OpenLyrics
Application · Song lyrics above your windows / Windows & Android · 2026
Play music in any player and its lyrics appear above your windows – line by line, right on the beat.
An app for Windows and Android that recognises the playing track and shows its lyrics in a borderless, transparent overlay. Lyrics come from the MP3 or FLAC file itself, or from the open LRCLIB database when the file has none.
OpenLyrics reads the same information as the system media panel: Spotify, AIMP, foobar2000, MusicBee, YouTube in a browser, YouTube Music or Poweramp – no player plugins needed. On Windows a small bridge talks to the system media session, on Android a service with access to player sessions does the job.
Lyrics from the file come first: the app finds the track on disk (by tags, duration and file name) and reads lyrics embedded in MP3, FLAC, OGG, Opus and M4A – including word-by-word timings – or an .lrc file next to it. The tag reader is written from scratch, with no external libraries. Only when the file has nothing does OpenLyrics ask the open LRCLIB database, remember the result and let you pick another one by hand.
The overlay has no frame and no background: lines move up according to their timestamps, the active one is enlarged and fills with colour like karaoke, and the edges fade out gently. Size, colours, number of lines, text shadow and scrolling style are all adjustable, and timing can be shifted for a single track. A locked overlay lets clicks through to the windows below.
It is built on Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform – the same interface on both platforms. Every release is built automatically, and the app downloads new versions from redzikowski.com on its own.
Features
- any player that reports to the system
- lyrics from MP3, FLAC, OGG, M4A or .lrc files
- LRCLIB when the file has no lyrics
- transparent overlay with smooth scrolling and karaoke
- Windows 10/11 and Android 10 or newer
Technology
- Kotlin
- Compose Multiplatform
- C# / WinRT
- LRCLIB
My role
Design, architecture, implementation and releases