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JellyDazzle 3.6.6
Four new fractals — and see the beat.
• Neon Mandelbrot: the edge of the Mandelbrot set drawn as glowing filaments — snowflakes, seahorse spirals and minibrot chains, diving and drifting.
• Nova: spiral basins where Newton meets Mandelbrot, with island chains of fine filigree.
• Multibrot bloom: the Mandelbrot set grows extra folds and back again — a flower opening and closing.
• Clifford silk: strange attractors woven like silk, every strand coloured by the way it moves.
• New M button: the beat meter on screen — bass, mid, treble and a dot that flashes on every beat.
• The on-screen bar is now C · S · M · ? — colour, shape, meter, about. Keys still work: C, S, M, A.
• Depth: layers drift in from the distance and float toward you, with gentle parallax.
• Every background now slowly zooms and turns; fractals evolve continuously instead of flickering.
• Less repetition: fresh shapes and colours every launch, and the same kind of shape no longer comes straight back.
• 22 creatures and fractals that 3.5.9 left out now appear, and 60+ patterns that looked identical each time now vary and follow your colours.
Download: JellyDazzle-macOS-arm64.zip — Developer ID signed, notarised and stapled. macOS 11+, Apple Silicon.
Also on the App Store for Mac, iPhone and iPad — released October 13, 2026.
JellyDazzle 3.6.4 (deprecated)
⚠️ Deprecated. This version is no longer supported. Use JellyDazzle 3.6.6 (or the App Store).
Deeper, smoother, never the same twice.
• Depth: layers drift in from the distance and float toward you, with gentle parallax — it feels like being inside the kaleidoscope.
• Fractals now flow: they evolve continuously instead of flickering as they redraw.
• Backgrounds move: slow zoom and turn behind every scene.
• 22 more patterns now appear — creatures (cats, dogs, butterflies, turtles…) and fractals (Julia, Phoenix, Sierpinski, Lyapunov…).
• Every launch opens on fresh shapes and fresh colours.
• Patterns that used to look the same each time now vary in shape and follow your colours.
• Keys: C new colours, S new shapes, A about.
• First launch measures the new library once; the card shows real progress.
Download: JellyDazzle-macOS-arm64.zip — Developer ID signed, notarised and stapled. macOS 11+, Apple Silicon.
The App Store build (Mac, iPhone, iPad) is in App Review.
JellyDazzle 3.5.9 (deprecated)
⚠️ Deprecated. This version is no longer supported. Use JellyDazzle 3.6.6 (or the App Store).
JellyDazzle 3.5.9 — signed as Developer ID Application: LIBCSYSTEMS LLC, notarised by Apple and stapled.
- Creatures: eighteen animals that move the way the real ones do — jellyfish, a great whale, a school of fish, manta rays, an octopus, seahorses, krill, a sea turtle, a squid, a starling murmuration, butterflies, beetles, an ant trail, a cat, a dog, dragonflies, moths and crabs.
- Ten new fractals: Julia, Burning Ship, Newton, Phoenix, Tricorn, Apollonian gasket, a growing fern, a folding dragon curve, Sierpinski rain and a Lyapunov zoom.
- 638 routines in all: 24 engine modes in hand-written ARM64 assembly, 614 patterns in C.
Also on the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jellydazzle/id6808884433 — and on iPhone and iPad.
Download JellyDazzle-macOS-arm64.zip — unzip, drag to Applications, open.
JellyDazzle 3.5.8 (deprecated)
⚠️ Deprecated. This version is no longer supported. Use JellyDazzle 3.6.6 (or the App Store).
This download now delivers the current JellyDazzle — the link was kept so older bookmarks still work. Latest release: https://github.com/LIBCSYS/JellyDazzle/releases/latest
JellyDazzle 3.5.8 — Mac, iPhone and iPad. Signed as Developer ID Application: LIBCSYSTEMS LLC and notarised by Apple, stapled for offline verification.
- Now on iPhone and iPad (also on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jellydazzle/id6808884433)
- On-screen C · S · ? · X buttons
- Far more background variety; the same family never plays twice in a row
Download: JellyDazzle-macOS-arm64.zip — unzip, drag to Applications, open.
JellyDazzle 3.0.4 (deprecated)
⚠️ Deprecated. This version is no longer supported. Use JellyDazzle 3.6.6 (or the App Store).
This download now delivers the current JellyDazzle — the link was kept so older bookmarks still work. Latest release: https://github.com/LIBCSYS/JellyDazzle/releases/latest
The accent layers were never being drawn
On a Retina display JellyDazzle was showing you a ground and, at most, one layer on top of it. The accent and spark layers — the small bright ones that give the picture its snap — never appeared at all.
Not dim. Not washed out. Never drawn.
