Toaster 0.4.20

A Doom fire, an old TV, the bass line by the beat, and the right tempo from the start.

• Fire, a new background (V). The old Doom fire in square pixels, lit by the song: the song sets how high it burns, the kick lifts it, the hats spit sparks, and on every drop the flames leap up and die back.
• CRT (Y). An old TV over everything: it comes on from a white line and goes off into a dot, slips into static on the drop, and every background is a channel, its number in the corner.
• Every kick, under a held bass. A kick that lands on a beat while the bass note rings on used to be heard as part of the note, so house and disco lines kept a beat missing. Now, once two of the bar's beats are kicks, a hit on a beat under a held note joins them: across our test songs the kick line shows 72% of the beats it should (up from 64%), and a clean four on the floor twice as often.
• The right tempo from the start. A syncopated intro (a riff in dotted 8ths, say) used to lock a third too fast and stay there for 15 to 40 seconds, or all song in Starboy's case. Now the first lock checks where the song's bars repeat: Gypsy Woman, Sunset Lover, Starships, Starboy and Saturn lock at their own tempo from the start, or come right in half the time.
• The bass line by the beat. The code used to give the bass one note a bar, and that note matched what the bass was playing about half the time. A new tracker follows the bass's pitch all the way through, and where the bass moves within a bar the code writes each note as it plays (Show Me Love: <[d2 f2 a1@2] [bb1@3 a1]>). Across our test songs the code's bass notes now match the song's about 83% of the time, up from 52%. The blocks and the song export (X) follow it too.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.20-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Mac: download Toaster-0.4.20-mac-universal.zip (it's built and added here a few minutes after the release), unzip it and drag Toaster into Applications. The first time, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

In a browser: toaster.locust.lol, nothing to install.

Toaster 0.4.19

The kick line comes in sooner, and on more songs.

• The kick line, sooner and on more songs. A soft, low sound off the kick's steps is now read as the bass, not as a kick that muddles the pattern. Across our test songs the kick line is now up for about two-thirds of each song (the median, up from 59%). Big gains on Starships, Show Me Love, Not Like Us, We Will Rock You and Delilah.
• The mini player's status shows whole (● LIVE), not cut short to "● LI…".

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.19-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Mac: download Toaster-0.4.19-mac-universal.zip (it's built and added here a few minutes after the release), unzip it and drag Toaster into Applications. The first time, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

In a browser: toaster.locust.lol, nothing to install.

Toaster 0.4.18

The sea redone round its lighthouse, the festival cleaned up, a star button, and no more freezes the first time a camera look comes on.

• The sea, redone round its lighthouse. A big red and white lighthouse on a rocky headland, the keeper's cottage beside it, its two beams sweeping round with the beat and flaring at you; the Milky Way rising over the water; the moon's light broken on the waves and running up the wet sand. It's a night scene now, whatever the theme.
• The festival, cleaned up. The stage's light lies on the lake in a calm column, the crowd reads as people (silhouettes against the light, every hand up on the drop), and it's at night too, under the Milky Way.
• The basement show is gone from the scenery: thirteen scenes, each one we're happy with.
• A star button by the name at the top: GitHub's logo, the star count rolling up, a click opens the project. If Toaster's useful to you, a star helps people find it.
• The camera looks come on straight away. The first time the dots, voxels, cut-out, windows or big eyes come on (K, C), the picture used to freeze for up to a second and a half while their models set up on the graphics card. Now it doesn't: on a fresh install the worst pause measured went from 1,535 ms to 24 ms. The person-finder and the face model now run on the processor, at the same speed.
• The eye, cleaned up. The window reflected beside its pupil is gone (painted out of the footage itself), and every stroke drawn in glyphs is clean at any screen size: the stars rushing past in the dive no longer turn into white blocks on 150% displays.
• Scenes changed quickly each decode from the one before, not from a scene long gone (pressing A twice in a row used to flash back to an old scene).
• The warp, the spectrum, the rain and the scope get ready in the background the first time, in the field of glyphs.
• The drop effect (B) starts off. The scenes take the drop themselves; B picks an effect if you want one.
• A faster start: the first scene is on screen in under a second from launch.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.18-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Mac: download Toaster-0.4.18-mac-universal.zip (it's built and added here a few minutes after the release), unzip it and drag Toaster into Applications. The first time, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

In a browser: toaster.locust.lol, nothing to install.

