What’s new

What every version brings

Ekhio updates itself: the app checks once a day and tells you. This is the written record of what changed in each version.

1.0.7currentOctober 1, 2026

Three new tools, behind the ··· button

Test tone. A sine, pink noise, white noise or a 20 Hz to 20 kHz sweep, through the left speaker, the right one or both. It is how you find out whether a speaker is dead or the file is. It comes out raw, without your curve, capped at −12 dBFS so a pair of headphones already on your head does not hurt.
Loudness. Measures what leaves Ekhio, after the equalizer, the way a platform measures it: integrated, momentary, short-term and true peak. Pick the target —Streaming at −14, Podcast at −16 or EBU R128 at −23 LUFS— and it tells you whether you are in range, high or low.
Two outputs. Compares how long each output takes to sound, from what each device declares to macOS, no microphone needed. If one runs more than 20 ms behind the other it shows on video, and it says so in words.
Where they live. The ··· button next to the volume opens a menu with Record, See the sound and the three new ones. It stays lit while any of them is open.

1.0.6September 30, 2026

You can let us count this Mac, if you want to

Count this Mac, and only if you say yes. Ekhio's trial never touches a server, so there is no way to know how many Macs are using it. Now you can tell us: one ping a day saying the app opened, nothing else. It starts off, it is asked once and not on day one —a question on install day gets answered on reflex— and you can turn it off any time in Settings.
What goes out fits in one line, and you can read it first. Ekhio's version, macOS's version, and whether you are on trial or licensed. Not your key, not your email, not your Mac's name, not which apps you have open, and never a sample of audio. Settings → Usage count has a «View» button that shows the exact text that would be sent, and you can copy it.
The number that identifies you is yours, and you can erase it. It is a random number for this install, different from the crash-report one: turning on one does not link what the other sends. «Forget» erases what already reached the server and throws the number away. The server does not keep your IP and deletes rows after 90 days.

1.0.5September 30, 2026

Your language, and the sound where it belongs

If your Mac uses a language Ekhio doesn't include, it shows in English. Ekhio comes in Spanish, English, Portuguese, German, Japanese and Korean. With the Mac set to Dutch or French, for instance, the app showed up entirely in Spanish; now it shows in English.
No more Spanish text left in other languages. Some parts —Settings → Sound, the license, the analysis panel, the recorder, the widgets and what VoiceOver reads— stayed in Spanish even with the app in another language. Now everything is translated. Also, the app was showing an old price: it now says $39.
With Bluetooth headphones the sound stays in the headphones. When connecting them, the menu bar sometimes said «headphones» while the sound kept coming out of the speakers. It happened right as macOS switched outputs: now Ekhio always follows the output your Mac has at that moment.
Short sounds no longer cut the audio. A screenshot app's shutter, an alert or any one-second sound could leave the equalized audio silent for a few seconds — once, much longer. Now they go through without touching anything.
Volume keys on HDMI monitors work right away. On monitors that don't let you set their volume, Ekhio takes over the keyboard keys. They used to switch on one output change late; now they do as soon as you pick the monitor. If the accessibility permission is missing, Ekhio asks for it then.
If the system audio gets stuck, Ekhio tells you. It used to retry silently. Now, if it doesn't come back after a few tries, it opens the window with the fix. And it no longer shows it by mistake right after your Mac wakes up.

1.0.4September 29, 2026

Now signed by Akouvara

The Apple certificate moved to another account. Until the previous version Ekhio was signed with the developer account it was born under. From this one it is signed by Akouvara, the same name that appears as the seller on your receipt. Inside, the app is the same; what changed is who answers for it.
macOS will ask for permissions one more time. The system grants permissions per signature, and the signature is a different one: it will ask again for system audio capture, the microphone and accessibility. Once only. Without system audio capture Ekhio cannot hear what is playing, so it corrects nothing.
And possibly your license key. The key is kept in the keychain, which is also tied to the signature. If it asks again, paste it back in: re-activating the SAME Mac does not use up another of your three — the server recognises it by its hardware identifier and just refreshes the one you already had.

1.0.3September 29, 2026

Headphone curves, only from people who allow them to be used

4,021 curves instead of 8,850. AutoEq's code is free software, but each measurement belongs to whoever made it and each sets their own terms. Five of those collections do not allow commercial use, and Ekhio is sold. They are out of the bundle. Eighteen sources that do allow it remain, and every curve names who measured it.
What you already saved did not move. A saved headphone keeps its curve inside the preset, not a link to the database: it sounds exactly the same. What can change is the ⌘K search — some models no longer appear, and others are now measured by someone else.
The list no longer dims almost everything. Rows rendered at 55% when the index did not say which rig was used. With the old sources that was rare; with the new ones it would have been nearly all of them, so it is gone. Between two measurements of the same model, the one that declares a rig still comes first.
A missing icon is now visible. A misspelled name left a blank gap and looked like a display problem. It now draws a dotted outline.

