matrixrain

The iconic Matrix digital rain as a drop-in canvas plugin. Ships with classic green katakana plus binary, emoji, terminal, bloodrain, arctic, and gbf themes — and a tiny API for live-tuning font size, speed, and density.

Demo

goboldlyforward.github.io/matrixrain — swap themes, drag the sliders, watch the rain react in real time.

What it does

Mounts a <canvas> inside any container, paints a per-frame trail-fade digital rain over it, and exposes a small live-tuning API. Resizes automatically with its host (via ResizeObserver), respects device pixel ratio, and supports transparent backgrounds so you can layer rain over your own gradients, images, or video.

Install

For now, download matrixrain.css and matrixrain.js from this repo. (npm publication pending.)

<link rel="stylesheet" href="path/to/matrixrain.css">
<script src="path/to/matrixrain.js"></script>

Usage

<div id="hero" style="height: 60vh"></div>

<script>
  const rain = new MatrixRain('#hero');

  // Live-tune anything, anytime.
  rain.setOptions({
    theme:    'binary',
    fontSize: 18,
    speed:    50,        // ms per frame; lower = faster
    density:  0.7,       // 0–1; fraction of columns actively raining
  });
</script>

new MatrixRain(target, options?) mounts a canvas into target (selector or element) and starts the animation. If target is itself a <canvas>, it paints directly into it.

Themes

Seven ship in the box. Each is a preset of charset · color · leadColor · background · fadeAlpha · glow · fontFamily.

Theme	Vibe
matrix	Classic green katakana + digits on black (default)
binary	0/1 in lime on black
emoji	Weather + cosmic emoji on midnight
terminal	Vintage amber on dark coal
bloodrain	Red on near-black, dense glow
arctic	Pale cyan on near-white (inverted)
gbf	Yellow binary on black (matches the GBF site)

Swap at any time:

rain.setOptions({ theme: 'bloodrain' });

Override any field per-instance — your overrides persist across theme swaps until you explicitly clear them with null:

// "Matrix charset, but in cyan"
new MatrixRain('#hero', { theme: 'matrix', color: '#22d3ee' });

// Later, fall back to the theme's color:
rain.setOptions({ color: null });

Define a new theme by extending MatrixRain.THEMES:

MatrixRain.THEMES.synthwave = {
  charset:    '01ABCDEF',
  color:      '#ff2e93',
  leadColor:  '#fff',
  background: '#1a0030',
  fadeAlpha:  0.06,
  glow:       8,
  fontFamily: '"Courier New", monospace',
};

rain.setOptions({ theme: 'synthwave' });

Options

new MatrixRain('#hero', {
  theme:       'matrix',     // 'matrix' | 'binary' | 'emoji' | 'terminal' | 'bloodrain' | 'arctic' | 'gbf'
  charset:     null,         // string or array; overrides theme's glyph set
  color:       null,         // CSS color; overrides theme
  leadColor:   null,         // brighter color for the leading head glyph; set false to disable
  background:  null,         // theme default, or 'transparent' to show the parent through
  fadeAlpha:   null,         // 0–1; trail-fade alpha per frame (lower = longer trails)
  fontSize:    16,           // px
  fontFamily:  null,         // overrides theme
  speed:       33,           // ms per frame
  density:     1.0,          // 0–1; fraction of columns actively raining
  glow:        null,         // px shadowBlur; overrides theme
  columnRatio: null,         // column step = fontSize * columnRatio (theme default 1.0)
  rowRatio:    1.0,          // row step = fontSize * rowRatio
  resetChance: 0.025,        // probability per frame a fallen drop resets to top
  paused:      false,
  autoStart:   true,
});

Methods

rain.start();
rain.pause();
rain.resume();
rain.stop();                 // clears canvas
rain.setOptions({ ... });    // merge + apply (hot-swap any option)
rain.resize();               // manual re-measure (auto via ResizeObserver)
rain.destroy();              // tear down canvas + listeners

Transparent over your own background

new MatrixRain('#hero', { background: 'transparent' });

When background: 'transparent', the plugin fades trails via globalCompositeOperation = 'destination-out', so whatever you paint on the host element (CSS gradient, image, video) shows through the rain.

Layer text & UI above the rain

The CSS hands you a zero-config stacking context — anything inside the host that isn't .matrixrain__canvas is auto-promoted above the canvas:

<header class="hero">
  <div id="rain"></div>
  <h1>Welcome to the desert of the real.</h1>
</header>

<style>
  .hero { position: relative; height: 60vh; }
  #rain { position: absolute; inset: 0; }
  .hero h1 { position: relative; z-index: 1; color: #fff; }
</style>

<script> new MatrixRain('#rain'); </script>

How the trail works

Each frame, the plugin paints a translucent fillRect over the whole canvas — this is the "fade" that turns yesterday's character into a dim ghost. Then it draws one fresh glyph per column at the current drop position. The brightest pixel is the head; everything above it is the same column's character history fading toward background.

When leadColor is set, the head is drawn in a brighter color, and the previous head (one row up) is re-drawn in the normal color — that downgrade is what gives the iconic single-bright-edge effect without needing per-row history.

Requirements

HTML, CSS, and ~5KB of JavaScript. No framework, no build step. Uses <canvas> + ResizeObserver.

Roadmap

• Canvas-based rain with theme presets
• Lead-head bright glyph (white-tipped column heads)
• DPR-aware crisp rendering
• ResizeObserver-driven auto-resize
• Live setOptions() for every field
• Theme swap with no color bleed
• Built-in themes: matrix, binary, emoji, terminal, bloodrain, arctic, gbf
• Transparent-background mode (composite over parent bg)
• Demo with controls + theme gallery
• Publish to npm (as @goboldlyforward/matrixrain)
• Optional matrixrain-rails gem wrapper
• GitHub Actions CI (stylelint + eslint)
• Deploy demo to gh-pages
• requestAnimationFrame-driven scheduling option (in addition to setInterval-style)
• Per-column speed jitter for varied fall rates
• Theme transitions (cross-fade between themes)

License

MIT — see LICENSE.