The engine has a load valve that thins the stack when frames get expensive. It latched the first time a frame ran long and then never released, because releasing required 120 consecutive fast frames and at 3456×2160 that never happens. One early hiccup removed half the layer stack for the rest of the session.
Measured on the headless harness at 3456×2160: the accent layer was present in 0.0% of frames before this build, and is present and visible after it.
That also explains why earlier attempts to fix "invisible accents" by adjusting blend modes and brightness never worked. They were adjusting the appearance of something that did not exist.
Also in this release
- The load valve now thins the stack instead of amputating it: a layer under pressure enters at half rate rather than being refused outright, and is only refused when the frame is genuinely over budget.
- A measurement harness for layer visibility, so this class of bug is caught by numbers instead of argument.
Honest note
The contrast and fog tuning behind this is not finished. This release fixes the categorical bug — the layers exist now — but how strongly they read against the ground is still being worked on, and the full multi-seed validation run is outstanding. If the picture looks busier or foggier than you expect at some resolutions, that is the open part, and it is being measured rather than guessed.
Install
Signed and notarised by Apple — it opens with no warning. Apple Silicon, macOS 11.0 or later.
JellyDazzle 3.0.3 (deprecated)
⚠️ Deprecated. This version is no longer supported. Use JellyDazzle 3.6.6 (or the App Store).
This download now delivers the current JellyDazzle — the link was kept so older bookmarks still work. Latest release: https://github.com/LIBCSYS/JellyDazzle/releases/latest
Signed as Developer ID Application: LIBCSYSTEMS LLC, notarised by Apple, ticket stapled. Downloads and opens with no warning, and works offline.
Patterns no longer drag a black box across the frame. A layer that zoomed out, panned or rotated used to tow a hard black rectangle behind it, because everything outside the source buffer was filled with opaque black. It looked intermittent because black is invisible under the max/screen/add blends and only showed under the default one. Out-of-bounds now mirrors back into the pattern, so it reflects at its own edge and continues past its box.
The first-run notice is honest now. It said "PRESS SPACE TO CONTINUE ANYWAY", which implied skipping it stopped the database build. It never did — the measuring carries on in the background either way. It now reads "PRESS SPACE TO DISMISS - IT KEEPS BUILDING".
Requires macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon.
JellyDazzle 3.0.2 (deprecated)
⚠️ Deprecated. This version is no longer supported. Use JellyDazzle 3.6.6 (or the App Store).
This download now delivers the current JellyDazzle — the link was kept so older bookmarks still work. Latest release: https://github.com/LIBCSYS/JellyDazzle/releases/latest
🔊 Play music first
JellyDazzle is audio-reactive — put something on before you watch it. Anything playing on your Mac: a record, a film, a livestream. On macOS 14.2+ it listens to the system output, so it follows whatever app is making the sound. In silence it still runs, but on internal clocks — and you are seeing maybe half of what it does.
✅ Signed by Apple — installs with no warnings
This build is code-signed as Developer ID Application: LIBCSYSTEMS LLC and notarised by Apple, with the notarisation ticket stapled so it verifies even offline.
spctl -a -vvv -t install JellyDazzle.app
accepted
source=Notarized Developer ID
origin=Developer ID Application: LIBCSYSTEMS LLC (46AXDWA6F8)
No "cannot verify" dialog. No right-click → Open trick. Download it, open it, done.
Mac App Store submission is in review — this direct download is live and supported either way.
Requirements
- Apple Silicon (M1 or later) — the rendering core is hand-written ARM64 assembly
- macOS 11 Big Sur or later. System-wide audio capture needs 14.2+; older systems fall back to the microphone
What it does
Listens to whatever your Mac is playing and paints to it. 634 routines — 24 in ARM64 assembly, 610 in C — across 180 colour schemes interpolated in OKLab.
Controls
| key | |
|---|---|
| C | new colours — jumps somewhere genuinely far from where it was |
| S | new shapes — retires the cast and refills |
| A · ? · ⌘? | help / about card |
| M | audio meter |
| F | full screen |
| ESC | quit |
Nothing strobes. Both C and S crossfade rather than cut — the engine's one law, and the release gate measures it.
New in 3.0.2
- C now reaches the whole library. It used to pick the single most-distant scheme, which is deterministic and symmetric — so it ping-ponged between two palettes and the other 178 never appeared. It now chooses at random among the most distant, never repeating the one it just left.
- A real Mac menu bar — Help ▸ JellyDazzle Help on ⌘?, plus the website and support contact. There is no F1 on macOS; ⌘? is the convention.
More
dazzle.jelia.nyc · About · Support · Privacy · The story
Privacy: no network code, no accounts, no analytics. Audio drives the current frame and is discarded — never recorded, stored, or sent. MIT licensed. jellydazzle@jelia.nyc