UI sound themes: change every sound with one command

Pick a sound theme (minimal, playful, mechanical or retro) and switch the personality of every UI sound in your app with one command, without touching code.

A theme is a set of sound definitions. Every first-party theme implements the same 43 semantic sounds, so you can switch themes without changing any code.

Built-in themes

Theme	Character
minimal	Quiet and precise. Pure sine tones and soft air.
playful	Bouncy and bright. Springy bloops and pentatonic chimes.
mechanical	Tactile. Key switches, latches and relays.
retro	8-bit. Square waves and bit-crushed noise.

minimal is the default. Preview every theme at audx.site.

Sounds with the same role are normalized to the same loudness across themes, so switching themes doesn’t make your app suddenly louder or quieter.

Pick a theme at setup

init asks which theme to use. To skip the prompt, pass --theme:

npx @litlab/audx init --yes --theme mechanical

Switch themes

npx @litlab/audx theme playful

This regenerates every installed sound from the new theme and updates theme in audx.json, so sounds you add later come from it too. Your imports stay the same.

To see the current theme and the available ones:

npx @litlab/audx theme
npx @litlab/audx list --themes

Mix themes

add --theme pulls individual sounds from another theme without changing your default:

npx @litlab/audx add toggle --theme retro --overwrite

Each sound file records which theme it came from, so update pulls changes from the right place. Running theme <name> again moves every sound back to one theme.

Customized sounds

Sounds you customize on audx.site are marked as custom in their file header. theme and update leave them alone. To replace them anyway:

npx @litlab/audx theme minimal --force

Keep sounds up to date

Built-in themes get refinements over time. Check for changes, then pull them:

npx @litlab/audx update --check
npx @litlab/audx update

update rewrites only the files that changed and skips customized sounds.

Next

Create a custom theme

Start from a built-in theme and make it your own.