Throughout this year, we’ve been working hard on significant improvements to the first-run experience for all of our audio capture applications as promised in our 2024 status report. We’ve shipped free updates to Piezo and Airfoil in March, Audio Hijack in April, and Loopback in early June. The final app we need to update is our audio control utility SoundSource.

That update is almost complete. SoundSource’s next update will provide a much simpler setup process, similar to Loopback: on a new Mac, no restarts will be required, nor any of the formerly necessary security setting changes. Instead, you’ll be all set in just a few clicks.

Bringing Support for MacOS 15 (Sequoia), Too

We’ve also been making the necessary refinements to get SoundSource working well on MacOS 15 (Sequoia), which Apple will be releasing soon. The rest of our lineup has already been updated for Sequoia, and SoundSource’s forthcoming update will offer preliminary compatibility with the new operating system release as well.

“She Needs More Work, Sir. A Shakedown!”

As we finalize SoundSource’s public release, we want to take it for a bit of a sea trial—and you can help! We’ve created a test release of SoundSource, for use on MacOS 14.5 and higher, including betas of MacOS 15.¹ To try it out, just click the big button below:

This will be a free update for all existing users, so don’t hesitate to give it a spin. We’re very interested in getting your feedback on this update, so please get in touch with us via this link, or through the Contact Us… command in SoundSource’s Help menu. Whether you experience issues or it’s working well for you, let us know.

Footnotes:

1. We’ll have another update to SoundSource that’s compatible with MacOS 11 through 14.4.1, as well. For now, we’re focused on testing against MacOS 14.5 and up. ↩︎

Our charmingly simple audio recording tool Piezo has just received an update that’s both small and monumental. There are a handful of bug fixes, but existing users may not notice much different in the update. Under the hood, however, there are massive changes. Now, anyone getting started with Piezo can do so without needing to install additional components, nor even enter an admin password. That’s a big deal!

Get Started in Seconds

As previewed in our recent status report, we’re working hard to simplify the first-run experience for all of our apps. That easier setup process has now launched with Piezo, making it possible to get started nearly instantly.

This video shows that you can now start recording audio in less than 30 seconds:

As you can see, you no longer need to restart your Mac to get started recording audio with Piezo. And since no password is required either, it’s now possible for Standard user accounts to use Piezo on their Mac without requiring assistance from an Administrator.

A Seamless Experience for All Users

Piezo’s audio capture technology has been overhauled to make this seamless setup possible. When it comes to recording, however, this new technology works as it always has. Piezo still makes it a snap to record audio from any app on your Mac.

Piezo’s new installer-free experience is available on MacOS 14.4 and higher, so we’ve split the app into two variants: Piezo 1.9.0 runs on MacOS 14.4 and higher, while Piezo 1.8.2 is available for MacOS 11 through 14.3.1.¹ To keep things simple for all users, Piezo always ensures that you’re running the right variant of the app for your system. There’s just one download from our website, and when you launch Piezo, everything is handled for you automatically.

Try the Latest Piezo Now

If you’re already a Piezo user, just choose Check for Updates… from the Piezo menu to get the latest version for your system.²

If you’re new to Piezo, or haven’t used the app in a while, it’s never been easier to get started. Visit Piezo’s product page to learn more about it, and download the free trial to test it out. You’re going to love it.

More to Come

This update to Piezo is just the beginning. We’re hard at work on updates which will provide this same easy setup to Airfoil, Audio Hijack, Loopback, and SoundSource. Stay tuned for more updates!³

Footnotes:

1. Piezo is still supported on MacOS 11 and later, through these two actively updated variants. Further, we always provide Legacy downloads of all our products for even older releases of MacOS that are no longer supported. If you bought a product from us, you’ll always be able to get it from us. ↩︎

2. Our in-app software update system is smart enough to detect whether you’ve got Apple’s latest updates to MacOS 14 (Sonoma). If you’re not prompted for Piezo 1.9, you may need to update your Mac by checking for updates in System Settings. ↩︎

3. To preview the latest and greatest changes before their official release, check out our test release system. ↩︎

The 2022 edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference kicked off earlier today, and as expected the keynote announced a new version of MacOS arriving this fall: MacOS 13 (Ventura). We’ve already begun downloading the developer preview to start work on supporting Ventura, and—as always—our intent is to have official updates in time for the public release in the fall.

Skip Apple’s Betas

The announcement of a new operating system means it’s also time for our standard reminder that our software will not yet run on the new OS. We always urge our customers to steer clear of beta versions of Apple’s operating systems until we’ve had a chance to vet them, and that remains the case with Ventura.

