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What is LRC Editor?

LRC Editor is a desktop app for creating and time-syncing LRC lyric files - the .lrc files that make lyrics scroll in sync with a song in music players and karaoke apps.

The way you sync is the point: you load a track, get your lyric lines into the editor, then press a single key on each line as the song plays and its timestamp is stamped on the spot. A built-in Reaction Delay quietly compensates for the gap between hearing a line and pressing the key, so the timing stays accurate, and a Verify pass plays the finished file back hands-free - auto-advancing through every line so you can catch any stamp that drifted.

Everything else hangs off that core: loading audio and lyrics, building the line list, fine-tuning individual stamps, editing the song's metadata, and saving the .lrc.

Sync lyrics to audio

This is the main job. Load the track you're syncing against, get every lyric line into the editor, then stamp each line's timestamp in real time while the song plays. The sub-sections below walk that flow from loading a file to fine-tuning a finished sync.

A quick end-to-end pass looks like this: open the music, paste your lyrics into the Notepad and push them into the list, click the first line, press Play, and tap the sync key as you hear each line. When you reach the end, save the .lrc.

Load audio and lyrics

Open the song you want to sync against, and bring in any lyrics you already have. If a same-named .lrc sits next to the audio, you don't even have to open it - see Automatic .lrc loading below.

Supported audio formats - LRC Editor opens and plays MP3, WAV, OGG, Opus, FLAC, M4A and AAC. You sync against the real track, so it plays the file back natively rather than converting it.

Automatic .lrc loading - when you open a music file, a same-named .lrc in the same folder is loaded automatically, bringing back every timestamp you saved earlier. If there's no matching .lrc, open one by hand with Open Lyrics, or start fresh. This is why re-opening a song you've already worked on takes just one step.

Timing repair on open - lyric files written by other editors sometimes contain lines timed out of sequence. When LRC Editor opens an .lrc, it checks the whole file and puts any such line back before the one that follows it, then marks the file as having unsaved changes - so the repair is offered, not forced: save to keep it, or close without saving to leave the file exactly as it was. A short message tells you when this has happened. The rule behind it is explained under Adjust line timing.

Drag and drop - you don't have to use the Open buttons: drag an audio file, an .lrc, or a plain .txt from your file manager and drop it onto the main lyric area (the toolbar and player bar stay clear of the drop zone). LRC Editor routes the file by type - an audio file opens as the track to sync against, an .lrc or .txt opens as lyrics - and pulls in the matching companion automatically, exactly like the Open buttons: a dropped track loads its same-named .lrc, and a dropped .lrc loads its same-named track.

Controls:

Open music file to sync against - opens an audio file to sync against. Loads a matching .lrc automatically if one is found beside it.
Open lyrics file (.lrc with timestamps or .txt for plain lyrics) - opens an existing .lrc (with timestamps) or a plain .txt of lyrics.
New LRC file - clears the current lyrics and metadata to start a new file. Offers to save first if you have unsaved changes.

Build the line list

Get every lyric line into the editor, one line per row, so each row is a single thing to time. The fastest way in is the Notepad; from there you split and merge rows until the breaks match how you want the lyrics to appear.

The Notepad panel - a collapsible panel on the right side of the window. Paste your raw lyrics there, one line per row, then push them all into the editor in a single action. It beats typing lines one at a time, and you can resize the panel by dragging its left edge.

Set Lyrics - replaces the line list with the Notepad's contents, every line dropped in at time 00:00.00 ready to be stamped.

The line list and its fixed rows - the editable list of lyric lines plus three rows that are always present and can't be removed:

Start of Music - fixed at 00:00.00.
End of Lyrics - an editable timestamp marking where the lyrics finish in the .lrc.
End of Music - fixed at the track's full length.

Each lyric row has an editable timestamp in MM:SS.HH format, ‹ / › nudge buttons (covered under Adjust line timing), and the text of the line itself. You can split one row into two or merge two rows together as you go - see the keyboard shortcuts for how.

