top?

Turn on the desktop overlay in Settings. It stays above every window, on every Space. Drag it wherever you like, or pin it to the top center or just above the Dock. If the lyrics have word timing, each word fills in as it's sung. You can hide it from screenshots, recordings and screen shares, and have it disappear while the music is paused. It works the same way with QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou Music, Soda Music, KKBOX, Amazon Music, LX Music, Spotify, Kaset and web players.

Can I show Spotify lyrics in the Mac menu bar?

Yes. Turn on menu bar text mode and the current line appears in the menu bar, for Spotify or any other supported player. Long lines scroll instead of being cut off, and a second row can show the next line, the translation or the romanization. You don't need to connect a Spotify account. Lyrimuse asks once for Automation access to Spotify, which gives it the exact playback position and makes the playback buttons work. If you say no, the lyrics still show, but the timing comes from macOS's MediaRemote and can be about a second off.

Does it show word-by-word lyrics for QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou or Soda Music?

Yes, as long as the lyrics have word timing. NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music, Kugou, Soda Music, Musixmatch, AMLL and Apple Music often do, and those lines fill in word by word. Lyrics with only line timing light up a whole line at once. The player doesn't limit where lyrics come from, either: a song playing in Soda Music can end up with QQ Music's word-by-word lyrics if those score best.

Do I need an Apple Developer account to install this?

No. Releases are signed with the project's own certificate instead of an Apple Developer ID, so neither you nor the project needs one. It's also why there's a one-time Gatekeeper step, described in Getting Started above.

Is Lyrimuse on the Mac App Store?

No. Install it with Homebrew (Option A above) or download it from the Releases page (Option B). Either way, updates come through the app after that.

Is Lyrimuse free?

Yes. It's open source under GPL-3.0. There's no paid version, no in-app purchase and no account to sign up for. Last.fm and the other services are up to you. If it's useful to you and you'd like to support it, you can sponsor it on GitHub or buy the author a coffee with Alipay or WeChat Pay.

Can I control QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music or Soda Music when another app holds system media focus?

Yes. When something like a browser video holds macOS's Now Playing, the system's media keys go to it; Lyrimuse then presses play/pause, previous and next in QQ Music's or NetEase Cloud Music's own menu bar, or on Soda Music's play bar, instead, leaving the player in the background. This needs Accessibility access (Settings → Players); without it, those buttons open that page. Seeking isn't available in this state. On macOS 27 the permission lives in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Device Control and Data Access; earlier releases call it Accessibility.

Does it work with Spotify, QQ Music, or NetEase Cloud Music, or only Apple Music?

All of those, plus Kugou Music, Soda Music, KKBOX, Amazon Music, Kaset (a YouTube Music app), the Winamp-style player reAMP and the open-source LX Music, so eleven players in all. Or let it auto-detect whatever macOS shows as Now Playing. Apple Music, Spotify and Kaset ask for Automation access (Spotify and Kaset use it for exact timing and the playback buttons). The other eight need no permission to read basic track information through macOS's MediaRemote; shuffle, repeat and like buttons for QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou Music, Soda Music and Amazon Music, and reAMP's shuffle and repeat, need Accessibility access. With KKBOX, Amazon Music or LX Music, the lyrics that app already saved for the song are considered too, and none of them is ever contacted.

Can I show KKBOX or Amazon Music lyrics on my Mac?

Yes. Both are read through macOS's MediaRemote, so there's nothing to grant, and their lyrics show in the overlay, the menu bar, the capsule and the Lyrics Window like any other player's. If KKBOX or Amazon Music already saved lyrics for the song, those are considered too and get extra weight. Lyrimuse never signs in to either service or sends them anything. The other sources are still searched, so if one of them has something better, like word-by-word timing, that one wins.

Does it work with LX Music (洛雪音乐)?

Yes. LX Music is read through macOS's MediaRemote, so there's nothing to grant. When you play a song in LX Music, the lyrics it saved for that song (word by word when the platform has them) are considered too and get extra weight, and the next songs in the list you're playing get their lyrics ready ahead of time. Lyrimuse only reads LX Music's data on your Mac and never sends it anything.

Does it work with a YouTube Music desktop app?

Yes, with Kaset, a native, open-source YouTube Music app for the Mac. Kaset is read with Automation access, which gives exact timing and working playback buttons, and YouTube Music's own lyrics are among the candidates. YouTube Music in the browser works too, see below.

What do the desktop lyrics look like?

Like karaoke on your desktop. The current line floats over your windows, each word fills in as it's sung when the lyrics have word timing, and the translation or romanization can sit alongside. You can change the font, size, text, background and shadow colors, and width, and let the text color follow the album art. The same lyrics can also go in the menu bar, in a Dynamic-Island-style capsule under the notch, or in a full Apple-Music-style lyrics window, in any combination.