Because OS updates can contain breaking changes to the audio system, we code our apps defensively to avoid causing issues. By design, our products that rely on our Audio Capture Engine (ACE) will not run on pre-release versions of MacOS, and our other apps will warn you of potential issues on launch. At present, that means running Ventura would preclude you from using most of our apps.

For now, you’ll need to be running MacOS 12 (Monterey), MacOS 11 (Big Sur), MacOS 10.15 (Catalina), or MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) to use our apps. Sticking with publicly released versions of MacOS ensures you can continue to use our tools.

In addition to our own products, we also license our audio capture technology for use in over a dozen third-party applications on the Mac. Products which license ACE, including popular applications like Discord, Logitech Capture, and Twitch, will also require updates for Ventura. The developers of those products will have more to share in the coming months, but you should not expect updates to come before the fall.

If you find yourself with an uncontrollable urge to be an OS beta tester, we strongly recommend taking Apple’s advice to install a separate copy in its own APFS volume on your Mac. It will preserve your ability to use the current release of MacOS (including our software and those third-party apps) while you check in on the upcoming OS release in a separate environment.

Test Releases

This is also a good time to remind you about our test release system, which we introduced last year. Test releases allow us to preview updates to our apps before a wider release, so if you’re interested in trying out changes to our products you can do so before the general public. In the future, those test releases will include the very first updates to be compatible with Ventura, and we’ll make note of that availability too.

To learn more about test releases, read this Knowledge Base article.

More to Come This Fall

Each year, we aim to ship compatible public versions of our software in time for Apple’s official release in fall. That’s a goal we’ve set, and met, for many years running. We intend to keep the streak going in 2022.

We’ll have more news on our own products soon, and our Status page always provides information on OS compatibility for all of our products. That page has already been refreshed with basic info on Ventura, and we’ll continue to update that in the coming months.

Last week, during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, we were all introduced to the next major update coming to the Mac operating system: MacOS 12 (Monterey). Like you, we’re always excited to learn about Apple’s plans for the Mac each year. Although no new Mac hardware was announced, the improved technologies coming to Monterey should provide great opportunities for future development.

We’re particularly interested in the renewed attention being brought to automation, most notable in the announcement of Shortcuts for Mac. In the last few years, Apple had seemed disinterested in enhancing scripting support in MacOS, which made it difficult for us to consider investing in these capabilities. Nevertheless, we’re well aware of the desire for automated control of our apps, and we’re now hopeful that devoting resources to this area will be worthwhile. We’ll be exploring these new possibilities to determine where automation can come to our apps in the future.

Current Status

We’re already running the developer beta of Monterey on multiple Macs internally, and we’ve also updated our Status page to make mention of the new operating system. That page is always the best place to find up-to-date information related to our support for Apple’s latest operating systems.

As that page notes, our products do not yet support Monterey. We also do not expect to post Monterey-compatible updates in the near future. If you’re an end user, you’d do well to steer clear of developer previews: they’re intended specifically for developers, providing a testing environment to ensure compatibility between app updates and the new OS. We work with these betas to create future updates that everyone can enjoy, but the OS is often quite buggy and not yet ready for widespread use.

An Additional Note About Public Betas

Apple also announced that a public beta of Monterey will be available some time in July. In our experience, these pre-release betas are a poor bet for most users, particularly those using their Macs as production machines. We always recommend sticking with Apple’s publicly released OSes.

That said, we certainly understand the interest folks have in trying out the new features coming to Monterey! Rather than running any risks in updating your Mac’s main environment, you should consider installing to a second volume or an external drive. Apple’s APFS file system makes it very easy to create a separate volume to install another copy of MacOS, but if you’re concerned about disk space then installing Monterey to an external SSD drive is also very straightforward. With either of these options, you can test new features without negatively impacting your carefully configured day-to-day setup.

Our Plan: Be Ready for The Public Release

We always aim to support each new version of MacOS as soon as Apple officially releases it. We’re proud that we’ve been able to hit this goal for several years in a row, and we’re hard at work so we can keep that streak going in 2021. Expect more news from us later this year on that front.

In the months ahead, our Status page will be updated with Monterey-specific details for each of our apps. We’ll also be adding other tidbits to our social media accounts as we discover them.

For now, if you want to use our apps you’ll need to be sure to stick with a compatible version of MacOS. We continue to fully support MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and later, including the current MacOS 11 (Big Sur), on both Intel and Apple’s M1 Macs.