Posted By Paul Kafasis on January 15th, 2026

It’s time for new calendars, and that means it’s also time for another annual status report. Today, I’m going to take a look back at what Rogue Amoeba accomplished in 2025, then preview a few of the things we’re looking forward to in 2026. Let’s jump right in!

Software Updates

We’re a software company, so our biggest news ought to be updates made to our software. It was!

SoundSource 6

Our single biggest update in 2025 was SoundSource 6. Hopefully, you already know about SoundSource, which provides instant access to audio settings right from your Mac’s menu bar, giving you powerful per-app control and the ability to apply effects to any app’s audio.

In version 6, we added dozens of helpful new features, alongside countless improvements. When an upgrade is this big, it can be difficult tough to convey all that it contains, so we focused our marketing on four key features: Quick Configs, AirPlay support, grouped output devices, and the powerful new Audio Devices window. You can learn about those, and so much more, on the What’s New page.

Whether you’re new to SoundSource, or just haven’t checked out version 6, download the free trial to check it out on MacOS 15 and higher. And if you previously purchased SoundSource 5 (or even SoundSource 4), you’re eligible for a discounted upgrade to version 6.

Free Updates, Big and Small

In addition to one paid upgrade, we also shipped a whopping 49 free updates across our product lineup in 2025, including three big releases.

With Audio Hijack 4.5, we removed the “Beta” label from the relatively new Transcribe block. That means Audio Hijack’s powerful speech-to-text abilities are now fully supported. This update also made transcription much faster and less CPU intensive.

Fission 2.9 included some notable interface improvements, like a better top navigation bar. However, user feedback convinced us that our choice of new colors was a misstep. We rectified things in subsequent updates, while also improving VoiceOver support.

We optimized SoundSource 5.8 to reduce CPU usage and correct an assortment of rare but irksome issues. The new SoundSource 6 is the current version of the app, but version 5 remains supported for existing users. In fact, it received another bug fix just a few days ago.

Rather than on-going subscriptions, all of our products are sold as one-time purchases. Nevertheless, the apps are always being refined, with a constant flow of free updates. In 2025, we shipped new features, performance enhancements, and hundreds of bug fixes to make all of our apps as reliable as possible. We also invested significant effort on full compatibility with MacOS 26 (Tahoe), ensuring everything was ready when it arrived.

Important MacOS Updates

Speaking of MacOS, we once again found ourselves eagerly awaiting point updates from Apple. While we have full control over our own apps, corrections to problems with the Mac’s underlying audio system can only come from Apple. Both MacOS 15 (Sequoia) and MacOS 26 (Tahoe) saw critical fixes arrive after their initial releases, with important improvements in Sequoia 15.4, as well Tahoe 26.1. We tested those OS updates in beta to validate Apple’s changes, and issued updates where needed.

Celebrating Our Team

We were delighted to have the chance to celebrate two employee milestones in 2025. Our ace designer, Neale Van Fleet, has now been with us for 10 years and counting. In that time, he’s done incredible work to make all that we do look good. Meanwhile, our support manager, Chris Barajas, crossed the 15-year mark. Chris has done more than anyone to make things better for customers. We know we’re lucky to have them both, and we hope our users do too.

One More Thing

One other project worth noting is our new Customer Dashboard. It provides automated access to full details on all your purchases from Rogue Amoeba. Retrieve lost licenses, download the latest version your license can unlock, view your purchase history, and update the email address under which your purchases are stored.

Click to check it out. You shouldn’t need it often, but when you do, the Customer Dashboard will be ready for you.

Updates Big and Small

We’re a software company, so our biggest plans ought to be updates for our software. They are!

First, I’m delighted to spill the beans on a major new feature coming to our audio router Loopback: audio effects! Currently, using effects to make microphone input sound better requires pairing Loopback and Audio Hijack. That’s not as streamlined as we’d like it to be. In the future, Loopback may be all you need to make your mic audio sound great.

We’re aiming to begin beta testing soon, so if you’re a Loopback user interested in testing the next iteration, we’d be glad to have you. Click here to apply, by sending your full name and your favorite food.

After unveiling SoundSource 6 last month, we found plenty to polish in subsequent minor updates. Now, we’re working hard on SoundSource 6.1, a sizable update we hope to ship before spring. It will contain some features that didn’t make it into 6.0, as well as backend enhancements which will reduce latency and CPU usage.

And of course, we’ll be keeping things shipshape in all the rest of our products. The steady procession of free updates to our entire product line will continue apace in 2026.

Still Faster Beta Support

When Apple provided MacOS 26 betas last year, most of our product line worked without needing updates. However, Loopback and SoundSource took a bit more time, because the ARK plugin they use for audio handling required an update for the new OS. Last fall, we decided it was time to change that.

