How to Play osu! on osu.net

What this player is

The player on osu.net is webosu!, an open-source, unofficial browser port of osu!. It plays the original osu! standard mode: hit circles, sliders and spinners timed to music. It is not the official game from ppy Pty Ltd, and it does not include other modes, accounts or online features. Some details below differ from the official client.

You need a desktop or laptop computer, a mouse or drawing tablet, and a keyboard. The player has no touch controls.

Finding a beatmap

A beatmap is a song plus the pattern of objects you play to it. Maps are made by community mappers, and the player loads them from a public beatmap mirror. When you open the player you see several rows of map cards:

• Popular beatmaps and Latest Beatmaps, fetched fresh from the mirror.
• Recently Played, the last few sets you played on this device.
• Favorited Beatmaps, the sets you marked with the heart icon in the lower right corner of a card.
• Random Beatmaps, with a "Get new random Beatmaps" link to reroll the row.

The top bar has New, Popular and Browse pages with longer lists and a Load More button, plus Favorites and Settings. The search box accepts a few words of a song title, or a beatmap set ID: type a number and the player opens that exact set. Text searches look through ranked, approved, qualified and loved sets.

Each card shows the cover art, title, artist, mapper, the map's status (for example RANKED, LOVED or GRAVEYARD), the set ID, the BPM, the length and one colored ring per difficulty.

Choosing a difficulty

Click a card. Three things happen at once: a preview of the song starts, the beatmap download begins (a progress bar appears in the status area), and a pop-up lists the set's difficulties. Each line shows the difficulty name chosen by the mapper, such as "Normal" or "Insane", the mapper's name and a row of ten stars that fills up with the star rating. The ring color gives a quick summary: easy below 2 stars, then normal, hard, insane, expert and expert-plus from 6.5 stars up. Difficulties are sorted from easiest to hardest, and only osu! standard difficulties are listed.

When the download has finished, click a difficulty to start. Clicking earlier does nothing. If you want mods, switch them on in Settings first; see the mods guide.

Controls

The two hit keys, both pause keys and the skip key can be rebound under Input on the Settings page. You can also turn off mouse clicks or the mouse wheel during play there. Holding a key down does not count as repeated hits, so alternate Z and X on fast patterns.

Hit circles and approach circles

A hit circle appears with a larger approach circle around it that shrinks toward the circle's edge. Move your cursor onto the circle and press a hit key at the moment the approach circle meets the edge. Circles carry numbers that count up within each combo, and faint follow points show the path to the next object.

Your timing decides the judgement. A precise hit is a 300 ("great"), a slightly off hit is a 100 ("good"), a rough hit is a 50 ("meh"), and a hit outside the window, or no hit at all, is a miss. How wide those windows are depends on the map's OD value, explained in the AR/OD/CS/HP guide. By default the player hides the "great" text so the screen stays clean.

Sliders

A slider starts with a normal hit circle. Hit it, then keep a key held and keep your cursor on the ball as it travels along the track. A follow circle grows around the ball while you hold correctly, which gives you a little room for error. Small dots on the track are slider ticks: each one you pass while holding is worth 10 points. A reverse arrow at the end means the ball turns around and comes back, sometimes several times.

Every slider end and every repeat is judged on its own. Holding through it gives a 300. Missing a repeat is a miss, but missing only the final end counts as a 50 if you hit the start or any tick.

Spinners

A spinner fills the center of the screen. Hold a key and move the cursor in circles around the middle until the spinner is complete. The number of rotations needed depends on the map's OD and the spinner's length. A full spin gives a 300, at least 90 percent gives a 100, at least 75 percent gives a 50, and anything less is a miss.

Combo, accuracy and grades

Every successful judgement, including slider ticks and slider ends, adds one to your combo. Any miss, including a missed tick, resets it to zero; past a combo of 20 you hear a combo-break sound. Each hit is worth its points multiplied by your mods and by a combo bonus, so long combos raise your score quickly.

Accuracy is the points you earned divided by the most you could have earned, counting 300 for each circle, slider end, repeat and spinner and 10 for each tick. Your grade comes from accuracy alone:

HP and failing

The HP bar runs along the top of the screen and starts full. It does not drain over time; it only moves when you are judged. Misses take HP away, 300s and 100s give it back, and on maps with a high HP value even a 50 can take a little away. If the bar empties, the song keeps playing to the end, but your grade becomes F. You never get thrown out mid-song, which makes the player a relaxed place to practise hard maps.

Breaks, pause, skip and retry

When the next object is more than one and a half seconds away, a shrinking bar and a countdown appear in the middle of the screen. Use these breaks to relax your hand.

Press Space or Esc to pause, and press it again to continue. The pause menu also offers Retry and Quit. The player pauses by itself if the window loses focus or changes size, for example when you click outside the player or switch fullscreen on. You cannot pause before the music has started. If a song has a long intro, press Ctrl to jump to three seconds before the first note.

The elapsed time is shown in the bottom left corner and the remaining time in the bottom right. Your score sits at the top center, with accuracy on its left and combo on its right.

The result screen

About a second and a half after the last object, the result screen appears. It shows the title, artist, difficulty, mapper and the mods you used, your grade, score, accuracy, the counts of greats, goods, mehs and misses, your max combo, and an FC badge if you never missed. Hit Error shows your average timing and its spread, for example "+12±18ms"; a plus sign means you tend to hit late. History Best is your best earlier score on this difficulty on this device; beat it and the new score is saved. Choose Retry to play again or Quit to go back to the map list. Every play is added to your history in the browser.

Your first session

1. Open the player on the home page and wait for Scripts, Skin and Hitsounds to finish loading.
2. Search for a song you know, or pick something from Latest Beatmaps.
3. Click the card and choose the easiest difficulty, the one with the fewest stars.
4. Rest two fingers on Z and X, or just click with the mouse at first.
5. Play the whole map, even if you miss a lot. You cannot fail out.
6. Look at your accuracy and Hit Error, then retry once.
7. When you can pass with a B or better, move up one difficulty.

Desktop only

The player reacts only to mouse, pen and keyboard input. On phones and most tablets you can open it but not play it properly.

If the timing feels off

If you hit every note in rhythm but still get many 100s, or the Hit Error value is always far from zero, your audio may be slightly delayed. Wireless headphones are a common cause. The settings guide shows how to fix this with the Audio Offset setting, and the tips page has advice for improving once the timing is right.