What browser setup is best for Stims music visualizer?

A recent laptop or desktop browser with WebGL or WebGPU hardware acceleration yields the richest motion, color, and rendering detail.

Does Stims work on mobile phones and tablets?

Yes. Stims provides touch-friendly controls and can reduce rendering resolution, feedback-buffer size, and visual density when measured frame cadence misses the device budget.

How do I play audio in Stims?

You can start immediately with built-in demo audio without granting permissions, or optionally connect your microphone, room audio, browser tab, or YouTube playback.

Before you start

Compatibility and performance

Stims starts fast with demo audio, then adjusts to your browser and hardware. This page tells you what to expect before you dive in.

Open Stims Browse looks first

Best case

Recent laptop or desktop browser

This is where the richest motion, color, and layering tend to show up, especially on newer hardware with stable graphics drivers.

Expected fallback

The same preset with less rendering pressure

If Stims eases back on rendering load, the preset keeps running while resolution, feedback buffers, or visual density may become lighter.

Fastest first run

Start with demo audio

Demo audio avoids permission friction and gets everything moving immediately. Microphone and tab capture are optional upgrades.

What to expect

Browser and device guidance

Browser guidance
Setup	Expectation
Newer desktop browser	Richest detail and the best shot at the heaviest rendering stack.
Older laptop or integrated graphics	Stims may ease back to keep motion stable.
Phone or tablet	Expect a cleaner, lighter run with touch-friendly controls.
TV-style browser	Use the default quick looks first and keep extra tuning minimal.

When things look simpler

What fallback really means

Stims may reduce resolution, feedback buffers, or visual density.
The preset equations and audio-reactive behavior keep running.
You can keep using the app without digging through technical settings.

Quick fixes

If the first run feels rough

Use demo audio first instead of microphone or tab capture.
Open Look and try Battery saver or TV balanced.
Enable the steadier-hardware toggle inside Advanced tuning.

Measured, not universal

How performance changes are checked

Stims compares code changes in a real browser while holding the preset, audio, viewport, renderer, and quality step constant. In one equation-heavy WebGPU stress case on an Apple M1 Max, a JIT hot-loop change reduced average frame work from 17.56 ms to 15.31 ms at 4× CPU throttling, while median delivered FPS moved from 58.14 to 59.88.

That result is evidence for one preset on one host, not an FPS promise for every device. The full method and the noisy tier that was not promoted are documented in the repository's runtime performance evidence .

First steps

The easiest way in

Open Stims and press Play with demo audio.
Switch through a few looks until you find one you want to stay with.
Only then move to your own mic, room, tab, or YouTube audio.