Toaster 0.4.17

The eye, a new scene; a Mac download; and no more black windows while things get ready.

• The eye (A in the scenery). A real eye, drawn in glyphs, looks out at you and blinks now and then. On a drop (D) the view glides into its pupil, which opens onto space: Hubble's photos of the Whirlpool galaxy and Saturn, drawn in glyphs like the eye. Eight bars later (four in a slow song) it comes back out.
• A Mac download. Every release now has Toaster-<version>-mac-universal.zip, one app for Intel and Apple silicon. It isn't signed by Apple, so the first time open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to Toaster and click Open Anyway. It asks to record system audio; allow it, that's how it hears what's playing.
• No black window while things get ready. The worlds, the chrome and the spectrogram now show the same field of glyphs as the scenery while they compile, then decode in. The spectrogram no longer holds the window up the first time.
• The worlds get ready in about half the time the first time after an update. On this PC, 26.6 s became 11.9 s, with every look's picture unchanged.
• 9:16 lets go of the window. Leaving the vertical layout (L) always gives the window back its old shape.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.17-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Mac: download Toaster-0.4.17-mac-universal.zip (it's built and added here a few minutes after the release), unzip it and drag Toaster into Applications.

In a browser: toaster.locust.lol, nothing to install.

Toaster 0.4.16

The city, the campfire and the snow redrawn by day, scenes that get ready in half the time, and recording that can't be spoiled by a slow disk.

• Three scenes, redrawn by day.

  • The city: in brick, stucco, slate and sage, its windows glass with sills, striped awnings over the shops, OPEN signs on dark boards, the towers behind in blue glass or warm stone, and the rainy sky in banks of low cloud.
  • The campfire: its meadow in sunlit patches, with wildflowers in drifts and the earth worn bare round the fire.
  • The snow: a clear winter sky, so the white peaks and the cabin's snowy roof finally stand out.

  Their nights are as they were.

• Quicker first shows. The garden, the koi pond and Halloween get ready in a third to a half less time the first time after an update. On this PC: the garden 13.3 to 8.4 s, the koi 5.0 to 2.5 s, Halloween 14.4 to 7.3 s. Every scene's picture is the same as before, checked pixel by pixel.

• Sturdier recording (M). A slow or failing disk now stops a recording cleanly and keeps what was written, and a failed recording can't spill into the next one. Stopping always finishes. Drop clips (J) clean up after a broken recorder, say so, and switch off instead of jamming.

• Chord changes. The spectrogram and the dots camera mark a change of chord only when the chord really changes.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.16-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

In a browser: toaster.locust.lol, nothing to install.

Toaster 0.4.15

The sharks redrawn in pixels with their shimmering letters kept, a change of scene that decodes in, and a field of glyphs instead of a black window while the scenery gets ready.

• The sharks in pixels. The hammerhead, the blacktip and the leopard shark have crisp pixel shapes and fins, and they still wear their skin of letters. The letters ride along with each shark as it swims and now and then flash a colour or white. The stingray and the jellyfish are redrawn the same way, and the fish made of code swims in front of them again.
• A change of scene decodes in. Pick another scene (A) and it spreads out from the toaster a cell at a time, each cell flickering through glyphs as the wave reaches it.
• No more black window while it gets ready. The first start after an update, or a first visit to the website, has to build the scenery's shaders, which can take a few seconds. A field of glyphs swells in the theme's colours while it does, and the first scene decodes in over it.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.15-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

In a browser: toaster.locust.lol, nothing to install.

