OpenMeters

June 12, 2026 · View on GitHub

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/52d0202e-f6e7-47aa-9952-e3a0be975f42

OpenMeters is an audio metering application for Linux. It currently consists of six meters: loudness , oscilloscope, spectrogram, spectrum analyzer, stereometer, and waveform.

My goal is to provide a free, open source desktop meter that is rigorous and correct about what it computes and pleasant to look at.

Features

Everything below describes behavior implemented thus far. If you have ideas for the next thing OpenMeters should do, please feel free to open an issue or pull request.

General

  • PipeWire audio capture
    • Per-application capture through a PipeWire virtual sink.
    • Device/default-sink capture by linking a selected PipeWire audio device/source, or the current default sink, into the OpenMeters sink.
    • Application routes touched by OpenMeters are reset on clean shutdown.
  • Windowing
    • Normal desktop windows on X11 or Wayland.
    • Wayland layer-shell bar mode when the compositor exposes zwlr_layer_shell_v1, anchored to the top or bottom of the selected monitor.
    • Pop-out windows for individual visuals.
    • Optional window decorations.
  • Appearance and persistence
    • Configurable RGBA background color.
    • Editable JSON settings with lossy loading for unknown or invalid fields.
    • User themes stored as separate JSON files.

Visuals

  • Loudness
    • BS.1770-5 K-weighted short-term and momentary LUFS meter modes.
    • True Peak meter modes.
    • Fast and slow K-weighted RMS dB meter modes.
  • Oscilloscope
    • Selectable left, right, mid/mono, side, or none channel traces.
    • Selectable trigger source, including channel-dependent triggering for independently stable traces.
    • A stable waveform trigger that uses autocorrelation period estimation and waveform template correlation. (Often referred to as "pitch-following" or "phase-locking" in other applications.)
    • Selectable cycle count in stable trigger mode.
    • Zero-crossing trigger for traditional scope behavior.
  • Spectrogram
    • A multitude of window types, lengths, and hop sizes.
    • Classic STFT rendering.
    • Time-frequency reassignment.
    • Click-and-hold crosshair with frequency, note, and time tooltip.
    • Piano-roll overlay.
    • Frequency-axis zoom and pan.
    • ERB, logarithmic, and linear frequency scales.
    • Adjustable color map, stop positions, and stop spreads.
  • Spectrum analyzer
    • A multitude of window types, lengths, and hop sizes.
    • Selectable primary and secondary source: left, right, mid, side, or none.
    • Raw or IEC 61672-1 A-weighted display.
    • Peak label with frequency, note, and level.
    • No averaging, exponential averaging, or peak hold.
    • ERB, logarithmic, and linear frequency scales.
    • Line or bar display with adjustable color map.
  • Stereometer
    • L/R vector display in Lissajous or dot-cloud modes.
    • Frequency-band dot-cloud mode with low/mid/high bands.
    • Single-band or low/mid/high correlation meter.
    • Adjustable correlation window.
    • Adjustable scale, rotation, channel flip, dot size, persistence, and grid.
  • Waveform
    • Selectable left, right, mid/mono, side, or none channel lanes.
    • Adjustable scroll speed.
    • Optional low/mid/high band-level history overlay.
    • Color by spectral centroid, amplitude, or a static color.

Installation

Prerequisites

OpenMeters requires:

  1. A graphical Linux session on X11 or Wayland.
  2. PipeWire installed and running.
  3. Vulkan support through your distribution's Vulkan loader and driver stack.
  4. For pre-built release artifacts: x86_64 GNU/Linux with glibc >= v2.41. The release workflow builds these artifacts in Debian 13.

Normal application windows are available on both X11 and Wayland. Bar mode additionally requires a Wayland compositor that exposes zwlr_layer_shell_v1.

Arch Linux

Install the openmeters-git package from the AUR:

yay -S openmeters-git

Debian

Download the latest .deb package from GitHub Releases.

Fedora

Download the latest .rpm package from GitHub Releases.