While we’ll continue to counsel caution when running beta OS versions, you’ll no longer need to wait for updates from us just to run the apps. For the first time ever, when Apple provides a beta of the next version of MacOS, you’ll be able to use our entire product line on it from day one. We know our users will appreciate it.

Fascinating Blog Posts

I don’t think I’ve ever teased blog posts in a status report before, but there are two in the works from other Amoebas that I’m personally very excited about. Neale’s design evolution posts are always excellent, so I’m eager to read his forthcoming “Design of SoundSource 6”. Meanwhile, Chris recently spearheaded some customer outreach that’s worth hearing about, and he’ll be posting about it soon.

Staying Up-To-Date

This annual status report is a good chance to reiterate how you can keep up with our latest news. Of course, our apps themselves offer automated update checking, with comprehensive release notes. But beyond that, there’s our:

Mailing List

Want our biggest news? We send just a few emails a year, and your address is never shared. Click right here to subscribe.

Blog

On Under the Microscope, you’ll hear about big updates, smaller updates, and other stories too. Subscribe to the RSS feed in a reader like NetNewsWire, or even get an email for every post with a service like Feedrabbit.

Social Media

You can follow @RogueAmoeba on an assortment of social media sites. We post about nearly all of our updates, provide links to articles on our blog, and share other ephemera.

New Year, Same Rogue Amoeba

We’re well into our third decade of developing the best audio tools for the Mac, and we don’t have any plans to stop. Everyone at Rogue Amoeba is hard at work on multiple updates we’ll be unveiling in the months ahead. It’s time to get back to that, so please allow Ammo and me to close by wishing you a happy new year.

Posted By Paul Kafasis on January 10th, 2026

Recently, two widely discussed posts have decried the proliferation of icons in MacOS 26 (Tahoe) menus. First, Jim Nielsen wrote a post in December that referenced Apple’s old Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) advice against using confusing symbols in menus. Next, Nikita Prokopov provided example after infuriating example of just how poorly implemented these icons are on Tahoe.

A Bit of Nuance

It’s not that icons in menus are inherently bad. Indeed, they can be helpful in small doses. We use them to good effect in select places throughout our own apps:

The menu icons seen above help differentiate between available options.

Tahoe’s Menu Icons

By contrast, Tahoe’s menu icons are distracting. Their tiny size and monochrome nature make distinguishing between icons difficult even on Retina displays. Apple’s implementation of menu icons across the operating system is simply not good.

Attaching icons to only key items is an idea with some potential, and in the initial Tahoe release, only some menu items had icons. Nevertheless, the inconsistencies in indentation and usage that Nielsen and Prokopov pointed out led to ugly and confusing menus.

Tahoe updates have made things worse, by cramming in more and more icons. It now seems Apple intends for every menu item to have an icon, which just doesn’t scale. The result is unhelpful clutter that makes scanning far more difficult.

Apple’s Mess

We often take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to Apple’s design changes, and we have not added any menu icons of our own on Tahoe. However, Apple has forced dozens of icons into our applications’ menus. We don’t love the result:

The random icons Apple littered about haphazardly made our menus uglier and less usable. Illustrative examples can be found in Audio Hijack and Farrago, which each contain “Import” and “Export” menu items. In Audio Hijack, Apple placed an icon on the “Export” option, but not on the “Import” option. Meanwhile in Farrago, neither item got an icon at all.

In addition to being inconsistent, Apple’s approach feels uncharacteristically heavy-handed. In the past, the company might have led by example in their own apps, while encouraging developers to follow along. But rather than WWDC sessions to educate and assist, they employed an overzealous tactic of running a search and replace on third-party apps, which has produced poor results.

Cleaning Things Up

Since the release of Tahoe, we’ve been stuck with the unattractive menus Apple has imposed upon us. Recently, however, we found we could do better. Thanks to inspiration from our old pal Brent Simmons, we can remove the clutter that’s been foisted upon our apps.¹

Our next releases will remove the icons Apple previously forced into our menus. This will restore clean, consistent, icon-free menus to our products.²

As you can see, the clutter-free menus found on MacOS Sequoia and earlier are possible on Tahoe as well. When we next update our apps, we’ll be retaking control of our menus.

Personally, I hope other developers will follow this example. We can’t fix the entire OS, but we don’t have to perpetuate its problems within our own products.

Footnotes:

1. Brent has provided a more fleshed-out version of his code here. ↩︎

2. If there are folks who prefer to keep these icons on Tahoe, that will be possible. We’re also adding a new “Restore icons in menus” setting in our Debugging windows.

   

   I’ll be interested to see if that gets much use. ↩︎

Posted By Paul Kafasis on December 12th, 2025

Back in 2020, we were delighted to celebrate Neale’s fifth anniversary as Rogue Amoeba’s designer. It’s now 2025, and he’s still here doing stellar work. That means it’s now time to celebrate a full decade of Neale Van Fleet!

