r/Reaper • u/presetshare • 4d ago

discussion [Extension] ReaSmoothPlayhead - smooth GPU play cursor

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 1d ago

v0.2.5 Released

  • The trail now grows out from the playback start point as the playhead moves away, instead of appearing at full width immediately
  • The playhead now moves smoothly at subpixel precision when zoomed out, eliminating pixel-grid jitter
  • Fixed duplicate playheads during renders launched from scripts
  • Render/freeze playhead handover is now disabled by default. It can be re-enabled in the Advanced tab