Nebula help

Nebula turns music into moving pictures. This guide covers every window in the app, in plain words. Start with the two-minute tour, then jump to the page you need.

The two-minute tour

1. Play something. On the start screen tap Add songs to pick music from Files. Or tap Radio & more to tune a live station, or Listen to your Mac on a Mac to follow whatever the Mac is playing.
2. Watch. The picture is already moving with the beat, the bass and the voices. Nebula works out each song on your device, so it also knows where the chorus, the build and the drop are.
3. Change the look. Tap Scenes and tap a card. Each scene is a ready-made look. Scenes under Nebula Scenes are ours; yours collect under My Scenes.
4. Make it yours. Tap Layers to stack visuals and turn their knobs. Tap Patches to let the music turn any knob for you.

The play button and the line under the picture work like any player: play and pause, arrows to skip, and tap the line to jump around the song.

The five sections

Five buttons sit in the bar. Tap one to open its window, tap it again (or tap outside the window) to close it. The lit button names the window that is open.

The play bar

The bar under the picture is a player.

• Play and pause in the middle, previous and next either side. A tap skips. Press and hold previous or next to scan through the song: 5 times speed after a moment, 15 times after 3 seconds, 60 times after 8 seconds. The clock shows the speed. It stops at the end of the song and does not skip to the next one.
• The line is the song. Tap it to jump. For radio, the microphone and This Mac, the station or source name shows in its place.
• Loop a section. Press and hold the line on your own song. Nebula loops the section under your finger, snapped to the beats (or 8 bars if it has no map yet). Two handles appear; drag one to move that end, and it snaps to the beats. Press and hold inside the loop to clear it. On a Mac you can also drag across the line to set a loop. A loop needs at least 2 seconds.
• The waveform of the song shows inside a loop. To show it along the whole line, turn on Settings › Playback › Waveform on the whole time line.
• A pale mark at the end of the line shows where the crossfade into the next song begins.
• The red dot opens the Record pane: your videos, the recording's options and Start recording, with the picture beside it framed as the video. See Recording a video.

Looping and scanning work with your own songs. Radio, the microphone and This Mac can't be looped.

Showing and hiding the controls

While music plays the bars and buttons fade away so the picture has the whole screen. To bring them back, double tap (or double click) the picture. Double tap again to hide them.

On iPhone, with a window open, tap with two fingers to hide everything at once.

Touch also plays the picture. Drag, hold or tap it and layers that respond to touch react. See Layers › Touch.

Recording a video

Tap the red dot in the play bar. The Record pane opens at the side (on an upright iPhone, at the bottom) and the picture beside it shows exactly what the video will hold, in the shape you choose. The red dot or a tap on the picture closes the pane.

The pane is one page: the options, then one line saying what Start will do now (for example "Starts the song and records up to 15 s; stops sooner if the music stops", or "Records up to 15 s without sound (Radio)"). Hold that line for the whole story. Under the Start button are your Videos, newest first (when they don't all fit, that row or grid scrolls).

Tap Start recording. The controls step aside and Nebula records at once; if the music is paused, it starts playing with the recording, and it pauses again when the recording stops. A small time at the top shows it is recording (with "No sound" while nothing goes into the sound track). Tap its red Stop to stop. Tap the picture to bring the controls back while recording (then the red square in the play bar is Stop): you can turn knobs and wire cables, and the video shows what they do.

A live recording also stops when its length runs out, when the music stops (a song that plays out with nothing after it, the end of a playlist, or a pause; a playlist plays on, and the video with it), or when you leave Nebula (another app, Control Center, a Mac window hidden). However it stops, the video is kept. If it stopped before anything was recorded, a note says so and nothing is added.

The video holds the picture only. The bars, windows and the red time are never in it, because it comes straight from Nebula's renderer rather than from the screen. It is an HEVC video (the iPhone camera's own format) at 1080 pixels on its short side, 60 frames a second where the device keeps up.

Your videos

Every video stays in Nebula until you delete it. When one is finished it plays where the picture was, and its tile is lit. Tap any video to watch it there (muted at first; the speaker under it, or on its bottom left corner, turns the sound on). A 9:16, 16:9 or 1:1 video, and its live picture while you set it up, sits in a plain device frame; the frame is only on screen, never in the video; the play bar plays and pauses the video (its own time line; previous and next are dimmed). Tap the lit video again, change an option, or tap Start, and the live picture is back. The frame under the picture (or the picture's corner) says which video it is, its length and size, and why it stopped when that wasn't you or its length ("Stopped when the music stopped", "Render stopped at 0:41 of 1:15", "No sound from 0:08 (Radio)").

• Every video has Share and the red trash in its top right corner (on a Mac, Show in Finder too). Share opens the system's share sheet: send the video to someone, or keep a copy with Save Video (Photos) or Save to Files. The video stays in Nebula too; once a copy is saved to Photos or Files its tile gets a check. Sending it to someone marks nothing. On a Mac the sheet offers Add to Photos, and the folder button (Show in Finder) shows the video's file so you can drag it anywhere.
• The red trash (tap twice) deletes that video from Nebula, and only that one; the live picture comes back. A copy already saved to Photos or Files stays there.
• Start always records a new video. Nothing is replaced.

