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Audio Visualizer

by koyPhish

A live audio spectrum in your Omarchy bar. A drop-in replacement for the built-in audio widget: the speaker icon becomes a cava-driven equalizer while sound is playing, and folds back to the icon when it stops. Click through for the full audio panel — volume, output picker, per-app mixer — plus a large visualizer and four styles: bars, grounded, blocks and dots. Requires cava: run omarchy pkg add cava before enabling.

GitHub

Security review

No obvious issues detected

Deterministic scan — not a security guarantee

None
Risk level
None
Analyzed commit
bbec27f
Scanned
1 month ago

No potentially dangerous behavior detected in the analyzed commit.

Automated analysis only — not a security guarantee.

AI advisory review

No obvious issues detected

Language-model assessment · ~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest — advisory only

None
AI risk level
None
Recommendation
install
Model
~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest
Analyzed commit
bbec27f
Reviewed
1 month ago

The plugin is a QML bar widget that runs cava for audio visualization and invokes a small set of documented Omarchy audio commands on user interaction. The sampled code contains no obfuscation, persistence, credential theft, destructive operations, or network access, and the shell command construction in Cava.qml properly quotes its inputs. The deterministic scan's 'none' finding matches this review.

How this check works

This review combines the deterministic scan (the rule-based results above) with an independent look at the plugin's code by a language model. The model reads a trimmed sample of the repository's files, the manifest, and the README, then gives a plain-language risk level and a recommendation: install (no notable danger), review (look closer first), or avoid (clearly dangerous).

It runs on the same analyzed commit as the deterministic scan and is strictly advisory — it is not a security guarantee and never blocks a plugin by itself. A human moderator still reviews plugins before they are listed.

AI advisory only — automated analysis, not a security guarantee.

Install
$ omarchy plugin add https://github.com/koyPhish/omarchy-audio-visualizer --enable
Widgets #bar #media #system

Audio Visualizer

The Omarchy audio widget with a live spectrum analyzer in place of the speaker icon. It is a drop-in replacement for omarchy.audio: same volume slider, output picker and per-app mixer, plus a visualizer.

<p align="center"> <img src="preview.png" alt="The spectrum running in the Omarchy bar, with the audio panel open below it" width="420"> </p>

cava does the FFT against the default PipeWire output monitor and streams one ascii frame per tick on stdout; Cava.qml parses those frames and Spectrum.qml draws them.

Install

omarchy pkg add cava
omarchy plugin add https://github.com/koyPhish/omarchy-audio-visualizer.git --enable
omarchy plugin disable omarchy.audio

Plugins land disabled on add so you can read the code first; drop --enable if you would rather review it before it runs. That last line matters: this widget replaces omarchy.audio rather than sitting beside it. Leaving both enabled is harmless — they use separate IPC targets and do not fight — but you will have two audio widgets in your bar.

Requires PipeWire, which is Omarchy's default.

Removing it

omarchy plugin remove io.github.koyphish.audio-visualizer
omarchy plugin enable omarchy.audio

The only thing this plugin ever writes outside its own directory is its own widget entry in shell.json — the bar position it is given, and the style you pick in the panel. omarchy plugin remove takes that entry with it. Nothing else in your config is touched, and cava stays installed unless you remove it yourself with omarchy pkg remove cava.

Behaviour

<p align="center"> <img src="docs/bar.png" alt="Playing versus silent in the bar" width="380"> </p>
  • In the bar: spectrum bars while audio is playing, and the ordinary speaker/headphone icon once it stops — the widget animates between the two widths rather than leaving a gap. The icon also stands in if cava never produces a frame, so a broken visualizer still leaves a working volume widget.
  • In the panel: the full audio panel with a larger 60fps visualizer on top and a style picker under it.
  • Works in vertical bars: bands stack down the bar and levels grow sideways.
  • On the power-saver profile the visualizer pauses and cava stops, then comes back on its own when you leave that profile. Your chosen style is not touched — the panel says Paused on power saver and keeps it selected. Turn this off with pauseOnPowerSaver if you would rather it always run.

