The track, lyrics and cover in the panel preview are original demo material made for this README.
Synced lyrics of the song that's playing right now — as a single line on the Windows taskbar, next to a small ring that breathes with the music.
- Works with any player that shows up in the Windows media controls: Spotify, Yandex Music, Apple Music, browsers (YouTube, SoundCloud, VK…), Windows Media Player and others.
- Lyrics come from your own
.lrcfiles inDocuments\Lyricsfirst, then from LRCLIB — free, no account or API key. - Lives inside the taskbar: sticks to the system tray and follows it when icons appear or disappear, doesn't blink when you minimize windows, hides together with the taskbar in fullscreen games and videos.
- Sung words fill in as the song plays, letters float in, a soft glow in your Windows accent color, light and dark
taskbar support, any system font or your own
.ttf/.otf. - Lyrics panel: click the ring to open the whole song above the taskbar — the current line in the middle with the same fill and glow, lines you can click to jump there, the album cover (click it to see it full size), a seek bar and player buttons (play/pause, previous/next, and shuffle/repeat when the player supports them).
- English and Russian interface.
Get HaloTaskbarLyrics.exe from the latest release and run it.
It's a single small file — no installer.
Requirements:
- Windows 10 version 2004 or newer, or Windows 11 (64-bit).
- .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64) — or any newer .NET. If it's missing, Windows shows a message on the first start; click Yes and it opens the Microsoft download page. On that page pick .NET Desktop Runtime → Windows → x64, install it and run HaloTaskbarLyrics again.
"Windows protected your PC"? The exe isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn about an
unknown publisher. Click More info → Run anyway. You can compare the file with the
.sha256 checksum published next to it in the release.
- Click the ring to open or close the lyrics panel. Scroll the lyrics with the mouse wheel; after a few seconds they return to the current line.
- Right-click the ring (or the right half of the lyrics line) for the menu: font and size, effects, position, sync offset for the current track, theme, language, start with Windows.
- Lyrics are late or early? Sync → Lyrics are late / early — the offset is remembered per track.
- Your own lyrics: put
Artist - Title.lrcintoDocuments\Lyrics(subfolders are fine). - Updates: the program checks GitHub once a day and offers Update to version … at the top of the menu. Turn it off in Updates.
- Something looks wrong? Diagnostics → Write diagnostic log, reproduce the problem, then Show the log file and attach it to an issue. The log contains technical details and track names, but no lyrics.
Settings, cache and logs are stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\HaloTaskbarLyrics.
Requires the .NET 10 SDK.
dotnet publish src/HaloTaskbarLyrics.csproj -c Release -o publish
# result: publish\HaloTaskbarLyrics.exeReleases are built by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/release.yml) when a v* tag is pushed.
- LRCLIB mostly has line-level timing, so the fill moves evenly through a line rather than word by word.
- The player has to report the playback position. Most do; some websites don't.
- Primary monitor only.
Lyrics by LRCLIB. Album covers (when the player doesn't provide one) by Deezer. Audio capture by NAudio. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.
Built with help from Claude by Anthropic.
PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for personal and other noncommercial use: download, use, study and change it. Commercial use (including in commercial products or services) is allowed only with the author's permission. To ask for permission, write to a.meynert1@gmail.com or Telegram @overzu.
Version 0.1.0 was released under the MIT license; that release stays under MIT.