NixOS

OpenMeters is available in nixpkgs thanks to @magnetophon and @bitbloxhub. Add it to your nix config with:

nix profile add nixpkgs#openmeters

Other distributions

Tarballs are available under tagged releases, or you can build OpenMeters from source. I cannot guarantee OpenMeters will work on every distribution, although it is designed to stay fairly distro-agnostic. If you have trouble getting it running, please open an issue and I will try to help.

Building from source

  1. Install a Rust toolchain, a C toolchain, pkg-config, libclang, and native development packages for PipeWire, Wayland/X11, xkbcommon, fontconfig/freetype, and the Vulkan loader/development headers. The recommended way to install Rust is rustup. OpenMeters currently requires the Rust version declared in Cargo.toml or newer.

  2. Clone the repository:

    git clone https://github.com/httpsworldview/openmeters/
cd openmeters

  3. Build and run the release binary:

    cargo build --release
./target/release/openmeters

    Or run it directly through Cargo:

    cargo run --release

Packaging

See packaging/ for instructions on building Debian, Fedora, and tarball artifacts.

Usage and key bindings

Global

BindingAction
ctrl+shift+hShow or hide the global configuration drawer.
right click on a visualOpen that visual's settings window.
pPause or resume meter updates.
q twiceQuit the application.
ctrl+spacePop out the hovered visual, or dock the focused pop-out.

Spectrogram

BindingAction
left click+holdShow the crosshair and frequency/note/time tooltip.
ctrl+scroll up/downZoom the frequency axis.
middle click+dragPan the frequency axis.

Configuration

Application settings are saved to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/openmeters/settings.json, or to:

~/.config/openmeters/settings.json

when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset.

settings.json is intentionally editable. GUI ranges are not hard limits; processors normalize only the values they need for safe runtime behavior. Unsupported keys or structurally invalid values are logged and ignored at the narrowest practical scope.

Invalid JSON syntax is ignored and default settings are used for that run. Your configuration file will not be overwritten unless you change settings in the GUI. Unknown keys are not preserved when the file is next written.

If a bug causes OpenMeters to misbehave, you can reset application settings by deleting settings.json. Please consider reporting the bug if you run into this.

Theming

Themes are saved as separate JSON files in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/openmeters/themes/, or in:

~/.config/openmeters/themes/

when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset. Theme files own palettes and background color; settings.json stores the selected theme name and non-palette module settings.

You can create and switch between themes in the Theme tab of the configuration page. Saving a theme refreshes the list of available themes, including any files that appeared in the theme directory while OpenMeters was running. The built-in theme is read-only in the UI and cannot be overwritten. Feel free to share custom themes by sharing the corresponding JSON files.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on how to contribute and how to get started. No matter what you have to offer, I greatly appreciate your interest in the project. Every bit helps.

Reuse and license

OpenMeters is GPL-3.0-or-later software. You may reuse code under the GPL's terms. If you want to discuss other arrangements or have licensing questions, feel free to email me at httpworldview@gmail.com. You are also free to draw inspiration from the ideas and methods used here, provided you respect the GPL.

It would be unfair to ask for attribution over ideas alone when this project exists thanks to the countless researchers and open-source contributors who came before me.

Credits

Thank you for checking out OpenMeters. If you think it is useful, please consider starring the repository and sharing it with others. I appreciate criticism, bug reports, and feedback, so feel free to reach out.

Projects

Papers and Standards

  • ITU-R BS.1770-5, loudness and true peak measurement.
  • IEC 61672-1, A-weighting reference curve.
  • A. de Cheveigné and H. Kawahara, "YIN, a fundamental frequency estimator for speech and music".
    • Historically, the algorithm within this paper was implemented by our oscilloscope.
  • F. Auger and P. Flandrin, "Improving the readability of time-frequency and time-scale representations by the reassignment method".
  • K. Kodera, R. Gendrin, and C. de Villedary, "Analysis of time-varying signals with small BT values".
  • S. Fulop and K. Fitz, "Algorithms for computing the time-corrected instantaneous frequency (reassigned) spectrogram, with applications".

Libraries

License

OpenMeters is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. See LICENSE for more details.