Terminal-based Matrix digital rain effect built in Rust. Cross-platform with Windows as the primary target.

Features true-color gradient trails, film-authentic katakana characters, gold highlights, character mutation, and a flexible effect system.

• True-color gradients: Smooth 24-bit RGB fading from bright white head through vivid green to dark tail
• Film-authentic characters: Half-width katakana mixed with digits and symbols
• Gold highlights: Occasional gold characters like in the original Matrix films
• Character mutation: Characters flicker and change over time
• 150+ color palettes: 9 hand-tuned featured palettes + all 148 CSS Level 4 named colors
• Multiple character sets: Matrix, ASCII, binary, digits, katakana, latin
• 8 visual effects: Classic rain, binary, cascade, pulse, glitch, fire, ocean, parallax
• Smooth transitions: Crossfade blending when switching between effects
• Configurable: Speed, density, FPS, palette, and charset via CLI flags
• TOML config file: Named presets, persistent defaults, platform-native config path
• CRT simulation: Scanlines, phosphor glow, screen flicker, and noise post-processing
• Interactive controls: Adjust speed, density, and effects in real-time with keyboard
• Cross-platform: Windows Terminal, PowerShell, cmd.exe, Linux, macOS

Classic green	Fire effect	Purple palette

Red palette	Gold dense	Gold classic

Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:

• Windows: digital_rain-windows-x86_64.zip
• Linux: digital_rain-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

Extract and run. No dependencies required.

Requires Rust 1.85+.

git clone https://github.com/HerbHall/DigitalRain.git
cd DigitalRain
cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/digital_rain.exe (Windows) or target/release/digital_rain (Linux/macOS).

cargo run --release

digital_rain [OPTIONS]

Press q, Esc, or Ctrl+C to quit. Press ? while running to show the keybindings help overlay.

All 148 CSS Level 4 named colors are also available as palettes. Gradients are auto-generated from the base color using HSL math. Examples: coral, tomato, dodgerblue, hotpink, indigo, springgreen, crimson, orchid.

Use --list-colors to see the full list. Aliases: monochrome -> silver.

# Classic green Matrix rain
digital_rain

# Red rain, double speed, sparse density
digital_rain --color red --speed 2.0 --density 0.5

# Binary rain in cyan (hacker aesthetic)
digital_rain --charset binary --color cyan

# Slow gold rain, heavy density
digital_rain --color gold --speed 0.5 --density 2.0

# Purple synthwave at 60fps
digital_rain --color purple --fps 60

# CSS named colors work directly
digital_rain --color coral
digital_rain --color dodgerblue --speed 1.5
digital_rain --color hotpink --charset binary

# Multi-hue featured palettes
digital_rain --color fire
digital_rain --color ocean --density 2.0
digital_rain --color synthwave --fps 60

# Fully randomized effect and parameters
digital_rain --random

# Auto-cycle: randomize every 30 seconds
digital_rain --random --timer 30

# CRT monitor simulation (scanlines, glow, flicker, noise)
digital_rain --crt

# Subtle CRT effect
digital_rain --crt --crt-intensity 0.3

# Heavy CRT with gold palette
digital_rain --crt --crt-intensity 1.0 --color gold

# Fire effect
digital_rain -e fire

# Ocean waves
digital_rain -e ocean

# Glitch rain with purple synthwave and CRT
digital_rain -e glitch -c purple --crt

# Multi-layer parallax depth rain
digital_rain -e parallax

# Save a preset
digital_rain --save-preset cyberpunk -e glitch -c purple --crt -s 1.5

# Load a preset
digital_rain --preset cyberpunk

# Load a preset but override speed
digital_rain --preset cyberpunk -s 3.0

While running, use these keys to adjust the rain in real-time:

Speed and density are clamped to the range 0.1x - 10.0x. Status messages appear briefly at the bottom of the screen when parameters change.

DigitalRain supports a TOML configuration file with default settings and named presets. The config file is auto-located at the platform-standard config directory:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\digitalrain\config.toml
• Linux: ~/.config/digitalrain/config.toml
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/digitalrain/config.toml

Priority: CLI flags > preset values > config defaults > hardcoded defaults.

[defaults]
effect = "classic"
speed = 1.0
color = "classic"
charset = "matrix"
fps = 30
crt = false
crt_intensity = 0.7

[presets.cyberpunk]
effect = "glitch"
color = "purple"
charset = "ascii"
speed = 1.5
crt = true

[presets.retro]
effect = "classic"
color = "gold"
crt = true
crt_intensity = 1.0

[presets.inferno]
effect = "fire"
speed = 1.2

• All 148 CSS Level 4 named colors available as palettes (e.g. --color coral)
• Auto-generated gradients from base color via HSL color space math
• 3 new hand-tuned multi-hue palettes: fire, ocean, synthwave
• GitHub Actions CI (Windows + Linux) and automated release workflow
• Pre-built binaries for Windows and Linux on every release
• MIT license, CHANGELOG, CONTRIBUTING guide, and issue templates

• 7 new visual effects: binary, cascade, pulse, glitch, fire, ocean, parallax
• Crossfade transitions between effects (~0.75s)
• TOML configuration file with named presets

See CHANGELOG.md for the full version history.

• Language: Rust (edition 2024)
• Terminal: crossterm (cross-platform terminal manipulation)
• CLI: clap (argument parsing)
• RNG: rand (character selection, timing)
• Config: toml + serde (TOML configuration file)
• Platform: dirs (platform-native config directory)

MIT