[dylan604]

If the bars are not related to actual data and are purely just pre-canned animation, the gif would just come with additional file size for a one time cached type of download. If the bars do need to be animated to real-time data coming in, then the gif would not be the right fit for that need.

[threetonesun]

Can't imagine anyone is deriving much information value from a visualizer with 3 bars. Apple Music has a similar animation and it will start bouncing when you click play, while the music is clearly downloading and there's no sound.

[will-bradshaw]

This was true pre iOS 18. The bars respond to the music now (at least on iOS)!

[threetonesun]

Ah, look at that, so they do!

[dylan604]

Just because it isn't useful to the user doesn't mean some dev hasn't spent the cycles doing it. I know I've personally had to write code that was an absolute waste, but some PM wanted and it was coded. Usually so it can be a bullet point in a demo that impresses low skilled PMs or sales drone, but techy user types just roll their eyes when it's pointed out to them.

[hbn]

I think a mic visualizer is very useful to the user. You can tell if you're quiet, clipping, or your mic straight up isn't working at all.

[dylan604]

You've moved the goal posts. Nobody said an input levels indicator isn't useful. We're talking about this specific graphic not being a useful graphic for visualizing live data. You've wandered away from the pack here

[xp84]

I've almost never seen these tiny icons to have any actual useful information being conveyed (meaning they are tracking amplitude or pitch). They're usually purely decorative, or boolean in function, meaning you can see they're flat if you are completely silent or they're bouncing around if not silent.

You can have 2 GIFs for "silent" and "sound happening" if one cares to truly indicate if it's picking up sound / playing sound, and switch between them. Will be 1000x simpler and 99% fewer lines of code to maintain forever.

[DamonHD]

And won't annoy people who get over-stimulated.

I don't normally have that issue, but one site had (has?) a bright green thing that jumped periodically that was so vastly distracting that I could not read the text on the page without covering the 'thing' somehow, eg with my hand! Absolutely pointless. I had to give up using the site entirely, even though it was otherwise useful.

[mrob]

If you use uBlock Origin on Firefox, it's very easy to remove that kind of annoyance using the "element zapper" mode. See:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-zapper