Does the Dynamic Island capsule work on a Mac without a notch?

Yes. On a screen without a notch, like an older MacBook or an external display, the capsule sits at the top center, as tall as the menu bar. You choose which screen it goes on in Settings.

Will lyrics work without an internet connection?

Yes, for any song it has already found lyrics for, since those are cached on your Mac. The first lookup for a song needs a connection, and so does online translation.

Does any of my data leave my Mac?

To find lyrics, it has to ask the lyric sources about the song that's playing: NetEase, QQ, Kugou, Kuwo, Migu, Musixmatch, LRCLIB, LyricFind, Deezer, AMLL, Soda Music, VIBE, Genie, and Apple Music if you connected it. Cover art comes from the iTunes Search API. Translation happens on your Mac by default, and lyric text only goes to an online translator (Google's web translation, then MyMemory) as a fallback. Your listening history, cached lyrics and settings stay in files on your Mac unless you connect Last.fm, ListenBrainz or the optional web relay. The full list is under License and Copyright below.

Can I get Japanese/Korean romanization or Chinese translation of the lyrics?

Yes. Romanization is decided line by line, so a song that mixes languages only gets readings where they belong. Translation comes from the lyric source's community translation when there is one, otherwise from on-device or online machine translation once you turn on System Fallback Translation (off by default), into any of 17 languages.

Which macOS versions does it support?

macOS 14 Sonoma or later (Sequoia, Tahoe and newer), on Apple Silicon or Intel. Translating on your Mac needs macOS 15 Sequoia or later; on macOS 14 only the online translators are available.

Does it support Intel Macs?

Yes, with a separate universal build (see Option B above). Auto-updates work on Intel too, since v1.5.0, so new versions show up just like they do on Apple Silicon.

Can it show lyrics for YouTube Music or Spotify playing in a browser?

Yes. Pair your browser once in Settings and YouTube Music or Spotify Web works like any other player. The lyrics follow the page's own progress bar instead of guessing, and a one-click test tells you before you commit whether your browser can be controlled.

Can it scrobble Apple Music to Last.fm on a Mac?

Yes, that's the other half of the app. Connect Last.fm in one click from Settings and every play from Apple Music (or any other supported player) gets scrobbled, with a live "now playing" status. Plays are saved on your Mac first, so the ones from before you connected aren't lost: once connected, click Backfill to send those from the last two weeks or so. You pick when a play counts (50%, 75%, 90% or the whole song), can leave some players out, and can send to ListenBrainz at the same time.

How does Lyrimuse avoid picking the wrong lyrics?

It doesn't just take the first source that answers. Every result from every source is scored the same way: how well the title, artist, album and length match, plus things like whether it has word timing. The highest score wins. You can look at that decision for any song, with every candidate's score and the reason the winner won. If a better match turns up later, Lyrimuse can switch to it by itself, but lyrics you picked by hand are locked and never replaced. Manual search shows the same scores and labels, so a wrong version is easy to spot before you pick it.

What if the lyrics are out of sync or wrong?

If the timing's off, shift it for that song; the offset is remembered. If it's the wrong lyrics or the wrong version, open manual search. You'll see every result from every source with its score, and whatever you pick is locked, so automatic matching won't swap it out. You can also edit any song's lyrics by hand in Lyrics Manager.

Can I save the lyrics as .lrc files?

They already are. Every song with lyrics gets a .lrc file with line timing, plus .tr.lrc for the translation and .roma.lrc for the romanization when those exist. Word-by-word timing is saved separately as .yrc, in NetEase's YRC format, which most other players can't read. The files are in ~/.config/lyrimuse/lyrics/, and you can move the folder in Settings.

Is LyricsX still maintained, and how is Lyrimuse different from LyricsX or Lyric Fever?

LyricsX's last release was v1.6.3, in April 2022. It runs on macOS 10.11 and later and works with Apple Music, Spotify and a few older players. Lyric Fever focuses on Spotify and Apple Music and needs macOS 15. Lyrimuse needs macOS 14 and adds QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou, Soda Music, KKBOX, Amazon Music, Kaset, reAMP and LX Music, players in your browser, per-line pinyin / Cantonese Jyutping / Japanese and Korean romanization, and Last.fm / ListenBrainz scrobbling with your own listening stats. The side-by-side table is on the comparison page.

