Posted By Paul Kafasis on March 2nd, 2013

It’s been a few months since Airfoil for Windows last saw an update, but we’ve been hard at work on refining its underpinnings. Our audio streamer is more popular than ever, so improving things behind the scenes is definitely a worthwhile investment. Today, we’re happy to unveil Airfoil for Windows 3.4, the latest and greatest way to stream audio from Windows all around your house. To download the newest version (it’s a free update), just head over to the Airfoil for Windows page. To learn more about the technical details of this update, read on.

A Major Update to Instant On

After much effort and testing, the latest version of Airfoil for Windows now includes a major update to Instant On, the built-in component to capture audio seamlessly. When Airfoil was first unveiled, its ability to capture audio usually required the quitting and re-opening of your source app. To work around the need for that cumbersome relaunching, we created Instant On, a technology to allow Airfoil to grab audio from applications instantly. While this worked well, there are some applications that don’t produce audio at all, others that don’t produce audio you’d want to capture, and some which just don’t work properly when Instant On is running.

With our latest update, Instant On now affects only a curated allowlist of audio applications. This list contains the most common applications our customers use with Airfoil for Windows, including Foobar 2000, Spotify, Chrome, Firefox, and more. You can view and edit the Application List at any time in Airfoil’s Preferences window. Any applications on this list won’t need to be re-launched when Airfoil captures audio from them.

Airfoil’s Instant On allowlist

When you attempt to intercept audio from a running application that isn’t yet on the approved list, Airfoil will offer to add it to the list, so future relaunches won’t be necessary.

Of course, Instant On is still entirely optional, just as before. For the best experience, we definitely recommend activating it. To do so, just click the “Enable Instant On” checkbox in Airfoil Preferences window:

With Instant On, the need for Airfoil to relaunch running applications to capture their audio vanishes, and things work as smoothly as possible. Best of all, with the new allowlist, issues that were once rare will disappear completely.

And More

This update also marks the first release where Airfoil is fully scriptable, allowing for control by other applications. For more details on scripting Airfoil, see this link. As usual, this update also includes has a handful of small improvements and fixes, and we always recommend using the latest version. So update your copy of Airfoil for Windows now!