Interaction

Input Action
left Open the audio panel
right Mute / unmute everything
scroll Output volume

Styles

Bars (centered), Ground (rising from the floor), Blocks (segmented LED columns), Dots (a dot riding each band's level), and Off.

Off is a real off switch, not a blank style: it stops cava outright, and the widget falls back to the plain speaker icon. You keep a working audio widget at zero cost.

<p align="center"> <img src="docs/styles.png" alt="The four visualizer styles" width="620"> </p>

Picking one in the panel applies to every monitor immediately and is written straight back to shell.json, so it survives a restart. The panel stays open through the write.

One cava, however many monitors

The bar paints one surface per screen, so the widget is instantiated once per monitor. CavaHub.js is a .pragma library, which is instantiated once per QML engine — and the whole shell is one engine — so it is the one place every copy can agree on. The first instance to ask becomes the owner and runs the only cava process; the rest render from the frames it publishes. Ownership is released on destruction and picked up by a peer within five seconds.

The panel's visualizer runs a second, finer-grained cava that lives only as long as the panel is open.

Settings

Change these from Setup > Plugins, or with omarchy bar set:

omarchy bar set io.github.koyphish.audio-visualizer bars 20
omarchy bar set io.github.koyphish.audio-visualizer channels stereo
omarchy bar set io.github.koyphish.audio-visualizer autoHide false --json
Key Default What it does
style bars bars, grounded, blocks, dots, none (off)
bars 12 Bands in the bar widget
barWidth 3 Bar thickness in px
gap 2 Gap between bars in px
heightPercent 70 Peak height as a percentage of the bar's own size
framerate 30 Bar framerate; one shared process
panelBars 32 Bands in the panel visualizer
panelFramerate 60 Panel framerate; only runs while the panel is open
noiseReduction 77 Smoothing; higher is calmer, lower is twitchier
channels mono stereo mirrors left and right
audioSource auto PipeWire source; auto follows the default output
autoHide true Fall back to the icon when audio is silent
pauseOnPowerSaver true Stop cava while the power profile is power-saver
hideAfterSeconds 3 How long silence must last first

Boolean and numeric values need --json when set from the command line; strings do not.

Files

File What it is
BarWidget.qml Entry point: the audio panel plus the visualizer wiring
Spectrum.qml The renderer — one frame, four styles
Cava.qml One cava process, config to level arrays
CavaHub.js Cross-monitor ownership and frame/style fan-out
Model.js Audio helpers, copied from omarchy.audio

BarWidget.qml and Model.js started as copies of $OMARCHY_PATH/shell/plugins/panels/audio/{Panel.qml,Model.js} (Omarchy, MIT), so an upstream change to the audio panel has to be merged in by hand.

If you rename the entry point, restart the shell rather than rescanning — the shell keeps resolving the old file and reports the rename as "File name case mismatch", which is neither a case nor a filesystem problem.

What it runs, and what it writes

Plugins run unsandboxed inside the shell, so here is everything this one executes and every file it touches.

Command When Why
bash -c "exec cava -p …" While the widget is mounted The visualizer. One process for the whole bar; a second one only while the panel is open. The cava config is passed through a process substitution, so no config file is written
omarchy bar set <id> style <value> Only when you click the style picker Persists your choice
omarchy-audio-output-set-default Only when you click an output device Inherited from omarchy.audio
omarchy-audio-input-set-default Only when you click an input device Inherited from omarchy.audio
omarchy-audio-sink-availability Every 5s while the panel is open Read-only
omarchy-audio-output-sink Every 15s Read-only
omarchy-powerprofiles-list --active-state Every 60s, on the surface that owns cava only Read-only; drives the power-saver pause. Not run at all when pauseOnPowerSaver is off

The only file it ever writes is its own widget entry in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json — the style key, and only on an explicit click. It never writes to any other part of your config, never asks for root, and never contacts the network.

Credits

The audio panel — volume slider, output picker, per-app mixer, and the keyboard navigation that goes with them — is Omarchy's omarchy.audio plugin by David Heinemeier Hansson, MIT licensed, with the visualizer grafted in. See LICENSE.

Spectrum data comes from cava by Karl Stavestrand.