1.0.2September 28, 2026

Your license now says when you bought it and when it expires

Expires: never, and now it says so. A license with no end date does not read as «never expires»: it reads as nobody telling you, which is what every subscription does. There is now a row that says it outright, and explains that version 1 updates are included at no extra cost.
And when you bought it. The purchase date travels inside the signed receipt and was nowhere on screen. It sits apart from the date you activated this Mac, which is a different thing: change machines and that one moves.
Macs count themselves. Opening the tab brings the Mac count up to date against the server, with no button and no notices. It used to say «up to 3» until you hit Refresh.

1.0.1September 28, 2026

You can actually activate your key now

The key field is now a field. In Settings → License, and in «I have a key» in the main window, the box was drawn but you could not type in it: it was the design mockup and was never wired up. Now you paste your key, hit Activate and it sticks. If you bought before today, your key was always good — this side was what was missing.
It really verifies, and only once. On activation the server returns a receipt signed with Ed25519 that is stored in your Mac's Keychain. From then on Ekhio verifies it offline: if the server goes away tomorrow, you keep working. Good for up to 3 Macs, and you can free one from the same screen.
And it tells you what went wrong. Key that does not exist, key from another app of ours, key already on three Macs, or no connection: each case has its own sentence. There were none before, because nothing could fail.
No more made-up data. The license screen used to show an invented key, an invented purchase date and an invented «2 of 3 Macs», complete with a VALID badge. Now everything comes from your receipt: your key with the middle masked, when you activated it and how many Macs you actually have.

1.0.0September 27, 2026

One point zero, and the small window becomes a console

No longer 0-something. Ekhio measures your room, corrects what your speakers swallow, switches profile when you join a call, records what is playing and shows you the spectrum. That has not been a beta for two releases. The «0.» was the only thing still saying otherwise.
Compare moved into the curve. In the strip —the window shrunk down to 428 points— the Compare and Save buttons were stealing room from the profile name until one letter was left. Now you compare by tapping the curve itself, which was the only thing in that window that did nothing when touched and was already showing the state: comparing flattens and dims it. It carries its label while it is on, because a control you can only discover by tapping is not a control.
The profile name gets its room. It is half of what that window is for —which profile is on and why— so it now gives way last and never drops below what it takes to read it. Save became an icon: at that width the label did not fit, and the «UNSAVED» badge next to it already says what it is about.
The 32 bands, with a loupe. The band strip gains a minimap with handles: you zoom into the range you are working on and the rest stays as context. It works in the small window too, which is exactly where all 32 never fit at once.
The window no longer drags itself. Before, any click on the top strip moved the window, buttons included. And coming back from an alert or the menu bar you had to click twice: the first one only woke the window up. Both are gone.
Your per-side profile stops saying «by hand». If you saved a preset with Music on the left and Night on the right, loading it back showed «by hand» and looked like your choice had been lost. Now it says where each side came from. And what is drawn is what will actually play: it used to paint the global curve, which with channels split was neither of the two.

0.5.0September 26, 2026

Record what's playing, get your volume keys back, and see the sound

Record what you're hearing. One click and Ekhio writes to disk exactly what leaves your speakers: after the equalizer, after your room correction. In AAC, ALAC, FLAC, WAV or AIFF. Nothing is routed through a virtual device, so your volume and your output keep working while it records, and the file lands in your Music folder.
Your volume keys, back. Plug in an HDMI monitor, an optical output or plenty of USB interfaces and macOS greys out the volume keys, because the device reports a fixed level. Ekhio hands them back: they really move, with their own HUD, and they tell you which output the sound is going to. It only steps in where the keys were already dead.
See the sound. A window that floats over any app, with three views: the spectrogram —which frequencies play and when, to hunt down a hum or check whether your «lossless» really is— plus a goniometer and a correlation meter, which tells you if the recording loses content when summed to mono. Resizable up to double.
A different profile on each side. Music on the left and Movie on the right, if that helps. Or a curve made by hand per side, for a room with one hard wall or an ear that hears less. On 5.1 it splits by role —fronts, center, surrounds and sub— and Ekhio asks your device how it's laid out instead of guessing. Save the whole set under a name, like any preset.
8,850 headphone curves, inside the app. The AutoEq database is no longer downloaded: it ships with Ekhio. The first search is instant and works offline.
Compare no longer cheats. «Compare» now level-matches both sides. A curve that lifted 3 dB used to win every time, because louder sounds better; now the question is whether it sounds better.
Measured correction, with no delay. If you already measured your room with REW, Acourate or had an installer do it, load that file and Ekhio applies it exactly, sample by sample, without adding a single millisecond of delay to your video.
Sound, a new tab in Settings. Loudness compensation for quiet listening —your ears lose bass and treble as the level drops, and this puts them back while doing nothing at full volume— and crossfeed for headphones, which removes that in-your-head feeling on long sessions.
Desktop widgets. Four of them: what profile is on, switching profiles with one click, how much your room was corrected, and per-app volume. In your language and with your accent color.
Intel Macs too. Ekhio is no longer Apple silicon only.

