April Fools: Turn Your MacBook Into a Theremin
If you have ever looked at your MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Neo, and thought to yourself “I wish this Mac was a theremin. I wish that when I moved the lid at any angle, to open or close, it played sounds like a theremin” then gosh all golly you just rubbed a magic lamp and your genie has arrived to grant your wish, because a very amusing Mac app called LidAngleSensor can transform your MacBook into a theremin.
Yes a theremin, that weird touchless instrument that creates bizarre “wooooooo wooooo” sounds as you move your hands around the antennas. That’s your Mac now, if you’d like.
Slowly move your MacBook lid towards all the way open or all the way closed, and enjoy as LidAngleSensor gets sillier and sillier. The more the lid angle changes the better, that’s when the sound effects and absurdity really shine.
Oh and though the MacTheremin is brilliant in every possible way, you don’t have to limit yourself to that, and you don’t have to use the theremin sound, you can also choose to make your MacBook lid movement sound like a creaking old door instead. But that’s not as exciting as a theremin doppelgänger if you ask me.
If you’re half as excited by this as I am, then here’s your next steps to transform your MacBook into a virtual theremin:
- Download LidAngleSensor from Github here
- Launch it on your Mac
- Click on “Start Audio” in the app, then toggle over to “Theremin”
- Move your MacBook lid back and forth, toward open and close, and enjoy your beautiful theremin experience
While we’re getting a kick out of this app, LidAngleSensor was actually developed to demonstrate a proof of concept – that MacBook lids have a lid angle sensor in them, and you can use this utility to demonstrate the precise angle that your display is tilting. What’s the purpose of that sensor, other than the stated obvious intention? Maybe to adjust things like True Tone or adjust screen brightness to ambient lighting, or to trigger the sleep and wake up sensors? Just a few guesses, but what do I know? Well, I know you can turn your MacBook screen into a theremin with this app that uses that sensor, that’s what I know for sure. That’s a known known.
Anyway have some fun with this. The LidAngleSensor app also makes for quite an amusing prank if you can get it to run on someone else’s MacBook, so prank a friend, family member, or coworker by running in on their Mac, hiding it in the background, and then enjoying the subsequent confusion and troubleshooting attempts.
It may be April Fools and make for an excellent and harmless Mac prank, but the app is real and so why not give it a try. See how it goes. Play your Mac theremin, creak your old Mac door. Just don’t overdo it and break the hinge on your MacBook.