Toaster 0.4.14

A start in about half a second, space as a thirteenth scene, the koi pond's koi redrawn in pixels, and sturdier updates.

• Starts in about half a second.

  • Every start used to compile the first scene's shader again, even after a normal restart: 5 seconds and more before the scenery showed.
  • Chromium was keeping compiled shaders in memory only, so they never reached the disk cache.
  • Now they're kept between launches. A restart shows the first scene in about half a second, and every other scene is ready a second later, where they took minutes. The first launch after an update still compiles, once.

• Space, a thirteenth scene:

  • On the moon, the toaster floats on its own power cord, plugged into a lander.
  • The Earth, Saturn and an astronaut hang in the sky, Colin's own pixel art.
  • The Milky Way crosses it, with a glowing core and its dust rift, and Andromeda sits beside it.
  • On a drop, the toast pops and tumbles off in zero-g while meteors streak by.
  • There's no day in space, so it's night whatever the theme. The code keeps its own boxes, so it stays readable in the light themes too.

• The koi pond's koi, redrawn in pixels: clean patterns, see-through fins and tails, eyes, the gold ones glinting, and their shadows on the bottom by day. They swim and feed as before.

• The sharks get ready in half the time the first time after an update. Their shader compiles about twice as fast, with the picture unchanged.

• Sturdier updates:

  • a download that stalls or breaks gives up cleanly and leaves your Toaster as it was;
  • only GitHub's own downloads are taken;
  • a failed update tidies up after itself;
  • unpacking an update no longer holds up the window.

Toaster 0.4.13

Every scene redrawn, a twelfth scene (the basement show), D's drop reaching the scenery, a quicker start, and fixes from outside code reviews.

• Every scene redrawn. Water, rock, ground and buildings are solid shapes now instead of loose characters, with pixel art where it looks better:

  • a pixel moon;
  • a campfire that leaps and roars on the kicks;
  • a trout leaping at the falls;
  • the garden's koi;
  • a flock of birds by day;
  • a sailboat on the sea's horizon and a crab walking the beach.

  Halloween has a great moon by night and a banded sun going down by day. The city's towers are detailed by day, and its puddles hold the sky.

• The basement show, a twelfth scene:

  • the toaster at the mic with its guitar in a brick basement, a drummer behind it;
  • the cans sweeping the haze and smoke every 8 bars;
  • on a drop, a strobe, confetti and every hand up.

• D drops the scenery too. Before, D (drop now) set off the drop effect, but the scenery never heard it. Now on a drop:

  • the toast pops;
  • the koi dart in and ring the toaster;
  • the sharks charge the bait ball;
  • the festival's fireworks go up;
  • the falls' trout leaps.

  With the drop effect turned off (B), it stays off.

• Made for reels. In a tall (9:16) window with the code hidden, the scenery's land rises, so the toaster sits above the caption a phone lays over the bottom of a reel. It glides up when you press Z. On a drop the koi ring the toaster in a tall window too, and they follow it when Z moves it.

• Starts quicker. Each background is made the first time you pick it, not all at startup. The worlds get ready in the background once the first background is showing.

• Z hides the code everywhere. The syntax-error box hides with the code, the glass stops showing it magnified, and the worlds use the whole window.

• Exporting (X) a long set is ten times quicker, and the window keeps going while it writes. A three-hour set used to freeze the window for 1.7 s. Now it's written in the background while the listening and drawing carry on.

• The code rain rains your code again. It had filled with plus signs from the drum grid's boxes.

• Hand tracking tells you when the face or the cut-out can't start, and keeps the hands going.

• Resizing the window keeps the sharks and the koi where they were. Before, every fish jumped somewhere new on every frame of a drag.

• The window's own buttons fit a narrow window. At the smallest size, mini and 9:16 included, every button sits clear of Windows' buttons.

