Visible Sound

What is Visible Sound?

Visible Sound is a client-side Fabric mod that displays sounds produced by blocks and entities directly in the game world, helping players quickly identify where a sound came from and what produced it.

How does Visible Sound work?

Block sounds are highlighted according to the block’s actual outline. If a block has no usable outline, a full-block outline is used instead. Entity sounds add a glowing effect to the corresponding entity, and sounds that continue over time follow the entity as it moves. When the source entity cannot be identified directly, the mod attempts to match the sound with the nearest entity within two blocks of the sound’s position.

Each sound visualization remains visible for approximately three seconds. When the same source produces another sound, its display duration and label are refreshed. The mod only processes sounds that the player can currently hear and ignores sources that are too far away or unrelated to the current environment.

What is it useful for?

Visible Sound does not need to be installed on the server. It is useful for locating hidden sound sources, identifying the positions of mobs or players, observing redstone and block interactions, and improving access to sound-based information.

Configuration screen

Press V by default to open the Visible Sound settings screen. The key binding can be changed in Minecraft’s Controls menu under the Visible Sound category. On versions that support Mod Menu, the configuration screen can also be opened from the mod list in Mod Menu.

The configuration screen includes the following options:

Enable sound visualization

Controls all visual features of the mod. It is enabled by default.

Text size

Use the slider to adjust the overall size of sound labels. The range is 0.50 to 5.00, the default value is 1.00, and the precision is 0.01.

Fixed screen text size

Enabled by default. When enabled, labels remain the same size on screen regardless of how far the sound source is from the player. When disabled, labels scale dynamically with distance: nearby labels appear larger and distant labels appear smaller.

Sound label

Switches between “ID only”, “Localized”, and “Localized and ID”.

• ID only: Displays the complete sound resource ID, such as minecraft:block.chest.open.
• Localized: Displays the subtitle corresponding to the game’s current language, such as “Chest opens”.
• Localized and ID: Displays both the sound ID and the localized subtitle.

The “Localized” option uses the localized subtitles provided by Minecraft’s current language. In other words, it reads the hidden subtitles displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen, so changing the game language also changes the displayed label language.

If a sound has no valid localized subtitle, the mod automatically falls back to its sound ID instead of displaying an empty label.

Block sound color and Entity sound color

Block sound color sets the glowing outline color for block sound sources. The default is #26E6FF.

Entity sound color sets the glowing outline color for entity sound sources. The default is #FFFFFF.

Colors use a six-digit hexadecimal format, such as #FF5555. The input fields show a live color preview. If the format is invalid, the text turns red and the message “Color must be 6 hexadecimal digits” is displayed. Invalid colors are not written to the configuration.

All options take effect immediately after being changed and are automatically saved to config/visible_sound.json. The Reset defaults button at the bottom of the configuration screen restores all settings, while the Done button returns to the previous screen.