When you’re using one of our apps, perusing our website, or check in with us on social media, you’re undoubtedly looking at something Neale created. That’s even true of this laudatory blog post, which recycles his artwork from past posts.

Major App Updates and More

Since we last feted Neale, we’ve shipped three massive new app updates, and he led the design of all of them.

When compared against the revolutionary version 3, Audio Hijack 4 was more of an evolutionary update. With over 100 new features, however, it was still a massive design job. Neale rose to the challenge. I always enjoy his design evolution posts, but The Design of Audio Hijack 4 is a particular favorite.

After that came Farrago 2. Neale’s idea to allow the use of emoji on tile faces was a stroke of genius, making it possible for tiles to appear distinct while still maintaining an overall uniform look. He talked about that, and much more, in “The Design of Farrago 2”. That post delightfully details how he managed to make a soundboard app so visually appealing.

We’ve also had dozens of point updates to our apps, and improvements like the sleek new Permissions window certainly didn’t design themselves. A few years back, Neale even went from designer to sound designer when we made the confetti in our License window accessible.

If you’re curious what that means, click the banner to read all about it.

Whimsical Things

We try to have a good amount of fun here, and Neale’s no stranger to that either. You might recall our Historic Screenshot Archive, which displays hundreds of images from 23+ years of Rogue Amoeba software. In addition to helping set that up, Neale also created some fun images to display on social media.

Last year, Neale added a special exhibit dedicated to Ammo the Amoeba. That page features dozens of assorted images of our mascot, and it’s a delight.

Even more delightful was Neale’s series on “The Least Likely Ways to Install Rogue Amoeba’s Apps”, like the goofy floppy disk seen above. If you missed that, you’re really in for a retro treat.

So Much More

Neale’s work encompasses far too much to list it all. Day in and day out, his work is outstanding, and we’re lucky to have him. Our users are too!

A Beautiful Award for Beautiful Work

Long-time readers might remember just how Rogue Amoeba celebrates a 10th anniversary: With a bespoke silver token. Neale’s was once again handcrafted by Quentin in his home forge, and it’s as beautiful as ever.

Neale is a particularly worthy recipient of this award, because he designed the logo it represents. We hope it brings him a feeling of pride., because we’re tremendously proud of his great work.

Closing

It’s an honor to be able to celebrate so many employee milestones here. The team that makes the products you use every day is second to none, and it’s a privilege to be able to work with them for such long tenures. Neale is no exception to that.

So thank you for ten great years, Neale, and here’s to many more to come.

Posted By Paul Kafasis on December 4th, 2025

We hope you already know our essential audio control utility, SoundSource. It provides fast menu bar access to your Mac’s audio settings, along with powerful per-app control, and the ability to apply effects to any audio. We’ve just released a major upgrade, SoundSource 6, which brings dozens of new features and refinements.

Major New Features in SoundSource 6

Let’s take a quick look at four major new features in version 6.

Grouped Output Devices

You can now play audio through multiple outputs at once, with grouped output devices. Add your desired devices to a group, then select it in any output menu within SoundSource to play audio to all of them. Use groups with per-app audio, as well as your Mac’s entire output.

AirPlay Support

SoundSource has outstanding new support for sending audio to AirPlay devices like HomePods, Sonos systems, and more. That means you can route an individual application to one or more AirPlay devices, while leaving the rest of your audio playing from a local output. You can also stream all of your Mac’s audio to multiple AirPlay devices, in sync.

A Powerful New Audio Devices Window

The new Audio Devices window gives you tremendous control over the audio devices connected to your Mac.

There’s a whole lot of functionality packed in this window, including:

• Key Settings: Adjust volume, balance, sample rate, channels, and more for your devices, right from SoundSource.

• Preferred Device Order: SoundSource can automatically select your preferred system devices whenever a device is plugged in or unplugged..

  

• Settings Lock: Lock settings on your devices to prevent undesired changes.

• Improve Sound Quality with AirPods: When AirPods and other Bluetooth devices are used for input on your Mac, output audio quality is unfortunately diminished. Get much better sound quality by adjusting their mode to “Output Only”.

• Hide Devices: Prevent devices from showing in SoundSource, and from being set as the system’s default device.

• Maximum Volume: Protect your ears by limiting how loud a device can get.

• Device Nicknames: Add nicknames and even custom icons to easily identify your devices within SoundSource.

The Audio Devices window is packed with even more, so be sure to check it out.

Quick Configs

With Quick Configs, you can save complete audio configurations for your Mac. Make configs for specific devices or different locations. Load specific effects, change volume levels, and more.

Once a Quick Config is saved, select it to instantly switch your Mac’s entire audio setup with a single click. Quick Configs are wicked powerful and wicked fast.