• The scenery:

  • a scene that fails to compile is left out instead of blanking the scenery for the session;
  • a hand on every raised arm at the festival;
  • the koi feed tidily near the window's edge, and a koi's fin no longer cuts a hole in the one below it;
  • the stingray, the code fish and the pond's petals no longer jump every 17 minutes.

• The worlds start their looks a few frames apart instead of all in the first frame, and stop measuring the code's layout every frame.

• Smaller things:

  • the machine info (I) no longer leaves an empty box in the corner when it's off (it showed in every recording);
  • drop clips (J) save in the background;
  • the beat tracker drops old readings at once after a pause in the music;
  • when the beat tracker double-checks a tempo change, it counts only the hits that fit;
  • the mini player and 9:16 change the layout only once the window has changed;
  • a failed mic check or song file no longer leaves anything open;
  • the now-playing helper starts a moment after the window.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.13-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Toaster 0.4.11

Two new scenes, the festival and the koi pond; the garden and the sharks redrawn; a smoother start after updates.

• The koi pond. Five koi swim a pond seen from above: a kohaku, a showa, a sanke, a yamabuki and an orange ogon, their fins and tails see-through. Lily pads sit in the corners, two in flower, and the toaster floats on a pad of its own, a ripple spreading from it on each kick. When the toast pops, the nearest koi comes for the crumbs. On the drop they all do, gathering round the toaster like the petals of a flower. Click the water to drop food, and the three nearest come to it.
• The festival. The toaster DJs on a stage at the edge of a lake in the mountains. Its lights' beams sweep round every two bars and flare on the kicks, and the screen behind the decks plays the music as bars. Fireworks go up every 8 bars and on the drop, and the crowd at the water's edge throws its arms up. By day it's an afternoon set.
• The garden, redrawn: the cherry tree in full blossom, a pagoda on the hill, the lanterns breathing with the loudness, the bridge's reflection closing the ring.
• The sharks have company:
  • jellyfish rising, pulsing with the beat;
  • a fish made of code, its scales rolling through digits;
  • a blue-spotted stingray gliding along the bottom;
  • the little fish as soft wisps.
• A smoother first start after an update. The scenery now makes its scenes one at a time, the one you're looking at first, instead of all at once. There are no more freezes while they're made, and the first scene comes in about twice as fast.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.11-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Toaster 0.4.10

Hide the code, a redone waterfall, and the scenery polished all over.

• Z hides the code, for using Toaster as a visualizer: just the visuals, the code still written underneath (Z again shows it). The scenery opens out into the room the code kept: the sharks' float comes to the middle, and in a tall window Halloween's moon rises into it.
• The waterfall, redone. Its water pours in unbroken streams that quicken as they fall, a dimmer sheet behind them. Each kick sends a surge of white racing down it and throws spray up from its foot, and a drop swells the whole falls. At night an aurora hangs over it, and the falls and the aurora are mirrored in the pool, with foam drifting off across it.
• The sharks' frenzy. A bait ball of fish circles the toaster's float; on the drop the sharks charge it and cut through it over the toaster.
• The lighthouse stands straight now, and its two beams sweep round in perspective, one flaring at you on each bar's first beat.
• Halloween: the jack-o'-lanterns are carved, each with its own face, and lit from inside; the bats beat their wings with the beat, their eyes glinting.
• The aurora over the snow hangs in smooth, unbroken rays.
• The beat follows a DJ mix into the next song sooner, and a lock that came out a few percent off its octave now gets put right (We Will Rock You).
• Opens straight away, even the first time, or the first after a graphics driver update: the worlds' graphics are prepared in the background now, where before they could hold the window frozen for a minute. The worlds' looks come in right on the drop, and the new waterfall shows without a stutter the first time.

Windows: if you have 0.3.9 or later, Toaster offers this update by itself. Otherwise:

1. Download Toaster-0.4.10-win-x64.zip.
2. Unzip it anywhere and double-click Toaster.exe.
3. The first time, Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" because the app isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.