COSMOSTRIX

High-performance cinematic terminal renderer

Demo

Watch full video demo (47s)

Watch on YouTube

Features

• 42 built-in color schemes and 24 character set presets
• Cinematic animation engine with phosphor persistence, depth fog, and parallax layers
• Configurable speed, density, FPS, and glitch intensity
• Alternate screen with diff-based rendering — no scrollback spam
• Adaptive throttling: reduces CPU usage when idle
• Screensaver mode
• Cross-platform: Linux, macOS, Windows, Android (Termux)

Requirements

• Rust stable toolchain to build from source
• A terminal supporting ANSI escape sequences, alternate screen, and raw mode
• Best results with 256-color or truecolor terminals

Quickstart

# Run from source
cargo run --release

# Build a release binary
cargo build --release

# Run with a color scheme
./target/release/cosmostrix --color rainbow --speed 12

Installation

GitHub Releases (prebuilt binaries)

Download from Releases, verify the checksum, and place cosmostrix in your PATH.

Available platforms:

• Linux x86_64: v1 (compatible), v2, v3, v4
• macOS: darwin-aarch64-native (Apple Silicon)
• Windows: windows-x86_64, windows-aarch64-native
• Android (Termux): android-aarch64-native

REPO="oxyzenQ/cosmostrix"
TAG="v2.0.0-stable.1"
PLATFORM="linux-x86_64-v3"
curl -LO "https://github.com/${REPO}/releases/download/${TAG}/cosmostrix-bin-${TAG}-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz"
curl -LO "https://github.com/${REPO}/releases/download/${TAG}/cosmostrix-bin-${TAG}-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz.sha512"
sha512sum -c "cosmostrix-bin-${TAG}-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz.sha512"
tar -xzf "cosmostrix-bin-${TAG}-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz"
./cosmostrix -i

AUR (Arch Linux)

paru -S cosmostrix-bin    # or: yay -S cosmostrix-bin

From source

git clone https://github.com/oxyzenQ/cosmostrix.git
cd cosmostrix
cargo install --path .
cosmostrix -i

Usage

cosmostrix                           # default settings
cosmostrix --color rainbow --speed 12   # color + speed
cosmostrix --screensaver              # exit on keypress
cosmostrix --message "wake up, neo"   # overlay message
cosmostrix --charset katakana         # character set
cosmostrix --low-power                # power-saving mode

CLI options

Run cosmostrix --help for common options or cosmostrix --help-detail for the full reference.

COMMON OPTIONS
  -c, --color <name>        Color theme
     --charset <name>       Character preset
  -f, --fps <1-240>         Target FPS
  -S, --speed <0.001-1000>  Rain speed
  -d, --density <0.01-5.0>  Rain density
  -s, --screensaver         Exit on keypress
  -m, --message <text>      Overlay message
     --low-power            Power-saving mode
     --glitch-level <level> Glitch intensity (none|subtle|default|intense)

DIAGNOSTICS
     --doctor               Compatibility report
     --benchmark            Renderer benchmark
  -i, --info                Build and runtime information

DISCOVERY
     --list-colors          Show available color themes
     --list-charsets        Show available charset presets
     --defaults             Show the default runtime profile

Runtime controls

  q / Esc       Quit              p          Pause / resume
  c / C         Cycle theme       s / S      Cycle charset
  [ / ]         Density           Up / Down  Speed
  g             Toggle glitch     Tab        Toggle shading
  Space         Reseed animation  m          Cycle profile

Config file

Persistent defaults can be set in ~/.config/cosmostrix/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/cosmostrix/config).

color = ocean
charset = matrix
fps = 60
speed = 10
density = 1.5
glitch-level = default

CLI arguments always take precedence over config file values. See --defaults for the curated default profile.

Color schemes

42 themes available. Run --list-colors to see all, including space-themed sets (cosmos, nebula, stars, aurora, galaxy, supernova, and more).

Character sets

24 presets available. Run --list-charsets to see all (binary, matrix, katakana, braille, cyberpunk, hacker, and more).

Performance & benchmarking

See benchmark/README.md for profiling artifacts and the reproducible benchmark script.

Release notes

v2.0.0-stable.1

• Fixed stale glyph artifacts in the top visible rows during charset and theme changes.
• Fixed long-idle rain/trail resync issues with wall-clock redraw scheduling and focus/input redraw resync.
• Clarified benchmark dirty-cell and color-mode metrics so differential rendering reports are easier to interpret.
• Fixed direct-color auto-detection for xterm-direct and tmux-direct.
• Removed unused low-value support code while preserving rendering behavior.
• Completed 10h+ visual soak checks across Alacritty, Konsole, and WezTerm.
• Resource monitoring found no memory, file descriptor, thread, swap, CPU, or IO leak during the release soak.

Development

cargo test --all
cargo fmt --all
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

Release process

Create a release by pushing a v* tag. See workflow/about-ci.md for CI and release workflow details.

Contributing

PRs and issues are welcome. Please run cargo fmt and cargo clippy before submitting.

Support

cosmostrix is an open-source project built and maintained independently.

If this project helped you, or saved development time, you can support future maintenance here:

Support is optional. The project remains open-source.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. Brand usage governed by TRADEMARK.md.