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 — 1.0.0 is the first thing ever published, and inventing a record of releases that never happened would make every entry below worthless.

1.1.0

6 August 2026 · build 74

Your language

  • Optically now speaks the language your Mac is set to, wherever a translation exists. Anything not yet translated stays in English rather than showing a blank or a placeholder — the app is written so English is the fallback, not an error state.
  • More languages arrive in ordinary updates, with no setting to find and nothing to reinstall.

Accessibility

  • A full VoiceOver pass. The volume slider speaks its level, every control names itself, decorative artwork is kept out of the way, setup announces which step you are on, and the keyboard lands where typing starts.

A licence that has ended

  • The licence window used to show a green "Licensed to…" over a refunded licence while the menu bar said the keys were off. It now says the same thing in both places, and offers the two ways forward: buy again, or uninstall.
  • A refunded or expired licence no longer leaves a working volume slider behind. The panel shows the notice and operates nothing, which is what "the licence has ended" should mean.
  • Buying again after a refund is a normal thing to do, and now takes one click from the panel.

1.0.4

6 August 2026 · build 73

The panel

  • When the volume keys are not working, the panel's message is now red. Orange remains for things worth knowing — a trial counting down, audio routed somewhere else — but "the keys are off" is not advisory and no longer looks it.
  • Those messages now state the consequence, not just the event: "Licence refunded — volume keys are off" rather than a line that read like a receipt.
  • A refunded licence's panel now offers Uninstall Optically… directly. Someone who has been refunded is done; the graceful last act is helping them leave without hunting the right-click menu.

The menu

  • The right-click menu gains About Optically — the version at a glance, which is the first question every support conversation asks — and Contact Support…, which opens the contact form.

1.0.3

6 August 2026 · build 72

Behaviour

  • Opening Optically while it is already running now opens the menu bar panel. A menu bar app has no window and no Dock icon, so launching it again used to do nothing at all — now the panel drops from the menu bar, which both answers "where is it?" and shows where it lives.

1.0.2

6 August 2026 · build 71

Three small sharpenings of 1.0.1's purchase resilience, found by adversarial review before anyone hit them.

Buying and licences

  • Only the licensing server itself can end an in-flight purchase claim. A proxy, hotel Wi-Fi portal or firewall answering in its place is now treated with the same scepticism the licence checker has always had, instead of being believed instantly.
  • A licence restored on the server — a refund that failed at the bank, a dispute that resolved in your favour — now revives the app even when every seat is momentarily occupied. Good standing counts, not just a free seat.
  • Uninstalling now removes an in-flight purchase record from the Keychain along with everything else. "Removes itself completely" should mean completely.

1.0.1

6 August 2026 · build 70

Same-day fixes to how buying behaves when the world is less than perfect. None of them change what the app does to your volume keys; all of them change what happens to your money and your licence when a payment, a refund or a network is slow or wrong.

Buying

  • A purchase now survives the app being quit, the Mac sleeping, or the network dropping while the payment is in flight. The claim that collects your licence is kept in the Keychain and retried quietly — including across a relaunch — until it resolves. Before this, closing the window at the wrong moment meant the app never learned you had paid, and the licence arrived only by email.
  • A slow payment no longer ends in a spinner that gives up silently. If the payment is still pending after ten minutes the app now says exactly that, keeps checking in the background, and reminds you the licence also arrives by email.
  • One failed status check no longer abandons a paid purchase. Transient server trouble is retried; only a genuine refusal stops the process.

Licences

  • Adding Macs to a licence no longer replaces the licence key. The key already installed on your other Macs keeps working with the server rather than only offline — before this, a top-up quietly orphaned every Mac you had already set up.
  • A partial refund — say, a goodwill few dollars back — no longer revokes the whole licence. Only a full refund or a chargeback does.
  • Refunding a seat top-up now takes back exactly the seats that were refunded, and leaves the licence you originally bought alone.
  • If a refund fails at the bank after we acted on it, the licence (or the seats) come back automatically. Nobody ends up with no money and no licence.

Setup

  • The licence line on the last page of setup no longer overlaps the progress dots.
  • The disk image you download now opens as a styled window with the app, an Applications shortcut, and instructions in the background art.

1.0.0

6 August 2026 · build 68

The first release. Everything listed here is new, because there is nothing before it to have changed. It is out — download it.

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. 1.0.0 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.