The player cursor - exactly one row at a time carries a ▶, and it marks where the player is. Load a track and it sits on Start of Music, because that is where pressing Play would begin; it then follows the track as it plays, and stays where you left it when you pause or stop, on the line playback would resume at. It is grey while the track is idle and takes on the accent colour while the track is running, so you can tell at a glance whether what you are looking at is moving. Every other row keeps its ▶ hidden until you move the pointer onto it - clicking that button jumps playback to that line and plays from there, whereas clicking a row's text only selects the line for editing.

Stamp timestamps in real time

This is the heart of the app. Select the first line, press Play, and listen. The moment you hear each line begin, press the sync key - the current playback position is stamped onto the selected line and the selection jumps to the next line automatically. Work straight down the song in one pass.

Sync Time - stamps the current playback position onto the selected line, then advances the selection to the next line. It's the one action you'll use most. Available while the track is playing and a line is selected; the Enter key does the same thing.

Reaction Delay - a number of milliseconds subtracted from every stamp to make up for the gap between hearing a line and pressing the key. Your reflex always lags the sound a little, and subtracting that lag is what keeps the timing accurate even though you can never press exactly on the beat.

Example: if your reaction time is about 300 ms and you press the sync key at 1:05.000, the stamp recorded is 1:04.700.

Set it to match your own response time - 200-500 ms is a good starting range. The value lives in Settings → Time, and there's also a quick input right in the player bar so you can tune it per song without opening Settings.

Reaction Delay - the milliseconds subtracted from each stamp. The same value appears inline in the player bar for per-song tuning.

Verify the sync

Once a file is synced, play it back hands-free to check your work. Verify starts playback and auto-advances through every line on its own, holding each line on screen for a set pause before moving to the next - so you can watch the lyrics track the music and spot any stamp that lands early or late, then stop and re-sync that line.

Verify - plays and auto-advances through each line after the Verification Delay - starts (or pauses) the hands-free verification playback.

Verification Delay - during a Verify pass, how long each line is held before playback advances to the next. It sets the pace of the review; leave it at the default unless the auto-advance feels too fast or too slow.

Verification Delay - the per-line pause used during Verify. Also available inline in the player bar.

Playback transport

The player bar along the bottom moves you through the track while you work - playing, stopping, jumping between the stamps you've already placed, and re-listening to a passage.

Play / Pause (Space) - toggles playback. Space does the same.
Stop (Esc) - stops and resets to 00:00. Escape does the same.
Previous timestamp / Next timestamp - jump to the previous or next line that already has a timestamp.
Seek back by configured seconds (←) / Seek forward by configured seconds (→) - jump backward or forward by a fixed number of seconds (the Seek Delay). The ← and → arrow keys do the same.

The bar also holds a draggable timeline slider, a current-position / total-duration readout, and a volume control.

Seek Delay - how many seconds each seek (and each arrow-key press) jumps. The same value is used for both directions, so set it to a comfortable re-listen window.

Seek Delay - the seek jump length in seconds. Also available inline in the player bar.

Adjust line timing

When a stamp is just a touch early or late, you don't need to re-sync it. Nudge a single line by a fixed step, or - if the whole file is consistently off - shift every line at once with the Global Offset.

Line Edit Delay - the step size, in milliseconds, that the ‹ / › buttons beside a line shift its timestamp earlier or later. It gives you a repeatable fine correction without typing a new time. The same buttons nudge the End of Lyrics row too.

Line Edit Delay - the millisecond step for the ‹ / › nudge buttons. Default 200 ms.

Lines always stay in order - a lyric line can never end up timed after the line below it. Whenever you change a timestamp - by stamping it, nudging it, or typing a new time - LRC Editor checks its neighbours and moves any line that would now be out of sequence, leaving a half-second gap between them. Lower a line's time and the lines above it are pulled back before it; raise it and the lines below are pushed after it. Only lines that already carry a timestamp are touched, so lines you haven't synced yet are never given a time you didn't set. This matters because a player reads an .lrc from top to bottom: a single line stamped out of sequence makes the lyrics jump backwards mid-song.

