How to Add a Particle Text Visual to Power BI Using Deneb

What is the Particle Text Visual?

The Particle Text Visual is an animated visual for Power BI, built with Deneb and Vega. It displays any text you choose as thousands of floating particles — each one drifting, dispersing, and snapping back into the shape of your phrase in a continuous looping animation.

You can cycle through multiple phrases automatically, trigger transitions on a timer, enable mouse repulsion so particles scatter when hovered, and adjust every visual property — colour, size, shape, glow, density — from the product page live before touching the Deneb editor.

• Any text — set one phrase or cycle through multiple automatically
• Smooth transitions between phrases with configurable easing and duration
• Mouse repulsion — hover to scatter particles away from your cursor
• Fully customisable particle size, shape, colour scheme, and opacity
• Optional glow effect for a neon or lit-up appearance
• No data required — fully self-contained, no fields or measures needed
• Works in Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service

What You'll Need

You only need two things — both free before the visual itself:

Installing Deneb in Power BI Desktop

Deneb is a free custom visual that lets you run Vega specs inside any Power BI report. You only install it once and it becomes permanently available across all your reports.

1. 1Open Power BI Desktop and open any report.
2. 2In the Visualisations pane, click the three dots ··· and choose Get more visuals.
3. 3Search for Deneb in the AppSource marketplace.
4. 4Click Add — the Deneb icon now appears in your Visualisations pane permanently.

Watch: Customise & Paste

The video below walks through the full process — setting your phrases and visual style on the product page, copying the spec, and pasting it into Deneb. The visual is live in your report in under a minute.

Customising the Particle Text Visual and pasting the spec into Deneb

Adding the Visual to Your Report

Once you have the spec from the product page, the whole process takes about a minute:

1. 1Click the Deneb icon in the Visualisations pane to add a Deneb visual to your canvas.
2. 2Resize it to match the dimensions you set in the Visual Dimensions controls on the product page — particle positions are calculated based on the canvas size, so this keeps everything aligned.
3. 3Click Edit in the visual toolbar to open the Deneb editor.
4. 4In the editor, select the Vega tab and delete the placeholder spec that appears by default.
5. 5Copy the JSON spec from the Particle Text Visual product page and paste it in.
6. 6Click Apply — the animation starts immediately.

Customising the Visual

The product page gives you a live preview of every setting — no code required. Adjust your phrases, colours, particle behaviour, and canvas size, then copy the spec once it looks right.

Customisation panel — product page

Mouse repulsion works inside Power BI too — not just in the preview. Once the visual is in your report, viewers can hover over it to scatter particles away from the cursor. If you're using the visual on a display screen where no one will interact with it, you can leave repulsion off and rely on the automatic phrase cycling instead.

Using the Visual in Power BI Service

Publish your report as normal and the Particle Text Visual runs for any viewer in Power BI Service — no gateway, no refresh schedule, no extra configuration. Phrase transitions, mouse repulsion, and the glow effect all work in the browser exactly as they do in Power BI Desktop.