There is no limit on how many videos Nebula keeps, and it never deletes one for you; the count and their total size are shown above them. Videos are kept on the device (and in its backup, so big ones use iCloud space); deleting Nebula deletes them. If the device is short of space, Start says how much your videos use.

The options

The options are remembered:

• Length: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute or 10 minutes, the most a video runs. With Render Offscreen the last one reads Song end: to the end of the song, at most 10 minutes.
• Shape: the screen's own, upright 9:16 (TikTok, Reels, Shorts), wide 16:9 (YouTube) or square 1:1. The picture is drawn at that shape, not cut from the screen; the picture beside the pane shows exactly what goes in.
• Sound: your own songs, Nebula's songs and the microphone can be recorded with their sound. Radio, Indie and This Mac are recorded silent, because their music isn't ours to save; switching to one of them while recording makes the video silent from there.
• Quality: 1080p, or 4K on iPad Pro and Mac. 4K turns on Render Offscreen, so it needs one of your own songs; with anything else the video is 1080p, recorded live.
• Watermark: "Made with Nebula" in the bottom right corner of the video.
• Touch effects: on, touching the picture while recording plays the touch layers, as on screen, and the video shows what they do (no finger dots); off, a touch only brings the controls back. With Render Offscreen on it is off and dimmed (a render has no touches); turn Render Offscreen off and your choice is back.

On iPhone the switches sit two to a line; at the largest text sizes Watermark, Touch effects and Render Offscreen are under More. Hold any option's name for what it does.

Render Offscreen (Nebula Pro), a switch in the Record pane: Start reads Render video and draws the video offscreen, one exact frame at a time from the song file, then adds the song's sound, instead of recording the screen as the song plays. Nothing is dropped however busy the scene, and the beats land exactly. 4K always renders this way. It starts where the song is now and runs for the Length chosen (Song end: to the end of that song); the line above Start gives the exact span. The music pauses while it works, your touches aren't in it, and on an older iPhone it can take a little over twice as long as the video. It works with your own songs once Nebula has learned them (a moment after a song starts); with anything else Start reads Record live instead and records live. While it works the screen shows how far it has got; Stop and keep ends it early and keeps what is done, with its sound in step.

Free videos are 15 seconds long and carry the watermark. With Nebula Pro they can run up to 10 minutes, the watermark can be turned off, and 4K and Render Offscreen are available.

Free and Nebula Pro

Nebula is free to use with your own music, radio, Indie, Nebula music, the microphone, every visual element (with its key knobs), 2 layers, 3 cables from the Music sources, 3 scenes of your own and the ready-made scenes. Nebula Pro is a one-time purchase (not a subscription) that opens the rest:

• unlimited layers and every knob of every Element, and all 13 blend modes,
• unlimited cables, and every cable source in Patches (Bands, Song structure, Colors, Layer outputs, Layers below, Numbers, Time),
• unlimited saved scenes,
• videos up to 10 minutes, without the watermark, in 4K on iPad Pro and Mac, and Render Offscreen.

Locked things stay visible, dimmed, with a small gold PRO mark; tap one to see what Pro adds. A scene you open that uses Pro features always plays in full if the app made it (the built-in scenes and anything exported from Nebula). A scene made by hand or by an AI assistant plays trimmed to the free limits until you unlock Pro.

Tap any gold PRO mark to open the Nebula Pro window: it shows the scene that is playing, what Pro adds and what free keeps, and one Unlock Nebula Pro button with the price. Once Pro is unlocked, the same window lists the Pro Packs: themed packs of new scenes and Elements, each a separate purchase. Packs you own say Owned; the others show their price. The first pack is coming soon.

Bought Pro or a pack on another device with the same Apple Account? Open Settings, choose Nebula Pro and tap Restore purchases, or tap Restore in the Nebula Pro window. It brings back Pro and every pack.

Every help page

• Music and radio: songs, playlists, radio, Indie, the microphone, song memory, the parental lock.
• Elements: every visual, with every knob, its range and what it does.
• Layers: adding, ordering, mixing and touch.
• Patches: every source a cable can use, and the full number and time syntax.
• Scenes: saving, loading, music for a scene, export and import.
• Settings: each setting in plain words.
• Mac: Listen to your Mac and the menu bar.
• Accessibility: VoiceOver, larger text, reduced motion and calmer flashes.
• Troubleshooting: no sound, radio, stutter, permissions, purchases and imports.

Still stuck?

Try Troubleshooting. The Support page answers common questions and has our email address. See also What's new in 1.0. Tell us your device and what happened; a screenshot helps.

Tip. In the app, press and hold (or hover over) almost any name for a short explanation. Tips cards also pop up the first time you open each window; turn them back on in Settings › Help.