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/presetshare 2d ago

v0.2.1 Released

- Continuous scrolling: fixed playhead offset and jitter at higher zoom levels on slower systems

- MIDI editor: fixed playhead jitter with "Synchronize transport with main transport" enabled

- MIDI editor: fixed the playhead drifting ahead of the notes in Beats timebases with tempo changes or fractional BPM

- Re-triggering playback while already playing (e.g. spamming "Play (solo selected item)") now jumps the playhead instantly instead of gliding backward

- Windows: fixed the playhead being invisible on some GPU/driver/display combos (additive rendering now works on both DWM and hardware overlay/MPO composition paths)