Press
Everything here is meant to be copied: how to describe Open DJ, and the files. Facts carry their date and the command that produced them.
In one line, and in one paragraph.
One line
Open DJ is a free alpha DJ app for Apple silicon Macs, with a four-deck screen laid out like rekordbox and typed controls that scripts and AI agents can drive.
One paragraph
Open DJ is an alpha DJ app for macOS on Apple silicon, built by Alex Foster with an agent build system. It keeps a four-deck performance screen that rekordbox users already know, imports an existing rekordbox library without changing it, and shows which tracks in a library are missing their files. Prepared stems and lyrics play inside the deck; making stems, or word timings for the word-level lyric lane, runs from a source checkout today, not in the Mac app. Most of its deck and mixer controls are typed commands, so an AI agent can operate, test and extend the app the same way a DJ plays it. In this alpha the Mac app does not support MIDI controllers, and making stems needs the developer setup. The code is Apache-2.0 licensed, and the open-dj library format it publishes is CC BY 4.0. The library layer dates from April 2026; the performance rig was started in July and built mostly in August and September 2026. Open DJ 1.0 alpha is its first announced release.
Naming
- Open DJ, two words. The wordmark is set in capitals.
- The stage word is alpha. The launch release is Open DJ 1.0 alpha; the April
v1.0tags belong to the library toolchain. - Not the OpenDJ LDAP directory server. The two projects are unrelated.
Accurate framing
- Say rekordbox-familiar. It is not a rekordbox replacement.
- It is not the first open-source DJ app: Mixxx has been developed since 2001.
- Until the public mirror is verified, say "Apache-2.0 licensed" rather than "open source".
- Do not say "two months". The performance rig was started in July 2026, and 88.6% of the commits since Wed 1 Jul landed in August and September, on a library layer from April 2026. It did not start from zero.
- "open-dj could rebuild itself from scratch in a week" is Alex Foster's stated goal for the build system, not a result. No timed rebuild has been run.
Dated facts.
Measured Fri 2 Oct 2026 on main at 487fa677d7. The commands are on How it was built.
Logo, screenshots, people.
The mark is two terracotta halves of a circle, slid apart along their cut. Keep its colors; place it on black or white.
Every logo file below, with usage notes and the font license, in one archive: open-dj-brand.zip.
The wordmark
Anybody 800 at width 150, in capitals, rendered from the shipped font subset. Transparent PNGs.
White, for dark backgrounds (SVG)
Black, for light backgrounds (SVG)
The colors
Mark dark #9c4b34
Mark light #d97757
Black #0a0a0a
White #f4f4f2
Screen capture: four decks loaded; the first two are playing, and the second is beat-synced to the first. The web UI from a development build at 487fa677d7, captured in Chromium on Fri 2 Oct 2026 with a generated test library and synthetic audio; not the signed Mac app, not real tracks. Full-size PNG.
Screen capture: two files were moved out of the library folder, and the app marks those rows as missing on its own. Same development build, browser, date and test library as above; not the signed Mac app, not real tracks. Full-size PNG.
Screen capture: lyric data drawn over the waveforms. The lyric text is test data written for the project's test suite, not a song, and the audio has no vocals, so this shows how lyrics are drawn, not how they are transcribed. The same development build at 487fa677d7, captured in Chromium on Sat 3 Oct 2026; not the signed Mac app. Full-size PNG.
