Lofi Cities turns the browser into pixel-art city nights with live lofi

Lofi Cities is a free web app that turns a browser tab into a quiet pixel-art city at night, with lofi music composed on the spot while you listen. It needs no install and no account, shows no pop-ups, and runs on computers, phones and tablets. The project was posted to Hacker News as a Show HN submission.

Sixteen pixel-art cities

Every scene is a 480×270 pixel animation that loops seamlessly every four minutes. Each city has its own weather, landmarks and ambient sounds: rain on an attic window in Paris, neon signs and wet asphalt in Tokyo, snow on a bridge in New York, fog on the river in London, a harbour light show in Hong Kong.

The city picker holds sixteen places. Paris, Tokyo, New York, London, Rio de Janeiro and Istanbul came first; Hong Kong, Sydney, San Francisco, Hamburg and Amsterdam followed, then Dubai, Madrid, Rome, Prague and Munich. A Tour chip switches city every 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, or follows the night by showing the city closest to 1 am local time.

Music that never runs out

Tracks are synthesized in the browser with the Web Audio API: a chord progression, a drum groove, a bass line and often a melody, finished with tape wobble and vinyl crackle. The Vibe panel sets the style, from jazzhop (the default: a Rhodes, jazzy chords and a swung beat at 68 to 88 BPM) to piano, ambient, bossa, synth, house, guitar, sad and medieval.

A Weather chip adds rain, snow, falling autumn leaves or a clear night to any city, and the city sounds and track titles follow it. Music and city sounds have separate volume controls.

One chat for every city

In the update of 28 September, chat changed: everyone listening now shares one room whichever city they are watching, and each name carries the city its author is on, which can be tapped to go there. If two people use the same name, each gets a short tag such as „sleepy fox ·3f“ so they are not confused. Messages are kept for three hours.

The same day the project opened a Discord server for city requests, and the top of the page on phones was tidied: the city name, tagline, local time, links and the live listener count now sit in one card. Lofi Cities also offers focus and sleep timers, a 1080p PNG frame export, offline use after the first visit and a browser-source mode for OBS. It is made by Safa Elmali.