Changelog

Optically can check for updates on its own, so a new version may arrive without you having gone looking for one. This page is where each release is written down, so you can read what is in an update before you install it. Newest first.

The list starts at the first release. There is no history above it because there is no history — nothing has been published yet, and inventing a record of releases that never happened would make every entry below worthless.

0.1.0

Unreleased · build 1

The first release. Everything listed here is new, because there is nothing before it to have changed. It is not published yet — leave your address on the download page and you will hear when it is.

Volume keys

  • Volume up, volume down and mute are caught before macOS handles them and sent to the Sonos speaker you chose. The key is suppressed rather than merely watched, so macOS does not apply its own change on top.
  • Holding a key ramps. Mute deliberately ignores the key repeat, so holding it does not toggle at the speed the keyboard is sending.
  • Shift with a volume key moves one point at a time instead of two.
  • A key press never waits on the network. It moves a local mirror of the speaker’s volume, the overlay paints from that, and the write to the speaker follows behind it.
  • The overlay shows the level read back from the speaker, not the last value your Mac sent — so turning it down in the Sonos app or on the speaker itself shows up rather than being overwritten.
  • When the chosen speaker is part of a Sonos group, volume and mute are addressed to the group’s coordinator instead of the single player.
  • The keys are redirected only while the output you picked is the one in use. Switch to headphones or the Mac’s own speakers and they go straight back to behaving the way macOS makes them behave.

The menu bar

  • Menu bar only: no Dock icon and no main window.
  • The panel shows what is playing in Music, TV and Spotify, and can play, pause and skip.
  • A volume slider and a mute button, driving the same speaker as the keys.
  • Night mode and speech clarity for soundbars that have them, read and set over the network without opening the Sonos app.
  • One warning line when the keys are not active, saying which of the possible reasons it is, with a button that goes to the fix.
  • Copy diagnostics, for when something has to be described in an email.

Setup, permissions and removal

  • A first-run walkthrough: Accessibility permission, finding the speakers on your network, and choosing which output the keys should apply to.
  • Starting at login is offered rather than arranged behind your back.
  • Uninstall from the app’s own menu. It lists what it is about to remove — the app, its settings, its login item, and its Accessibility and Automation permissions — before it removes any of it.
  • Running the app with --probe prints a read-only diagnostic: permissions, audio outputs, which process is making sound, every Sonos zone it can see, the saved settings, and whether the keys would currently be armed. It changes nothing.

Licence, trial and updates

  • A 14-day trial with no account and no card. When it ends the keys stop being redirected and the panel says so; nothing is deleted.
  • A licence is verified on your own Mac against a signature. Nothing in this part fails closed: with no network, or with this site unreachable, an activated Mac keeps working.
  • The server is asked only to count how many Macs a licence is used on and to remember when a trial started. It is never asked whether a licence is valid, because it is not the thing that decides.
  • Update checking is asked for on first launch rather than assumed, and nothing is fetched before you have answered.
  • An update is verified twice before it is installed: the EdDSA signature in the update feed, against the public key inside the app you already have, and then macOS’s own Developer ID and notarisation check on what was downloaded.

Requirements

  • macOS 14.4 or later.
  • A universal build — Apple silicon and Intel.
  • A Sonos speaker reachable on the same local network, and macOS Accessibility permission for the keys.
  • The situation it is built for: a Mac feeding that speaker down an optical S/PDIF cable, from a port on the Mac or on a dock or interface that adds one.

Before that

Nothing. 0.1.0 is the first release, and the record starts where the product does.

If an update ever changes what leaves your Mac, it will say so here and in the privacy notice before it does. What is covered by a licence is set out in the terms of sale. Anything about a release that is not clear — ask us.