Example: line 12 is at 0:48.51 and you re-stamp line 13 at 0:47.95. Line 12 is moved back to 0:47.45 so it still comes first, instead of leaving the file with the two lines crossed over.

To shift the entire file at once - say it's all early against a remaster - use the Global Offset, explained under Edit song metadata.

Edit song metadata

Open the metadata editor with the Metadata button in the toolbar to add the song information that gets written into the .lrc file, and to set a Global Offset for the whole file.

LRC metadata tags - optional song info stored at the top of the .lrc so players and libraries can label the lyrics:

Field	Saved in the .lrc as
Artist	`[ar:]`
Album	`[al:]`
Title	`[ti:]`
Songwriter	`[au:]`
LRC By	credit for whoever made the `.lrc`

All of it is optional - fill what you know before saving.

Auto-fill from the track - rather than retype what the music file already carries, pull its embedded tags straight in.

Auto-fill - reads the audio file's own tags and fills Artist, Album and Title in one click.

Global Offset - a millisecond value, positive or negative, that shifts the timing of every line in the file at once (stored as the .lrc offset tag). Use it when all your lines are consistently early or late - for instance against a remastered version of the track - so you re-align the whole file instead of redoing each stamp.

Global Offset (ms) - the whole-file timing shift in milliseconds.

Save and export

Write out the synced file, or export just the words.

Save LRC file - saves to the current .lrc path. If the file hasn't been saved yet, it asks where to put it.
Save as new .lrc file - saves to a new .lrc location.
Export lyric list to .txt file - exports just the lyric text, with no timestamps, to a .txt file. The save dialog opens in the folder of the .lrc you're editing, already named after it, so the two files land side by side.

Personalize the app

Open the Open settings panel to set how the app looks and to pre-fill credits. Settings is organized into Display, Time, Meta Data and About tabs - the Time tab gathers the four delays explained alongside their features above (Reaction, Verification, Seek and Line Edit).

Display -

Language - the interface language. Dozens of languages are available, including right-to-left scripts and CJK.
Theme - Dark or Light. The default is Light.

Default credits - values that pre-fill the metadata fields on every new file, so if you always credit yourself the same way you set them once instead of on each file.

Artist / Songwriter / LRC By - the default Artist, Songwriter and LRC-By values for new files.

Keyboard shortcuts

While the editor has focus (not typing in a field):

Key	Action
`Space`	Play / Pause
`Escape`	Stop
`Enter`	Sync Time - stamp the current position onto the selected line
`←`	Seek back
`→`	Seek forward
`Ctrl+Z` / `⌘Z`	Undo (up to 50 steps)

While typing in a lyric's text field:

Key	Action
`Enter`	Move to the next line
`Ctrl+Enter` / `⌘Enter` / `Shift+Enter`	Split the line at the cursor
`Backspace` at the start of a line	Merge with the previous line
`Delete` at the end of a line	Merge with the next line

Tips

The 50-step undo stack covers timestamp edits, line edits, splits, merges and bulk imports - make mistakes freely.
Keep a track and its matching .lrc in the same folder - opening either one pulls in the other automatically.
Drag an audio file or .lrc straight onto the lyric area to load it, instead of reaching for the Open buttons.
For karaoke-style line splitting, split mid-line exactly at the cursor - both halves keep their text.
Use the Global Offset to fine-tune a finished .lrc against a slightly different audio version (e.g. a remaster) without redoing every timestamp.
Run a Verify pass before you call a file done - watching it auto-advance is the quickest way to catch a stamp that's slightly off.

Other controls

Help - opens this help page in your browser, in your current language.
GitHub - opens the app's source repository in your browser.