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
- 2–4 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.
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-0.18.18-aarch64-apple-darwin.dmg
9e32185a524613aa9426292a9372348a8eae141c63194b8462ff4c41e5359cc9- BeatByte-0.18.18-x86_64-apple-darwin.dmg
0f783628c82388ccb30be74b56c66e7628da2151a8f916dd3c32d374bd060157- beatbyte-v0.18.18-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
207283abca363936427e1ebda61f5e274cca7e2ad286e06a94aaea79356d69d6- BeatByte-0.18.18-x86_64.AppImage
13796d9c224854c4d483680a8dd6376f0b5c1d3d5aec9c4cec45ee380072672b
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.
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.