Charcoal UI

Laser Flow

A laser sweeps a dark field from the top edge, bending toward the pointer, with bright packets flowing down the beam and a fog that catches its glow.

  • Category: Backgrounds
  • Licence: Charcoal UI Pro
  • Built with: React 19, Tailwind CSS 4, Motion
  • Dependencies: motion, clsx, tailwind-merge

Examples

Laser Flow

API reference

PropTypeDefaultDescription
colorstring"var(--ember)"
speednumber1
widthnumber3Beam core width in px.
intensitynumber1
fogbooleantrue
classNamestring—

About Laser Flow

Laser Flow sweeps a laser beam across a dark field from the top edge, bending toward the pointer, with bright packets flowing down it and a fog that catches the glow.

Laser Flow is an animated background for React 19, styled with Tailwind CSS 4 and animated with Motion. It drops into Next.js, Vite, Remix or Astro through the shadcn CLI as a single file you own.

When to use Laser Flow

  • Tech and hardware launches.
  • Gaming and esports.
  • Nightlife and music.
  • Bold call-to-action sections.

How it works

The beam is layered additive strokes with travelling radial packets. It runs on a canvas capped at 2x pixel density, pauses when scrolled off screen, and reads its colours from your theme tokens so it follows dark mode.

The whole layer is decorative and aria-hidden, sits behind your content without taking pointer events it does not need, and pauses when scrolled off screen. With prefers-reduced-motion on, it holds still or settles instantly instead of animating.

Customizing Laser Flow

Every prop is documented in the API reference above with its type and default. The ones you will reach for first are listed here.

The Customize panel next to the preview lets you change color, speed, width, intensity, fog live, and the Code tab updates to match, so the snippet you copy already carries your values.

  • color (string, default "var(--ember)").
  • speed (number, default 1).
  • width (number, default 3): Beam core width in px.
  • intensity (number, default 1).
  • fog (boolean, default true).

Goes well with Laser Flow

These backgrounds pieces share its tokens and motion language, so they sit together on one page without clashing.

  • Ember Field: An animated React ember background: glowing embers drift up and flicker as they cool
  • Smoke: A slow React smoke background: blurred plumes drifting over dark sections, CSS only
  • Aurora: An animated React aurora background: soft light bands drifting across a section
  • Grid Beams: A React grid background with beams of light running along its lines
  • Meteors: A React meteor shower background: streaks falling diagonally, CSS only

Install Laser Flow

npx shadcn@latest add @charcoal/laser-flow

Laser Flow is part of Charcoal UI Pro. One seat unlocks all 300 Pro components, 107 landing-page sections and 100 full templates, for every personal and client project, with updates included. Add the @charcoal registry once with your access token, then the command above copies laser-flow.tsx into components/ui and installs clsx, tailwind-merge.

You own the file you install: no runtime package, no lock-in, nothing to keep in sync. Change it however your product needs.

See Charcoal UI Pro pricing · Pro setup

Frequently asked questions

How do I install Laser Flow?
Laser Flow is part of Charcoal UI Pro. Add the @charcoal registry to components.json with your access token, then run npx shadcn@latest add @charcoal/laser-flow. It copies laser-flow.tsx into components/ui and installs motion, clsx, tailwind-merge.
Is Laser Flow free for commercial use?
Laser Flow needs a Charcoal UI Pro seat, monthly or a one-time lifetime price. A seat covers unlimited personal and commercial projects, including client work, and every future Pro component.
Does Laser Flow work with Next.js?
Yes. It is a client component for React 19 styled with Tailwind CSS 4, so it works in the Next.js App Router and Pages Router, Vite, Remix and Astro.
Can an AI coding agent install Laser Flow?
Yes. Connect the Charcoal UI MCP server (https://charcoalui.com/mcp) to Claude Code, Cursor or any MCP client; get_component returns Laser Flow's props and get_install_command returns the exact command.

Laser Flow as Markdown · llms.txt