Block Orb a black ball of blocks that pops to your music
A glossy black ball built from small cubes hovers over a red rug in a voxel Halloween music room, between a pipe organ, speaker stacks, a cauldron and jack-o'-lanterns. With music sync on, each part of the sound pushes rings of blocks out of it in its own colour, and a big hit blows its shell apart.
Free to install. Block Orb unlocks with Pro, $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Cancel anytime.
What you see on every new tab
Block Orb puts a ball about 22 blocks across in the middle of the New Tab page, hovering in a stone room made of voxels: an orange plank floor, a round red rug ringed with glowing glyphs, a pipe organ, three speaker stacks, a gramophone, a green cauldron, candles and carved pumpkins. At rest the ball is black and glossy. It is built for music.
Pop: rings of blocks slide out of the ball, up to about three blocks high, and travel across its surface. Blocks light up in the colour of the sound that pushed them while they are out, then go dark again. Where two rings cross, the stronger colour wins.
Slosh: the ball moves like jelly. Hits squash it, lean it and send an S-shaped wobble through its layers. While bass keeps coming, a short column of blocks with an orange tip hangs under it, the last block drops to the floor, lands, and is pulled back up.
Burst: the outer shell, about 2,800 blocks, flies off in bands of colour from red at the bottom to violet at the top, stops at the floor, passes behind the furniture, and snaps back in a little over a second.
The room: candle flames lean and shiver, each jack-o'-lantern flickers on its own, green bubbles rise from the cauldron, and the speaker rings glow in a slow pulse. The ball casts a blocky shadow and throws a pool of its current colours on the floor.
In silence: it bobs gently, one soft ring of colour crosses it every few seconds, and now and then it juggles three coloured blocks above itself for about eight seconds.
Nothing is a video. The room is a pre-rendered voxel picture that is re-lit live, one light at a time, and the orb, its loose blocks, the candle flames, speaker cones and bubbles are drawn live as cubes on your graphics card with WebGL.
What it reacts to
Music: with music sync on, the sound is split into seven bands. The deepest bass squashes and swells the ball and throws extra bubbles from the cauldron. Bass sends orange rings up from underneath and flashes the glyph ring on the floor. Low mids pop amber rings from the left face and thump the left speakers; high mids pop green rings from the right face and thump the right speakers, cones jumping out of the cabinets. Presence sends cyan rings from the corner facing you. Treble sends violet rings from the top, lights the organ's stops and puffs small violet and gold blocks out of its pipes. The very top makes single blocks sparkle. A bass hit clearly louder than the ones before it, or the first heavy one after a pause, bursts the shell, at most once every eight seconds.
Mouse: the ball leans a little toward your cursor. Over the ball, the blocks under the cursor sink into a dent that follows it, with a faintly lit rim, and dragging across it sends out white ripples, taller the faster you drag. Park the cursor for six seconds and the dent levels out.
Click: click the ball and its shell bursts and snaps back. Clicking anywhere else does nothing.
Night: after dusk the room's general light drops and cools, and the candles and lanterns shine brighter. The ball behaves the same.
Free or Pro?Pro
Ambient New Tab is free to install, with three free themes. Block Orb is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year, cancel anytime, and it unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as we release it. You can preview Block Orb full screen before you buy: open the Themes panel and rest your mouse on it. Changed your mind? 14-day refund, no questions.
Open a new tab and click the Themes pill in the bottom-right corner.
Pick Block Orb. Done.
Block Orb on a 1280×800 New Tab page.
Questions
Does it do anything without music?
Yes. After three seconds of silence it settles into quiet time: it bobs, a soft ring crosses it every few seconds, and about every half minute it juggles three blocks. The candles, pumpkins and cauldron keep going, and you can still dent it, ripple it and burst it with the mouse.
Is Block Orb free?
It is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year. It unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as it is released. Cancel anytime.
Where does the music come from?
Play music in any tab and click the Ambient icon on that tab. The extension measures that tab's sound on your own computer. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
Does it work on my phone?
No. It's a desktop browser extension for Chrome and Edge on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. If you're reading this on a phone, send yourself the link.