So Much More to See

SoundSource 6 contains more than 30 major new features, but there’s only so much space to detail everything we’ve added. Here’s a bullet-point list of just a dozen more improvements in this huge upgrade:

• Recent Noise Indicator

• New Balance & Pan Effect

• Per-App “Headphone EQ”

• Automation Support with New Shortcuts Actions

• Create a System-Wide “Cough” Button

• Improved Alternate (Control-Click) Menu

• Enhanced Effects Management

• Audio Unit Improvements

• Multi-Channel Support

• Per-App Menu Bar Icons

• Switch Devices via the Keyboard

• Per-App Volume Control From the Keyboard

Find more info on our “What’s New in SoundSource 6” page, or see the comprehensive release notes to get every last detail.

Interface Enhancements, Too

On top of all the new functionality, we’ve improved SoundSource’s interface to make it both easier to use and more customizable to suit your tastes. Tint things with eight different accent colors, then customize SoundSource’s menu bar icon. After that, resize the app’s main window to your needs, and even control individual apps and devices showing activity in the menu bar.

Try SoundSource 6 Today

SoundSource 6 is available for download right now. Just click this big honking button to get it:

↓ Get SoundSource 6
SoundSource 6 supports MacOS 15 and higher¹

If you’re new to SoundSource, a license costs just $49. Existing SoundSource users can upgrade to version 6 for just $25.² We can’t wait for you to try it.

Footnotes:

1. Running MacOS 14 or lower? Get the still-supported SoundSource version 5 from our Legacy page.

   When you purchase a SoundSource license through our store, the license you receive is valid for both SoundSource 5 and SoundSource 6. ↩︎

2. If you purchased SoundSource 5 on September 1, 2025 or later, we’ve emailed you a complimentary upgrade to version 6. Check your inbox for an email with the subject line “Your free SoundSource 6 upgrade is inside!”. ↩︎

Posted By Paul Kafasis on November 4th, 2025

Back in September, we noted two critical bugs in MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple’s latest update to the Mac’s operating system. As a result of these issues, we suggested holding off on upgrading to the initial 26.0 release.

We’ve since been tracking Apple’s progress fixing those bugs in subsequent MacOS beta releases. We’re happy to report that the issues we reported have been resolved with the recent release of MacOS 26.1, and that Tahoe contains several additional fixes for various audio bugs. With that in mind, we’re now able to recommend upgrading your Mac to Tahoe (26.1 or higher).

Below, you’ll find an overview of important audio-related bug fixes found in Tahoe. Each of these bugs previously impacted all five of our audio capture tools:

Airfoil Audio Hijack Loopback Piezo SoundSource

• Audio From FaceTime and Phone Is No Longer Lost
  A critical bug introduced in MacOS 26.0 led to audio captures from FaceTime and the new Phone app failing in many setups. These issues have been addressed in 26.1. Capturing audio from FaceTime or Phone should now work without any issue.

• Sample Rate Mismatches No Longer Cause Failed Audio Captures
  A second critical bug introduced in MacOS 26.0 led to audio captures failing when secondary output devices had a different sample rate than that of the system’s default output device. This problem has also been corrected in 26.1.

• Improved Audio Capture From Safari at 44.1 kHz
  When the default output for the Mac was set to a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, audio played by Safari could have skipping or clicks when it was captured. This issue has been corrected, and all audio capture from Safari should sound flawless.

• Reliable “Hey Siri” Access
  Previously, the system could fail to recognize spoken requests for Siri when you were capturing audio with our products. On Tahoe, using “Hey Siri” should now always work as expected.

• Capture of Audio at Low Sample Rates Once Again Works as Expected
  A regression in later versions of MacOS 15 (Sequoia) led to audio capture failures when audio was played at low sample rates. On Tahoe, capturing works as expected regardless of sample rate.

• More Reliable Capture With Some Advanced Audio Devices
  A bug in older versions of MacOS resulted in audio capture issues with devices from manufacturers like MOTU and Apogee which use stream groups. Updates in Tahoe have addressed issues where the wrong audio could be captured, as well as problems of silenced audio incorrectly being heard.

• Low-Pass Filter, Lowered
  Prior to Tahoe, a strong low-pass filter was applied by the system to all audio captures. Updates from Apple mean this filter is no longer applied as aggressively.

One additional bug affected only Audio Hijack:

• Fully Functional Apple Music Track Title Capture
  In the 26.0 release of Tahoe, retrieval of track titles from Apple Music was broken for streaming songs. With MacOS 26.1, track titles can once again be retrieved from streaming songs, as well as local songs.

Consider Upgrading to Tahoe Now

We advise a conservative approach when it comes to upgrading your Mac’s operating system, but with Apple’s 26.1 update, we’re confident in recommending Tahoe for our users. The fixes detailed above make Tahoe the best OS for most users.

Of course, the latest versions of our own products are always our recommended versions. To make sure you have our latest, just select Check for Updates from within the app.