flexMeter pins a calm strip to the edge of your Mac. Live levels, on-air status, and producer cues — all in your peripheral vision while you stream, record, or play. No window to manage, no Dock icon, never any focus stolen.
v1.9 · macOS 26.4 · Apple Silicon Last shipped May 2026
flexMeter does the watching so you don't have to. A working meter belongs in your periphery — the way a car's dashboard belongs in yours when you're driving.
A saturated color ladder tuned for peripheral vision. The bar goes red the moment your mic gets hot — your eye registers it without you having to look. Peak hold lingers for 1.5 s so transients don't slip past between glances.
The strip floats above every window — fullscreen games, full-screen DAWs, Riverside, Zoom. It follows you across Spaces. It never takes focus. Your stream never sees a desktop flash because you tabbed away to check levels.
System Audio Output taps your full output mix via ScreenCaptureKit — game audio, browser, Discord, music. No BlackHole. No Multi-Output Device. No aggregate device to maintain. The biggest friction killer on macOS for streamers, simplified to one toggle.
Pick your platform from a list — YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, broadcast — and a cyan line on the strip shows your target. A trend arrow tells you whether you're tracking too loud, too quiet, or on point. The math is done; you just watch the strip.
The Tally Light is a colored rail alongside the meter — red when you're live, green when you're clear, amber when something's about to happen. Flip it with a keyboard shortcut, a Stream Deck button, a phone call, or any of six automation surfaces. Your eye reads the state before your brain decides to look.
The free iPhone Companion app turns your phone into a confidence monitor, a producer cue pad, or a full-screen tally light. Watch levels from across the room. Tap "WRAP UP" and the host sees it on their Text Strip — without the audience seeing them text you.
The product surface is wider than it looks. Same strip; very different shows.
You're three hours into a fullscreen play session. The headset starts crackling — barely audible to you, but viewers will catch it. The bar on the left edge goes red. You move the mic. Chat never has to mention it.
You switch segments four times a stream. One keyboard shortcut swaps the Workflow Preset — meter mode, target, dock position. flexMeter watches the foreground app and offers the right preset for OBS, Zoom, or Logic so you don't have to.
You and your co-host record on separate mics into Logic. Channel Labels show "ALEX" and "SAM" right on the meter bars so you can tell at a glance which one's getting hot. Quiet Zone shifts the color ladder for the soft moments — your acoustic-guitar intro, the post-cry pause, the whispered punchline.
You want the meter on your output mix, not your mic. One toggle in Settings → Audio — System Audio Output — and flexMeter measures the full stereo bus going to your viewers. The kick dips into red? You see it the moment it happens.
Your guest's mic mutes mid-thought — you've all been there. Dead Air Alerting fires a notification two seconds in, before the silence gets awkward. You unmute them and move on.
Your friend is producing from across the city, watching your stream on iPhone. They tap "WRAP UP" on the Companion cue pad and it appears on your Text Strip. You see the cue without the audience seeing them text you.
Most meters do one thing. flexMeter ships a handful of features built specifically to make broadcasts go more smoothly — these are the ones that earn the second look.
Every other meter app on macOS makes you install a virtual loopback device (BlackHole, Loopback) and build a Multi-Output. flexMeter just taps the system mix via ScreenCaptureKit.
One toggle in Settings → Audio. Your full mix — games, browsers, Discord, music — goes through the LUFS engine. Uses the system Screen Recording permission. No extra audio devices to maintain.
Your guest's mic mutes mid-thought. The silence stretches. The audience starts wondering.
Dead Air monitors the peak level every 250 ms while you're on-air. When the signal stays below your threshold for the configured duration, a time-sensitive notification fires — before the silence gets awkward. Four built-in presets: Spoken Word, Music, Strict, and Custom.
Air Log records every session you broadcast — integrated LUFS, loudness range, true peak, overs, and the per-clip timestamps that let you see exactly when things went sideways.
Tap Generate Insight on any session and an on-device language model (FoundationModels) writes you a one-paragraph coaching note. Cached locally. Never sent off-device. Trends sparkline shows your last 10 sessions against your target.
"Consistent across the full session. LRA tighter than your trailing 5-session average. Headroom looks healthy — no overs."
flexMeter is a tool for people who are busy doing real work — streaming, recording, broadcasting. The voice respects the reader's time and expertise without being terse or cold. Standards, not vibes.
Each mode answers a different question. Switch from the menu bar or the right-click menu. We ship the math correct so you can focus on the show.
| Mode | When to use it | What it's good for |
|---|---|---|
| VU ANSI S4.40 | When you want to feel the program | The slow-bouncing classic. Good for voice and most music. |
| PPM IEC 60268-10 Type I | When you're chasing transients | Catches the brief peaks VU smooths over. Good for drums and live-mic surprises. |
| LUFS ITU-R BS.1770-4 | When you're about to publish | Tells you if your podcast or stream meets a platform's loudness target. |
The measurement is identical across all three — LED, Studer-blue smooth gradient, or the analog VU needle. Pick the face that fits the show. Switch from the menu bar in two clicks.
Once flexMeter is on your screen edge, you almost never reach for the mouse. Show, hide, lock, move, fire the tally. Pro users can remap any of the ten global shortcuts.
Six more shortcuts cover reset, find my meter, show palette, and the other dock edges.
You don't need to walk in knowing what LUFS means or why PPM has a fast attack. flexMeter ships 37 in-app help articles and five contextual tips that surface at exactly the moment you'd want them.
Concepts (what is true peak, what does −14 LUFS mean, why the Tally Light has three animation modes), how-tos (setting up the Stream Deck, connecting OBS via webhooks, pairing the iPhone Companion), and reference for every setting in the app.
The Standards Sweep diagnostic explains what each PASS / WARN / FAIL means in plain language — so when you ship to a podcast network that asks for "EBU R128 compliance," you can answer them with confidence.
If you have a Stream Deck, point a button at a flex:// URL and you've got a one-tap tally. If you live in Shortcuts, App Intents are already wired. The full automation surface is in Pro, but the strip itself is on screen the moment you install.
Pair a Pro-licensed Mac with flexMeter Companion (free on the App Store). Live levels, LUFS, tally, and an Air Log session timer at 10 Hz. Flip to Tally Light Mode and the whole iPhone screen goes red — set it on a stand outside your booth and anyone walking by knows you're live.
Have a friend producing for you? They tap "WRAP UP" on the cue pad and it appears on your Text Strip. You see it. The audience never does.
See the Companion →Free is real — peak hold, three meter modes, four dock edges, up to two channels, and the entire in-app learning library. Plus and Pro each ship two 14-day trials per machine, so try before you buy.
One-time. No subscription. No telemetry.