Question 1

Is CarbonRGB free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. CarbonRGB is free and open source under the GPL-2.0-or-later licence. There is no account, no subscription and no advertising, and the source is public on GitLab.

Question 2

Which RGB brands does CarbonRGB work with?

Accepted Answer

CarbonRGB reaches hardware through OpenRGB, which supports devices from Corsair, Razer, Logitech, ASUS Aura, MSI Mystic Light, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, ASRock Polychrome, SteelSeries, HyperX, NZXT, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, G.Skill, Kingston FURY, Govee, Philips Hue, Nanoleaf and many more. Support is per model rather than per brand, so check your exact device on OpenRGB’s supported list.

Question 3

Can it control different brands of RGB at the same time?

Accepted Answer

Yes. That is the point of it. One effect plays across every light CarbonRGB finds, whatever brand each piece of hardware is, instead of running a separate app for each manufacturer.

Question 4

Do the lights react to music?

Accepted Answer

Many of them do. Visualisers and beat effects follow the spectrum; the ambient scenes — a fireplace, a sunset, an aurora — just run, because a scene that only looks right while music is playing is a worse scene. On Linux the audio-reactive ones listen to your system audio. On Windows that is not working yet, so choose the microphone as the audio source and they move with whatever is playing in the room.

Question 5

Can I make my own RGB effect?

Accepted Answer

Yes, by typing what you want. CarbonRGB has an AI that writes the effect for you — "a pixelart fireplace", "neon city", "lava lamp" — and puts it straight on your lights. It takes about half a minute, and you can keep the result, edit it or share it. It needs an AI key, or the free Antigravity CLI.

Question 6

Do I need to install OpenRGB separately?

Accepted Answer

No. CarbonRGB ships with everything it needs and starts its own copy, so a machine that has never installed OpenRGB still works.