Versify

Music and lyrics for your desktop, while you do your work.

Get started  ·  How it works  ·  Liner notes

Pick a song and read along. Versify plays the lyrics in time with the music, right over the album art. There’s no feed and nothing pulling you elsewhere, just one song and its words.

[!NOTE] There are no accounts. Favorites, playlists, and settings stay in the browser you use, and do not sync between devices.

Side A

Feature	What it does
Find a song	Search by song or artist and choose a recording.
Follow the lyrics	Lyrics scroll with the music. Click a line to jump to it, or scroll through them yourself.
Change the audio	Wrong version? Add a YouTube link and adjust the lyric timing.
Translate the lyrics	Show translations under each line in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
Save your favorites	Make playlists, shuffle, and repeat. Everything is saved in your browser—no account needed.
Make it yours	Colors match the album art, by day or by night. Adjust the lyric size, change the clock format, or go fullscreen.
Keep listening	When a song ends, Versify finds another one to play.

How a song finds its words

Synchronized lyrics only work when the words and the audio describe the same recording. Versify holds every step to that:

1. Search. Apple's catalog provides the title, artist, album, and exact length.
2. Words. LRCLIB supplies timed lyrics. Credits and remaster labels can differ, but the length must agree within three seconds, or the lyrics are shown untimed rather than out of step.
3. Recording. YouTube Music's official song uploads are the label's master, the same one the lyrics were timed against. Covers, karaoke, live, and sped-up versions are left out.
4. In sync. Each line lands on its moment.

[!TIP] If a song still drifts, choose Change source, paste another YouTube recording, and set Lyric timing in half-second steps until the words land.

Why I made this

I made Versify to keep on my desktop while I study or do other things. Just music, album art, and lyrics I can glance at whenever I want.

Get started

Requires Node.js 22.18 or newer and an internet connection.

npm install
npm run dev

Open localhost:3000. Search, lyrics, and audio matching work without any keys. Two optional services can be added in .env.local (the names are listed in .env.example):

Variable	Adds
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY	On-demand lyric translation, using a server-side key with Cloud Translation enabled.
YOUTUBE_API_KEY	An extra fallback for audio matching, using a server-side key with YouTube Data API v3 enabled.

Restart the dev server after changing these, and set production values in your hosting provider.

[!CAUTION] Both keys are server-side secrets tied to your Google Cloud project, where misuse can exhaust quota or run up charges. Never commit .env.local or paste real keys into client code.

Liner notes

Versify brings together independent services; it does not host or distribute music.

• Search: Apple's public iTunes Search API, across the US and Japanese storefronts.
• Lyrics: LRCLIB. Synchronized lyrics are shown when they match the recording; untimed text is never presented as timed.
• Audio: YouTube's embedded player, preferring official YouTube Music recordings. Availability depends on region and embed permissions, and you can always connect another recording.
• Translation: Optional Google Cloud Translation. Machine translation may miss a lyric's nuance.
• Library: Favorites, playlists, and preferences live in this browser's storage, with no accounts or sync.

[!IMPORTANT] Versify is not a licensed streaming service. These services and their content can change, so check each provider's terms, and the rights involved, before any public or commercial deployment.

For contributors

npm test            # unit tests
npm run typecheck   # TypeScript
npm run build       # production build

Built with Next.js, React, and TypeScript. The README artwork in docs/readme/ is plain animated SVG, generated by node docs/readme/generate.mjs.

[!WARNING] Audio matching first queries YouTube Music's public web search, which is not an official API and can change without notice. If it stops responding, Versify falls back to YouTube search, so keep that path working when you change lib/video-match.ts.