Your songs become charts
MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG or WAV: BeatByte analyses tempo, beats and onsets and builds a playable chart in Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. Drop a folder on the window and it watches it for new tracks.
Rhythm game · Open source · Free
Your music.
Five lanes.
Drop in the songs you love — BeatByte charts them in four difficulties and puts you on a 3D stage with karaoke lyrics, a crowd and a light show. Keyboard, gamepad or guitar.
Plays with
- Keyboard
- Gamepad
- Guitar controller
- MP3 · M4A · FLAC · OGG · WAV
- 1–4 players
A rhythm game for the music you already have
Karaoke on the highway
Press L and BeatByte fetches synced lyrics from lrclib’s open catalogue, or drop your own .lrc. The words fill in on the same clock the notes fall on; an optional local aligner times them word by word.
A stage, not a backdrop
A 3D concert venue with moving heads, PA stacks, fog and a crowd that dances to the song. Land a star-power phrase and lightning strikes the fret.
Keyboard, gamepad or guitar
Every input is remappable in the game. Gamepads work through the system, and a built-in driver reads the wired Guitar Hero X-plorer directly. Two to four players share the screen. Left-handed? Set it per player profile and the highway flips: green on the right, orange on the left.
Timing you can trust
Judgment runs on input timestamps against a clock reconciled with the audio device, not on frames. Calibrate latency in the game, slow any section to 50 % and loop it in practice mode.
Edit, track, improve
A built-in chart editor fixes what the generator got wrong and playtests it in the real highway. A local roster files every run under its player, with statistics and three hundred achievements.
Install in three steps
-
1
Download your build
The button above picks your platform: a DMG for Apple silicon or Intel Macs, a portable zip for Windows, an AppImage for Linux.
-
2
Start it
macOS: drag it to Applications, then right-click → Open the first time (the build is not notarized). Windows: unzip and run
beatbyte.exe. Linux:chmod +xthe AppImage and run it. -
3
Bring your music
Drop an audio file or a whole folder onto the window. BeatByte charts it in the background and it appears in the song browser.
Check what you downloaded
- BeatByte-0.19.10-aarch64-apple-darwin.dmg
ffbc2ef6ecbea92ac8e51941a1a4258ee1ad19d17c22d4769f292fe665540e99- BeatByte-0.19.10-x86_64-apple-darwin.dmg
0156bd5dd1df354704a50f4038eb811cce351b4b0177f9a63f5c45456c84facc- beatbyte-v0.19.10-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
001e501dd777c20af13b624078b82eba6b231142c7e55ba29e1255b41a9566d7- BeatByte-0.19.10-x86_64.AppImage
8d01f7d355cde6cf931364990ffc8e0eb7b0e4bcdd5dd0ca3a222bbae0cf774c
The checksums are the ones GitHub computed for the release files. Compare with shasum -a 256 on macOS and Linux or Get-FileHash on Windows.
No song ships with the game — BeatByte plays the music you bring. Everything it learns about your songs stays on your machine.
Questions
Is BeatByte free?
Yes. It is free and open source under the MIT licence, with no ads, no account and no in-game purchases.
Which songs can I play?
Your own: MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG and WAV files. No song ships with the game. With yt-dlp installed you can also add a song by typing its name.
What do I need to run it?
macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon or Intel, 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, or 64-bit Linux, with a GPU that runs Metal, DirectX 12 or Vulkan. A keyboard is enough to play.
Can I play left-handed?
Yes. On the player screen, select your profile and press ← for left-handed or → for right-handed (or H to switch). The highway is mirrored for you, green on the right and orange on the left, and so is the guitarist on stage. On a keyboard the fret keys follow the picture; a guitar or gamepad keeps its colours, because your fingers find green by touch.
Why does macOS warn me the first time?
The macOS builds are signed ad hoc but not notarized by Apple. Right-click the app and choose Open once; after that it starts normally.
How do I update?
Download the newest build from this page and replace the old one. Your songs, charts, scores, players and settings live in your user data folder and stay where they are.
Is the download genuine?
Every file comes straight from the project’s GitHub Releases, built by its release workflow. The SHA-256 of each file is listed on this page; compare it with the file you downloaded.
Like the app?
BeatByte is free, has no ads and stays that way. A small donation keeps it maintained — and a review of celox.io on Google helps just as much.