Warning

YARG is not done yet! Expect incomplete features and bugs!

👉 Disclaimer

Important

YARG stands firmly against all forms of piracy. We neither support nor endorse piracy, as it is a violation of copyright law with serious legal consequences. Our platform's importable content—designed for creators to share their work and for educational purposes—does not justify or excuse piracy.

YARG itself does not use any ripped/pirated assets or music and never will. By using YARG, users agree not to promote or endorse piracy in any way through our platform. Upholding these principles ensures a community that respects copyright, creativity, and legal standards.

YARG stands for "Yet Another Rhythm Game" and NOT for pirates.

📃 Table of Contents

• 👉 Disclaimer
• 📃 Table of Contents
• 📥 Downloading and Playing
  • Windows
  • Mac
  • Linux
  • In-Game Setup
• 🔨 Building
  • ⚠️ If you wish to contribute, use the dev branch. Your PR will NOT be merged if it's on master. ⚠️
  • Setup Instructions
  • Unity YAML Merge Tool
• ✍️ Contributing
• 🛡️ License
• 🧰 External Licenses
• 📦 External Assets and Libraries
• 💸 Donate

📥 Downloading and Playing

It is recommended you download YARG via the YARC Launcher. Downloading the portable option is not recommended as some features may not work.

YARC Launcher

Important

If you are on Linux, there are some additional things you need to do in order for controllers to work. See the Linux section for more info.

1. Go to the YARC Launcher releases page, here.
2. Click on the download option for your operating system.
3. You may get a "this application is not safe" warning depending on your operating system. This is a false positive. Click here to learn more.
4. Once in the launcher, click on "YARG" on the left hand side.
5. Then, click on green "Update Stable" button.
6. You will be prompted to choose an install folder. If you don't know what folder to choose, just click "Okay". Please ensure that the folder you select is empty.
7. Wait for it to finish installing...
8. Finally, press "Play Stable"!
9. Additionally, if you want some songs, install "YARG Setlist" which is also on the left in the YARC Launcher.

Windows

1. Go to the latest release and click on the "Assets" dropdown, then click on YARG_vX.X.X-Windows-x64.zip to download.
2. Extract the contents of the zip file by right clicking it and pressing "Extract All..."
3. Choose where you want to extract it to, then click "Extract".
4. Open the extracted folder and double-click YARG.exe (if you don't have file extensions on, it is called just YARG)
5. You may get a "Windows protected your PC" warning. This is because not many people have run YARG before, so Windows does not know if it is harmful or not. Click on "More info" and then "Run anyway" to run it anyways. If you don't trust me, please feel free to scan the folder with an anti-virus, and remember that false positives can still happen.

Mac

1. Go to the the latest release and click on the "Assets" dropdown, then click on YARG_vX.X.X-MacOS-Universal.dmg to download.
2. Open the downloaded .dmg and drag the YARG app to your Apps folder.
3. Double-click the YARG app to run it.

Linux

1. Go to the latest release and click on the "Assets" dropdown, then click on YARG_vX.X.X-Linux-x86_64.zip to download.
2. Extract the zip to the location of your choosing.
3. Inside the folder you extracted the game to, open a terminal and run chmod +x ./YARG.x86_64 to give the game executable permission.
4. You can now double-click the YARG.x86_64 file or use ./YARG.x86_64 in a terminal to run the game, however there are some dependencies that will be needed for HID devices (such as PS3 and Wii instruments).
5. Next, install hidapi and libudev:

• (Package names may differ depending on package repositories.)
• On apt-based distros (such as Ubuntu or Debian), use sudo apt install libhidapi-hidraw0 libudev1.
• On pacman-based distros (such as Arch Linux), use pacman -S hidapi systemd-libs.
• On Fedora, use dnf install hidapi systemd-libs.

6. Finally, create a new udev rules file called 69-hid.rules inside of /etc/udev/rules.d/ or /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/, with the following contents:

KERNEL=="hidraw*", TAG+="uaccess"

• Without this file, YARG will not be able to access HID devices without special permissions such as being run with sudo, which is not recommended.
• The file name may differ if desired, but it must come before 73-seat-late.rules!

7. Reboot your system to apply the new udev rule, then you should be all good to go!

In-Game Setup

• Set up your song folders:
  1. From the main menu, click on "SETTINGS", then click on "Open Song Folder Manager"
  2. Next, click on "Add Folder." A new entry should pop-up.
  3. Click on the folder icon to open a folder picker, then choose the folder your songs are stored in.
  4. Repeat the previous two steps for each of your song folders.
  5. Now, click on "Refresh All Caches" to make YARG scan that folder for songs. Doing this may take a while depending on the amount of songs you have. If you ever add more songs, be sure to come back here and click on "Refresh All Caches".
• Set up your controllers:
  1. From the main menu, click on "ADD/EDIT PLAYERS".
  2. Click "Add Player" and select the controller you wish to use for that player (or select "Create a BOT" to create a bot player).
  3. Enter in a name for this player, and select what type of instrument you will be playing from the dropdown below it (i.e. "Five Fret", "Microphone", etc.).
  4. Depending on the instrument type, you may have to bind some controls. To do this, click on each mapping and press the control you want to map to it.
• Finally, click on "QUICKPLAY" to enter the song list.