License and Copyright

• Lyrimuse itself is GPL-3.0. The open-source components and dictionary data shipped inside the app (media-control, Sparkle, KeyboardShortcuts, and the OpenCC and rime-cantonese dictionaries) keep their own licenses; the full texts are in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES, which is also bundled into the app and can be opened from Settings → About → Third-party licenses.
• Lyrics, artwork and track metadata belong to their respective rights holders. Lyrimuse only looks them up, caches them and displays them: whatever the public lyric APIs return is stored on your own Mac (~/.config/lyrimuse/) for your own viewing. It does not host, relay or redistribute lyrics or artwork, and the cache can be deleted at any time from Lyrics Manager or by removing that folder.
• Lyrimuse is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Apple, Tencent (QQ Music), NetEase (NetEase Cloud Music), Kugou, Kuwo, Douyin (Soda Music), KKBOX, Amazon (Amazon Music), China Mobile (Migu Music), Spotify, Kaset, LX Music, Google (YouTube Music, Google Translate), Last.fm, ListenBrainz, MusicBrainz, Musixmatch, LRCLIB, LyricFind, Deezer, Naver (VIBE), KT (Genie), AMLL or SponsorBlock. Their names and trademarks belong to their owners and appear here only to say which players, lyric sources and services are involved.
• This is everything that leaves your Mac. Lyrics resolution sends the track's artist, title and album (plus the duration, for sources that accept it) to the fourteen lyric sources above; when none of them matches, the artist name is also sent to MusicBrainz for alias lookup (Last.fm's Smart matching does the same for artists it hasn't seen before), and the charts look up their artists there by MusicBrainz ID for country/region and links. Cover art and the idle page send artist + title to the iTunes Search API; with Kaset, the cover it reports is downloaded from YouTube Music's image server (googleusercontent.com), and each new video ID it plays is sent to YouTube Music once to check whether it is a podcast episode (those aren't treated as songs). With LX Music's Open API turned on, Lyrimuse only talks to LX Music's own port on this Mac, and when the system has no cover for the song it downloads the one LX Music points to, once. Album notes and artist bios request the album's and artist's public Apple Music pages by their Apple Music IDs — no Apple account involved; when the interface is in Chinese and Apple Music has no artist bio or album notes, the song's NetEase Cloud Music ID is used to look up its credited artists and its album, then NetEase's introduction of that artist or album is fetched by its ID, again without signing in. With the interface in Chinese, song notes also request the song's details from QQ Music by its QQ Music song ID, likewise without signing in. While QQ Music is playing, the same details are requested once per song in any interface language, to tell audiobooks and other spoken programs apart from songs (their subtitles still show, but they aren't scrobbled or shown as a song). Album notes and artist bios may also search YouTube Music for the album by artist and album name (songs played in Kaset or YouTube Music on the web use the album and artist IDs the player reports) and fetch the Wikipedia description on its album and artist pages; for songs played in Soda Music, the album's and artist's public share pages are requested by the IDs Soda Music reports. Neither needs an account. The machine-translation fallback (off by default, and used only when on-device Apple translation is unavailable) sends the , in chunks, to Google's web translation endpoint first and whatever is still untranslated to MyMemory; the MyMemory request carries a randomly generated e-mail parameter — never yours. While a music video plays in YouTube Music, the first four characters of the video ID's SHA-256 hash go to SponsorBlock to find the video's non-music segments so the lyrics line up with the picture; SponsorBlock can't tell from that which video it is. Musixmatch's domain is resolved over DNS-over-HTTPS via Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Google (8.8.8.8). The About page asks the GitHub API for the star count at most once every six hours, and, if you opt into beta updates, for the release list at most once an hour; update checks fetch the appcast from GitHub Releases and send no system profile. Beyond that, only the services you connect yourself: Last.fm, ListenBrainz, push-notification platforms, the optional web relay (whose Top-10 artists page looks up artist avatars on Deezer). With "Show on Discord" on in the Discord settings, the title, artist, album, player name, playback progress, cover URL and links to the song and the artist (plus the line being sung and your buttons' links, if you turn those on) are handed to the Discord app on your Mac, which shows them on your profile; the cover is the one your player itself provides, the one already on your own web relay, or the same picture on NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music or Apple Music (when the engine switches to your player's own cover, it downloads a thumbnail of that picture once to check they match) when possible; otherwise it is looked up on iTunes by the Apple Music track or album ID (or by artist + title), and for a video with nothing else, the video's YouTube thumbnail URL is used. With Apple Music, the track-ID lookup also runs when the relay already has the cover, to get the artist's page. Once connected, the Discord avatar shown in Settings (and, if you wear one, your avatar decoration for the preview) is downloaded from Discord's image server (cdn.discordapp.com), and while the Discord page in Settings is open, its preview downloads the cover from the URL in your status to draw it. When the player's own cover is small, the engine downloads thumbnails of the matching cover on NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music or Apple Music, of the cover the player itself keeps (including KKBOX's and Amazon Music's image servers, and the Kuwo and Migu image servers behind LX Music's covers), and of the covers that come with the lyric sources' results (such as Kugou's, Soda Music's, Deezer's and Musixmatch's image servers), to check whether they are the same picture; when a cover URL doesn't state its size, it also fetches the start of the image to read its dimensions. Only the image URL is sent. With Web Lyrics or OBS Output on (both off by default), Lyrimuse serves a page on this Mac (ports 3939 and 3940 unless you change them); only this Mac can open it until you turn on "Allow Local Network Access", after which devices on your network that have the link (it carries a random key) can see the current lyrics, cover and progress, and, with "Allow Remote Control" on, control playback. It sends nothing anywhere by itself. Every outbound request is written to a local audit log — host and operation only, never parameters or credentials — which "Export diagnostics" includes.

