Guides › Music

The visuals, one by one

5 minute read

Every visualizer style with a picture of each, which ones are free, how each one follows the music, and how to choose the set that plays.

Choosing which visuals play

Open Settings › Visualizations.
Under Scenes, move down the list, which is grouped by style. Highlighting a scene previews it beside the list; pressing Select includes it in the automatic cycle, or takes it out again. The scenes you include are the ones the visualizer cycles through in the music room, and the ones its swipes and Skip buttons step through.
Turn All Scenes On or Off at the top saves selecting one at a time.

Settings › Visualizations: the Visualizer Engine card, then the Scenes list with a live preview beside it. — Settings › Visualizations.

There are 35 visuals in all. Eleven are free all year, and the Pumpkin Patch is free during October. The rest come with Theatrium Pro and show a small PRO mark. Three of the 35 are Halloween visuals, which appear in this list only while Halloween Mode is on (Settings › Appearance › Halloween Mode); the rest are always listed.

When the visuals hear the music

When Theatrium plays the music itself – Spotify sent to this Apple TV from Spotify’s speaker list (Premium required) – the visuals hear the sound, not just the tempo. Each keeps its own design, but moves faster as the music gets busier, settles in quiet passages, grows through a build and opens out at the drop. Listening never adds a flash on the beat.

Music from anywhere else – Apple Music, a Home Assistant speaker, or Plex and Last.fm playing on another device – moves the visuals to the song’s tempo, as before. Theatrium never listens to the room; it hears only the music it is playing. How the visualizer keeps time explains both.

Below, a visual marked Listening does something more when it can hear the music. The rest speed up and slow down with it.

Calm

Aurora. Free. Slow curtains of light, like the northern lights.

Ocean. Free. Soft pools of light drifting like something seen underwater. Listening: the swell reaches further in loud passages.

Line Ribbons. Free. Fine threads drifting across the screen. Listening: the threads swing wider in loud passages.

Interference. Pro. Overlapping waves making shifting patterns.

Butterfly. Pro. A flight of butterflies at different depths, in the colors of your album, their wings beating with the music.

Black Oil. Pro. Glossy black oil, flowing at the pace of the song. Listening: the oil churns harder in loud passages.

From the album cover

These are built from the song's own artwork.

Silk. Free. The cover flows like fabric.

Prism. Pro. The cover fractured and glitching. Its glints stay locked to the tempo, even while listening.

Liquid Sand. Pro. The cover pours and settles.

Gallery. Pro. The cover rebuilt in shifting pieces.

Mandala Zoom. Pro. Your album cover mirrored into a mandala that opens slowly and endlessly. Listening: the mandala breathes larger as the energy rises.

Retro

The Compact Disc, Mixtape and Click Wheel sit in a darker room, and the Mirrorball reads as mirror glass.

Mixtape. Free. A cassette whose reels turn with the track. Listening: the reels turn faster on louder passages, and the colors drift with the music.

Click Wheel. Pro. A music player of a certain age, scrolling with the song. Listening: the player sways faster with the music, and the colors drift with it.

Compact Disc. Pro. A spinning disc catching the light. Listening: the disc spins faster on louder passages, and the colors drift with the music.

Lava Lamp. Pro. Slow blobs of color rising and falling. Keeps to the tempo, even while listening.

Mirrorball. Pro. Spots of light sweeping the room. Listening: the ball turns faster on louder sound.

Bars and brand

Listening, these four draw the music itself: the bars rise and fall with the sound and settle when it pauses. Settings › Visualizations › Theatrium visualiser style chooses how. Equalizer spreads the sound from bass to treble across the bars; Conductor swells the whole row together. Other sources move the bars to the song’s tempo.

Logo Bars. Free. The Theatrium bars rising with the song.

Bar Wall. Free. A wall of bars in the song's colors.

Bar Halo. Free. Bars arranged in a ring.

Theatrium Ribbon. Free. A ribbon of the brand's colors.

Fractals

Endless mathematical patterns that zoom and turn. They sit on a dark wash of the album's two colors, flow at the pace of the song without flashing, and are sharper on older Apple TVs. Listening, their sweep reaches further in loud passages.

Kinetic and neon

Mandala. Free. Turning rings and spokes, in the song's colors.

Fire. Pro. Flames that breathe with the song. Listening: the flames breathe deeper in loud passages.

Neon Grid. Pro. A glowing grid rushing toward you.

Circuit Traces. Pro. Light running along circuit-board paths.

Iron Filings. Pro. Rings of particles pulled about as if by a magnet.

Seasonal

Three Halloween visuals, listed together under Seasonal in Settings. They are listed, and they play, only while Halloween Mode is on. With it on, the cycle plays only the Halloween visuals you have access to; turn it off and your own visuals return exactly as you had them. Pumpkin Patch is free during October and Pro the rest of the year; Mirror Pumpkin and Crimson Drip are Pro all year. See the Halloween pack guide for the whole look.

Pumpkin Patch. Free in October, Pro the rest of the year. Paper pumpkins hop to the beat on a cut-paper hill, with a dancing skeleton, bats and a friendly ghost. The pumpkins stay on the beat, even while listening.

Mirror Pumpkin. Pro. A jack-o'-lantern of copper mirror tiles, turning and throwing Halloween colors. Listening: it turns faster on louder sound.

Crimson Drip. Pro. Your cover on a black gloss floor, glossy blood running down it as lightning cracks the sky behind. Keeps to the tempo, even while listening.

Two engines

Settings › Visualizations › Visualizer Engine offers Live (the visuals are drawn live on the Apple TV, the normal choice) and Video Loops (Pro: ready-made video clips, downloaded once, for an older Apple TV that struggles to draw them live). Once downloaded, a Remove downloaded loops button under More visualizer settings frees the space again. The same More visualizer settings row holds the Info Panel and the Tempo and Colors choices; see How the visualizer keeps time.