Have fun!

🔨 Building

⚠️ If you wish to contribute, use the dev branch. Your PR will NOT be merged if it's on master. ⚠️

Setup Instructions

Warning

If you would like to build the game yourself, please follow these instructions.

If you don't follow these instructions, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RUN THE GAME.

1. Make sure you have the latest version of Blender installed. This is for loading models, even if you don't plan on editing them.
2. Clone the repository. If you don't know how to do this:
3. Download Git. Be sure it is added to system path.
4. Open the command prompt in the directory you want to store the repository.
5. Type in git clone https://github.com/YARC-Official/YARG.git.
6. Install Unity Hub and Unity 2021.3.21f1 (LTS).
7. Download and install Unity Hub.
8. Sign-in/create an account with a personal license (free).
9. In Unity Hub, click on "Install Editor" and select 2021.3.21f1 (LTS). It may be favourable to unselect Visual Studio if you are not using it.
10. Click "Install"
11. Open the project in Unity (select "Open" and select YARG's repo's folder).
12. Load in without entering safe mode. Click "Ignore".
13. (You may need to) click on NuGet on the menu bar, then click on Restore Packages.
14. You're ready to go!

Unity YAML Merge Tool

Sometimes merge conflicts may happen between Unity scenes. These can be much more difficult to resolve than other merge conflicts, so we recommend using the Unity YAML merge tool to resolve these instead of attempting to do so manually.

Setup:

1. Open a command prompt to the repository (on VS Code you can do Terminal > New Terminal)
2. Type in git config --local --edit
3. In the file that gets opened, go to the bottom and paste this in:

[merge]
    tool = unityyamlmerge
[mergetool "unityyamlmerge"]
    trustExitCode = false
    cmd = 'C:\\Program Files\\Unity\\Hub\\Editor\\2021.3.21f1\\Editor\\Data\\Tools\\UnityYAMLMerge.exe' merge -p "$BASE" "$REMOTE" "$LOCAL" "$MERGED"

• You may need to change the file path depending on where you installed Unity to.

4. Save and close the file.

Resolving conflicts:

1. Start the merge/cherry-pick which is causing conflicts.
2. If the conflict doesn't resolve automatically, open the command prompt and use git merge-tool.
3. Verify that the conflict was resolved correctly, then commit/continue the merge.

✍️ Contributing

If you want to contribute, please feel free! Please join our Discord if you want your PR/Art merged.

🛡️ License

YARC Launcher is licensed under the YARG License - see the LICENSE file for details. Essentially, you can do whatever you want with any of the code, except for YARG (and related) logos. You DO NOT have permission to redistribute any YARG branding.

🧰 External Licenses

Some libraries/assets are packaged with the source code have licenses that must be included.

Library	License
NuGet for Unity	MIT
Unity Standalone File Browser	MIT
Discord GameSDK	Licenseless
Lucide	ISC
DtxCS	Licenseless
Moonscraper	BSD 3-Clause License

Please note that other libraries are not packaged within the source code, and are to be install by NuGet.

BASS is the audio library for YARG. It has it's own license for release. BASS is free for non-commercial use, ensure you have the correct license if you intend to distribute YARG (and therefore BASS) commercially.

📦 External Assets and Libraries

Link	Type	Use
Unbounded	Font	Combo/Multipier Meter
Barlow	Font	UI Font
Material Symbols	Icons	UI Icons
Lucide	Icons	UI Icons
PolyHaven	Assets	Textures and Models
PlasticBand	Reference	Controller Support Info
PlasticBand-Unity	Library	GH/RB Controller Support
HIDrogen	Library	Linux HID Controller Support
GuitarGame_ChartFormats	Reference	File Format Documentation
NuGet for Unity	Library	NuGet Packages in Unity
EliteAsian's Unity Extensions	Library	Utility
Unity Standalone File Browser	Library	"Browse" Button
FuzzySharp	Library	Search Function
ini-parser	Library	Parsing song.ini Files
DryWetMidi	Library	Parsing .mid Files
TagLibSharp	Library	Finding Audio Metadata
Minis	Library	MIDI Input for Unity
Discord GameSDK	Library	Discord Rich Presence
DtxCS	Library	Parsing .dta Files
Moonscraper	Library	Parsing .chart Files
DOTween	Library	Animation Utility
UniTask	Library	Async Library
unity-toolbar-extender	Library	Unity Editor Stuff

💸 Donate

Some people have expressed interest in donating. This is an open-source project and therefore donating is not required. If you do want to still help out, spread the word or contribute!