You are the instrument. Record short selfie clips — a clap, a beep, a "tss", your face making any noise — and each clip becomes a playable video+sound pad. Tap pads to play them, place them on a step grid to build a beat, then export the whole thing as a beat-synced 9:16 music video made of you.
Everything — recording, chopping, sequencing, effects, video rendering — happens 100% in your browser, on your device. No account, no upload, no server doing the work. Your clips and beats never leave your phone unless you share them. (Details: LEGAL.)
Three big keycaps at the top of ⚙ OPTIONS get you from zero to a beat fast:
Record one ~10-second take (make 8 different sounds — beatbox, clap, hum, hiss!) and the app builds a whole kit: it analyzes your take and auto-chops it into 8 role-assigned pads — the loudest/deepest hit becomes the KICK (tuned a full octave down + low-pass filtered, punchy decay), the noisiest becomes the HAT (an octave up + crisp high-pass), the loudest remaining becomes the SNARE (high-passed for snap), your longest sustained sound becomes the VOX (kept clean), and the rest become PERCs pitched around the kit — one gets delay, one gets reverb. Then it drops a power-pattern groove on top, sets the BPM, and you're ready to PLAY and EXPORT. Countdown 3·2·1 → 🔴 recording bar → done. ■ CANCEL any time — your previous pads and pattern stay untouched. Note: it replaces your current pads + pattern (it asks first).
One tap opens the style picker: choose one of the 8 grooves or hit 🎲 RANDOM (random never repeats the same style twice in a row). It overwrites the whole pattern incl. step pitches and ■ stops, and sets the style's BPM — the picker warns you, CANCEL backs out. The library (style + BPM): HOUSE 124 · BOOM BAP 92 · TRAP 140 · TECHNO 132 · DEMBOW 96 · DRUM'N'BASS 174 · DISCO 118 · BREAKBEAT 110. The groove fills ALL pads you've recorded: by pad order the 1st = kick lane, 2nd = snare, 3rd = hat, 4th = perc — and every further pad gets a matching layer (shaker, snare ghosts, sub doubles, answer perc, ticks, offbeat shade, bar-end fill, kick echo). Fewer pads simply use fewer lanes, so it works from one pad up.
A guided ~1-minute walkthrough to your first beat: comic speech bubbles point at the real controls and advance when you actually DO the step — power on → record 2 pads → place 3 hits → ▶ PLAY → 🎉 celebration. It only ADDS to your session (never deletes anything), you can ✕ exit any time, and the keycap shows a ✓ once Level 1 is done. More levels coming soon.
Each track row = its pad on the left + that pad's steps on the right (16 steps wrap as 2 rows of 8 — the whole pattern is always visible, no sideways scrolling). The grid loops; a hit triggers that pad's sound (and its video in exports).
A live looper, separate from the step grid: pick a loop length (4s / 8s / 16s), hit ▶ Loop, then jam on the pads — every tap is captured and replays each cycle. 🎤 Vocals arms a mic overdub: it starts recording at the next loop start, records one pass, then sings along every cycle. 🧹 Loop clears taps + vocals. Honest note: the jam loop is a live-performance layer — it is NOT written into the step pattern, so audio/video exports (which render the pattern grid) won't contain it. Put keepers into the grid.
The mastering chain lives in ⚙ OPTIONS → 🎛 MASTERING: a level meter (green ok · yellow loud · red = clipping, with a ⚠ CLIP warning), a Compressor (Off / Glue / Punch / Squash / Warm), and a Limiter (Off / Safe −1dB — the default / Loud −0.3 / Hard −0.1) with a live gain-reduction readout. Defaults = Master 95% + Limiter Safe: loud but unclipped.
Open with the ✎ pencil on a pad (or long-press the pad). The simple view shows the clip video, the waveform with Start/End trim faders, a per-pad Volume fader (0–200%), the trimmed length, and ▶ Preview / ✓ Apply right at the top. ⚙ Advanced… reveals the full FX rack:
✓ Apply (top or bottom) saves your changes; ✕ or Cancel closes without saving. ▶ Preview always plays the trimmed sample WITH the current FX.
⚙ OPTIONS → 💾 SESSIONS: name it, hit 💾 Save (a little "saved!" flies out), and your whole session — clips, FX, pattern, BPM — is stored on your device (IndexedDB). It survives reloads and restarts. 📂 Load any saved session from the list (the name field prefills so re-saving is one tap), 🗑 deletes the selected one. Nothing is uploaded anywhere — sessions exist only in this browser on this device.
Same section as Sessions: ⬇ WAV and ⬇ MP3 bounce the pattern grid offline (faster than real time, studio-clean — not a mic recording of playback). Loops (1–256) sets how many times the pattern repeats when 🎞 Progression is OFF; with Progression ON the arrangement decides the length (it applies to WAV/MP3 too). Files download named after your session.
The big 🎬 EXPORT VIDEO button renders your beat as a vertical 9:16 music video, beat-synced: pads light up, clips fire on their hits, FX pump with the music. A C64 disk-load bar shows render progress. When it's done you get a share card — 📤 Share opens your phone's native share sheet with the mp4 (falls back to a download), or ⬇ Save to device.
Every export uses the offline renderer: 720×1280 / 30 fps, rendered on-device with WebCodecs — usually faster than the video plays. Nothing is captured from the screen in real time, so a dimming display, a notification or a slow phone can NOT freeze the picture; the screen is also kept awake while it renders. If a render ever fails, the app says so and you simply tap export again — it never silently ships a broken file.
On iPhone & Safari the SOUND pass runs once in real time (the progress bar shows it — about as long as the video), because Apple's AAC encoder is reached through the system recorder; the picture still renders offline at full speed. Either way the result is a standard mp4 (H.264 + AAC) that plays and shares everywhere.
Beat-reactive glitch destruction with an Amount dial and individual toggles: RGB Split · Datamosh · Pixel Crush · Static · Matrix · CRT · Shake · Death Flash. One-tap ☠️ Death Presets: DEATH GLITCH · Datamosh · Matrix Rain · Kernel Panic · Signal Lost · CRT Death · Glitch Off.
Progression (ON by default) turns your loop into a multi-bar arrangement: tracks fade in and out and looks/glitch presets switch at bar boundaries, beat-synced. Pick from 20 arrangements (🏗 Classic Build to 🌟 THE 42) and set the length in Bars (1–256). The minimap previews the selected arrangement bar by bar — cell fill = active tracks, color = glitch heat, top tick = look change. Applies to video AND WAV/MP3 exports.
SelfieBeats is an installable web app: use your browser's "Add to Home Screen" / "Install" and it launches fullscreen in portrait, like a native app. After the first load the app shell is cached, so it opens and works offline — the camera itself needs a secure (HTTPS) context, which selfiebeats.com always is.
Privacy, short version: today your recordings, beats and sessions are created and stored locally on your device, and content leaves it only when YOU share or save it out. Accounts/cloud features may roll out later — the full and current version always lives at LEGAL.
© McGrinsey UG (haftungsbeschränkt) · SelfieBeats manual v1 · matches app v28