0.4.0September 24, 2026

Each app through the output you choose, with its own profile

Each app, through the output you choose. Spotify on the speakers, the meeting on your headphones and everything else on the monitor. In Volume the console splits into one group per output: drag an app to another group and it plays there, equalized with that device's curve and at its own volume. Your choices are remembered even if you quit the app, and if you unplug the output, the app goes back on its own and returns when you plug it in again.
The profile goes where the app plays. The app that is playing picks the profile, and that profile is applied on the output it plays through. If Teams joins a meeting on your headphones, Voice goes on the headphones while Spotify stays on Music through the speakers. You can also pin a profile to any output.
Meetings play wherever you say. The meetings rule gets one more row: pick an output and, for as long as the call lasts, the meeting plays there. When you hang up, every app goes back to its place.
Ekhio respects the output each app chose. Before, if you picked your headphones in Teams, Ekhio moved its audio to the Mac's output. Now every app plays where it sends its audio, and anything going to a virtual device —a recorder, the audio you share in a call— is left untouched.
Screen recording no longer counts as a meeting. Before, any app that took the microphone was treated as a meeting: recording your screen or a voice memo lowered your music. Now only meeting apps and browsers running Meet or Zoom count. If you use another app for meetings, add it under “Count as a meeting”.
Clearer meeting voices. In the meetings rule you choose how much the incoming voice gets fixed: the first level compresses it and adds presence; the strongest also fills in the highs a bad connection eats. It only acts during the meeting and only on the meeting app: your music is left alone.
Range: dialogue close, blasts far. Three options in the equalizer —Off, Gentle and Night— so dialogue in a movie is clear without the explosions knocking you out of your chair. It goes with the profile: Night comes with it on.
Every app at the same loudness, if you want. In Volume, Match measures how loud each app sounds and brings them to the same loudness. The fader becomes how much more or less you want of each one, and an app can stay fixed at its percentage.
Play and pause from the console. Apps that allow it get their own play and pause button on their Volume channel.
A shorter menu bar. The profile with its reason and the volume, and nothing else. If something plays through another output, one line tells you. Everything else lives in the window.

0.3.0September 22, 2026

Join a meeting and the profile switches on its own, even if nobody speaks

Meetings are detected on joining, not when someone speaks. It used to need six seconds of audible speech. Now it is enough for the meeting app to take the microphone: you join a silent meeting and the Voice profile is on within the same second. If you only listen and never open your microphone, it works too.
And it leaves without keeping you waiting. How much silence ends a meeting is set by the meeting itself: its longest pause is remembered and a little more than that is waited for, between eight and twenty-five seconds. One with people talking over each other ends quickly; one with long pauses holds on.
The equalizer picks itself up if it falls. A tap on an app that quits abruptly could take the audio engine down without a word: Ekhio stopped equalizing and nobody noticed. Now the audio is watched, and if it stops flowing the engine is rebuilt within three seconds.
Ekhio no longer falls asleep when it matters. macOS throttles apps with no window open, which is exactly what Ekhio is during a call. That stalled the volume ramp on hanging up and the meeting detection. While it is switched on, it no longer sleeps.
Crash reports, if you want them. When something breaks, Ekhio saves a note on your Mac. You can read it in full before deciding whether it is sent, switch it on or off in Settings, and delete the random number that identifies it. It starts switched off and carries nothing from your audio or your apps.
The window shrinks down to a strip. Make it smaller and it goes through three shapes: the full editor, a console with the bands at half size, and a 428-point strip with the curve, the profile, the output and the volume. No buttons: you get there by dragging the edge.
The 32 bands stretch with the window. Full screen or on a wide monitor they no longer squeezed to the left leaving a stretch of black: now they take the width, and with all 32 in view there is nothing left to scroll.

0.2.0September 20, 2026

Rules, per-app volume and your headphone curves

Rules on a board. One list read top to bottom: the first that applies wins. Drag them to change the order. Above it all, «Where it plays»: each output sets the profile it starts with, and rules take over on top while they apply.
When a call comes in, everything else ducks. It doesn't pause: it drops to 0, 20 or 40 % and ramps back up over three seconds when you hang up. You pick it in the rule itself.
Per-app volume, like a mixer. One channel per app with its meter and fader, a master that moves them all, and the scroll wheel to adjust without dragging.
Your headphone curves, from the public database. Search your model among 8,850 measured ones. One row per model with all its measurements, the industry rig marked, and before using it you pick measurement, target and strength. It stays as another preset.
Auto-tune, step by step. Permissions, volume cap, positions and measurement, one at a time, showing what the mic is hearing.
Settings in tabs. General, Appearance, Shortcuts, Outputs, License and About, with ⌘1 through ⌘6. Shortcuts can now be changed: click the key and press the new combination.
The equalizer, as a desk. Profile combo, ⌘K search, preset chips along the bottom and the ridge of what is playing behind the curve.

0.1.0September 19, 2026

The first one

A 32-band equalizer for the whole system. No driver: it rides on the process taps in macOS 14.4. Audio goes through the filters and out; nothing is stored or uploaded.
It switches itself. Join a call and it sets Voice; hang up and music is back. By app, by output and by time of day.
It measures your room. With the Mac's mic, from several positions, and corrects what the room does to your speakers.

If you already have it installed you don’t need to download anything: open it, go to Settings → About and hit «Check now».

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