RizlDizl

Your keyboard lights up when you type.

RizlDizl is reactive RGB lighting for Razer keyboards on macOS. Hit a key, a ripple spreads out from it. That's the whole idea. Razer's own software is Windows-only, so I built the Mac version I wanted.

macOS app — coming soon Read the keystroke code →

Not released yet — I'm still polishing. Building it in the open in the meantime.

What it is

A little menu-bar app. It watches what you type and paints light across the keys in response — nothing more. It runs quietly, stays out of your way, and does one thing: makes your board react.

It works with Razer keyboards (built and tested on the Ornata Chroma V2). Your keyboard keeps working as a keyboard the entire time.

The effects

Ripple

A ring of light spreads out from each key you press, fading as it goes.

Centipede

Each press sends a little segmented crawler scurrying across the board.

AlphaStick

The letter you typed lights up, in place, right where your finger landed.

AlphaSplat

Letters march in from the edge and scroll across like a ticker, in the order you typed them.

Yes, it reads your keystrokes

It has to — reacting to your typing is the entire point. So I'm not going to be cagey about it. Here's the deal, and you can check every word of it:

Keystrokes are read only to figure out which key lit up (and, for the letter effects, which letter). They are never saved to disk, never buffered, and never sent anywhere. There is no network code in the part that touches your keys.

I can say that, or you can just look. The entire keystroke-handling layer is open source — one small file you can read top to bottom: RizlDizlScaryBitz. If that's not good enough, don't install it. That's a reasonable call.

What it costs

Free to download, with a few effects to start. The rest are a couple bucks each, or grab them all in a bundle. No subscription, no account, no login. You can preview every effect on your own keyboard before you pay for one.

The honest version

This is a lighting toy, not essential software. One person made it — me — because I have a Razer keyboard and a Mac and wanted the lights to do something fun. It's not affiliated with Razer in any way. If it makes your desk a little nicer and earns me a few bucks for the trouble of putting it out there, that's the whole deal. No grand plan.