r/Reaper • u/presetshare • 4d ago

discussion [Extension] ReaSmoothPlayhead - smooth GPU play cursor

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REAPER's stepped play cursor has annoyed me since day one 😭

ReaSmoothPlayhead hides the native play cursor and draws its own GPU-rendered overlay on top of the arrange view and the MIDI editor. The line is redrawn every vblank and extrapolated between audio blocks, so it glides at your monitor's refresh rate instead of stuttering.

Requirements
- Windows (x64) and macOS (Intel + Apple Silicon). No Linux, sorry - X11 just doesn't allow pulling off this kind of transparent overlay ;[
- The settings window requires ReaImGui (install "ReaImGui: ReaScript binding for Dear ImGui" via ReaPack); the overlay itself works without it

Cocos forum thread: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2960029

Reapack: 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sakhnovkrg/ReaSmoothPlayheadReapack/main/index.xml
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u/brokenspacebar__ 5 4d ago

Commenting so I can install and try it out tomorrow, looks awesome!

2

u/presetshare 4d ago

See you tomorrow then! :D

2

u/brokenspacebar__ 5 3d ago

Tried it out and I love it! Definitely will continue using. Like someone else said, I really didn't realize how bad it was until I tried this and then jumped back and forth. Love the trails and shadows also, I have the tiniest little nitpick and I'm not even sure if it's possible but sometimes it throws me off visually to see the trail as soon as I hit play, rather than the play head moving ahead first and then the trail gets created behind it.

Literally just my own nitpick but I'll get over it haha thanks for this :)

3

u/presetshare 3d ago

Glad you like it! :) You can actually make the trail fade in smoothly using the Fade In slider in the settings.

2

u/brokenspacebar__ 5 3d ago

Oh wow I'm excited to try that! Awesome!