Music visualizers for Chrome in 2026: an honest comparison
Who wrote this. This page is written by the developer of Deus, one of the tools below, so read it with that in mind. To keep it fair, every fact about another product comes from its own store listing, website or source code, linked at the end, and was checked on 15 October 2026. Where we could not confirm something, the table says "not stated" instead of guessing. Ratings and user counts are the Chrome Web Store's own numbers and change often.
The short version
- You want visuals inside Spotify, YouTube Music or Yandex Music, or any other tab: Deus or YouTube Musical Spectrum (spectrum only).
- You want classic MilkDrop and nothing else, for free: the Butterchurn extension or the butterchurnviz.com page.
- You only use YouTube Music: Music Visualizer for YouTube Music or Music Visualizer by Grigore Mardari are small, focused overlays.
- You want to make music videos from audio files: Groovalizer is built for that (paid export).
- You want a visualizer that does not need an extension at all: vizz.fm runs in a web page and takes sound from the mic, a file or screen-share audio.
Extensions compared
| Sound from | Where it draws | MilkDrop | Price | Users / rating | Last update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deus | Any tab (tab capture) | Inside Spotify, YouTube Music and Yandex Music pages; fullscreen tab or window for any tab | Yes, 966 community presets (1,100+ presets in total) | Free; optional one-time Pro ($20) | Left out: we make it | October 2026 |
| Butterchurn Music Visualizer | Any tab (tab capture) | Its own window; exact form not stated | Yes (Butterchurn) | Free | 9,000 / 4.5 (73) | June 2025 |
| audiovisualizer (afreak) | Current tab; microphone or system audio since v12.2 | Separate animation window | No | Free | 20,000 / 4.2 (146) | May 2026 |
| YouTube Musical Spectrum | The page's own audio; optional microphone | Overlay inside YouTube, YouTube Music, Spotify and SoundCloud | No (spectrum) | Free, open source (GPL/LGPL) | ~10,000 / 4.8 (39) | July 2026 |
| Music Visualizer for YouTube Music (Greyson Flippo) | The YouTube page's audio | Overlay inside YouTube and YouTube Music | No | No price shown | 4,000 / 3.9 (104) | June 2026 |
| Music Visualizer (Grigore Mardari) | The YouTube page's audio | Overlay on the YouTube player | No | Free | 3,000 / 4.0 (87) | October 2026 |
Web apps compared
| Sound from | MilkDrop | Video export | Price | Account | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vizz.fm | Microphone, files, a stream URL, or tab/system audio via screen share | No, its own visualizers | Not yet (in development) | Free | Not needed |
| Groovalizer | Uploaded files; live input from mic, line-in or music playing on the computer | Yes (projectM) | Yes, up to 4K, Pro only | Free to play; Pro $14.99/month or $144/year | Needed to save and for Pro |
| butterchurnviz.com | Not stated | Yes (Butterchurn, open source, MIT) | Not stated | Free | Not stated |
| Kaleidosync | Its own player (Audius, Radio Paradise, MP3); the original version used Spotify login | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
Kaleidosync's site could not be checked directly, and a March 2026 article described it as temporarily unavailable, so treat that row as uncertain.
Deus and Butterchurn
Butterchurn is the open-source WebGL port of MilkDrop by Jordan Berg, and the Butterchurn extension wraps it for Chrome. Deus uses MilkDrop presets too, through its own player, alongside its own shader scenes. The practical differences: the Butterchurn extension shows the visual in its own window, while Deus can also draw it inside the music site's page and change that site's colours with themes. The Butterchurn extension has not been updated since June 2025. If all you want is MilkDrop, free, with nothing else around it, Butterchurn is a good choice.
Deus and the YouTube Music overlays
The two YouTube-only extensions draw a visual over the YouTube or YouTube Music page and need no extra permission beyond YouTube itself. That makes them small and simple. Deus asks for one click on its icon so Chrome lets it hear the tab, and in exchange works on any site and offers far more presets. If you never leave YouTube Music and want a light overlay, the focused extensions are reasonable picks.
Deus and YouTube Musical Spectrum
YouTube Musical Spectrum draws a precise, configurable frequency spectrum over YouTube, YouTube Music, Spotify and SoundCloud, is open source and is very well rated. It is a measuring instrument more than a light show. Deus has spectrum presets too, but most of its presets are scenes that react to kicks, snares and bass. Pick the one that fits what you want to look at.
If you want videos, not live visuals
Groovalizer is built around turning an audio file into a video, with many MilkDrop looks and aspect ratios for Shorts and Reels; exports need its Pro plan. Deus can record what is on screen into a video for free with a small watermark, or without it in Pro, but it is a live visualizer first.
How we checked
Store pages, the developers' own sites and GitHub repositories, plus chrome-stats.com for permissions. We installed nothing from these pages for this article and measured no performance; we don't compare frame rates or CPU use because we could not test them fairly on the same machine. If something here is wrong or out of date, write to [email protected] and we will fix it.
Sources
- Butterchurn Music Visualizer, Chrome Web Store
- Butterchurn on GitHub
- audiovisualizer, Chrome Web Store
- audiovisualizer on GitHub
- YouTube Musical Spectrum, Chrome Web Store
- YouTube Musical Spectrum on GitHub
- Music Visualizer for YouTube Music, Chrome Web Store
- Music Visualizer by Grigore Mardari, Chrome Web Store
- vizz.fm
- Groovalizer
- Kaleidosync relaunch post