Installation

Rmatrix is distributed via PyPI. You can install it globally using pipx (recommended) or in a virtual environment with pip.

Global (Recommended)
$pipx install rmatrix

Recommended: This allows you to run the `rmatrix` app from any directory without manually activating a virtual environment.

Local Environment
$pip install rmatrix

The rmatrix binary will be added to your path automatically.

Basic Usage

To launch the animation with system defaults, simply run:

$rmatrix

Alternatively, you can also run the app using the shorter rmx command in your terminal.

Press q or Ctrl+C to exit and return to your shell.

Command Line Flags

Fine-tune the stream using these parameters.

Shorthand
Flag
Description
-df
--default
Save current flags as defaults for future runs.
-b
--bookmark
Display centrally located glowing text.
-ch
--chars
Select character stream type (classic, binary, special).
-c
--color
Choose a color palette (see below).
-s
--speed
Animation speed multiplier (0.1 - 5.0).
-d
--density
Stream density (light, medium, heavy).
-l
--length
Trail length (short, medium, long).
-f
--fps
Target frames per second (1 - 60).
-mr
--mutation-rate
Frequency of glyph scrambling (0.0 - 1.0).

Color Palettes

Supported colors for the --color flag.

GREEN
RED
BLUE
CYAN
YELLOW
MAGENTA
WHITE
ORANGE
VIOLET
PINK
GOLD
SILVER
BLOOD
OCEAN

Requirements

  • Python 3.6+
  • A terminal with curses support (Standard on POSIX)
  • For Windows: Windows Terminal or PowerShell is recommended