Troubleshooting

If lyrics don't show up, open Lyrics Sources in Settings and click Test to see which source can't be reached. If that doesn't sort it out, use Export Diagnostics and attach the file to an issue; it already includes the full self-check of the background service.

The same check, run from Terminal:

/Applications/Lyrimuse.app/Contents/Resources/lyrimuse-engine healthcheck
/Applications/Lyrimuse.app/Contents/Resources/lyrimuse-engine healthcheck -local-only  # no network
/Applications/Lyrimuse.app/Contents/Resources/lyrimuse-engine healthcheck -json

Feedback

• Problems and ideas: in the app, open Settings › About › Report an Issue, or right-click the menu bar icon and choose Help › Report an Issue…. It opens a new GitHub issue with your version, macOS and current player already filled in; pick the kind of report: bug, lyrics missing or wrong, player request, or feature request.
• Wrong lyrics for one song: open Search for Lyrics for that song in the Lyrics Manager and click Can't find the right lyrics? Report it on GitHub at the bottom left. The song details, the lyrics source in use and the sources that returned results come along.
• Questions: ask in the Q&A category of Discussions.
• Chat with other users: join the Discord server or the Telegram group. Ask questions, report problems or suggest features there too; Chinese has its own chat channel and feedback forum on Discord, and its own topic on Telegram.
• No GitHub account: email [email protected]. The envelope button on the Report an Issue row in Settings › About fills in your version and macOS; right-click it to copy the address.
• Security issues: report them privately as described in SECURITY.md, not in a public issue.

Uninstalling

Dragging Lyrimuse.app to the Trash is not enough. The lyrics engine (process name lyrimuse-engine) is registered with launchd as a KeepAlive job, so its LaunchAgent stays behind and launchd keeps trying to start a binary that is no longer there.

lyrimuse/scripts/uninstall.sh              # report only — shows what is installed
lyrimuse/scripts/uninstall.sh --services   # unregister both launchd jobs, keep your data
lyrimuse/scripts/uninstall.sh --purge      # also delete config, caches, logs and settings

Running it with no arguments changes nothing; it just tells you what is on your system. --purge lists everything it is about to delete, warns you how many exported lyrics files are among them, and requires you to type yes.

--services leaves your settings alone. --purge also removes them (defaults delete me.yudaotor.lyrimuse), because leaving them behind puts a reinstall into a dead end: the LaunchAgent is gone, so the lyrics engine is not installed, but the app still thinks onboarding is done — so the wizard that would install it never appears, and the desktop just sits at "searching for lyrics".

Project Layout

This repo is the app:

• lyrimuse/ — the app itself (Swift, SwiftUI + AppKit)
• lyrimuse-engine/ — the background engine that resolves lyrics/artwork and feeds them to the app (Go); built and bundled into the app automatically

The optional web experience lives in two sibling repos, so you can fork either without touching the app:

Repo	Role
Yudaotor/nowplaying	The shareable "now playing" web page itself, plus a fork-ready template
Yudaotor/nowplaying-workers	The Cloudflare Worker relay + live README badge behind it, with a complete from-scratch setup guide

this repo (app + engine)  ──push──▶  nowplaying-workers (relay)  ◀──read──  nowplaying (web page)

Credits

Thanks to LyricsX, which showed what desktop lyrics on the Mac could be.

• media-control and mediaremote-adapter: reading what's playing on macOS
• Sparkle: in-app updates
• KeyboardShortcuts: global shortcuts
• OpenCC: Simplified / Traditional Chinese conversion
• rime-cantonese: Cantonese Jyutping
• AMLL TTML DB: community-made word-by-word lyrics
• LRCLIB: open synced-lyrics database
• SponsorBlock: non-music segments in music videos

License texts are in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.