Features

Every surface, named and tiered.

52 features across seven surfaces. We mark the tier on every row so you can see exactly what Free gives you, what Plus adds, and what's reserved for Pro.

Free Plus · $29 Pro · $79

Marquee features

The headlining work — given room to breathe.

These are the features people install flexMeter for. Below them is the complete grid, every row tier-tagged. But these four are the ones worth a second look.

iPhone Companion Pro

A physical on-air light. A producer's cue pad. A pocket meter.

The Companion is a free App Store download that pairs to a Pro-licensed Mac by QR. It does three jobs at once — a live-status meter for talent across the room, a cue pad your producer uses to push WRAP UP to your Text Strip, and a full-screen Tally Light when you set the iPhone on a stand outside the booth.

Live Activities mirror your on-air state onto the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. Pair multiple Macs. Switch between them from the Companion's settings.

See the Companion →

● ON AIR · 00:43:12

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ON AIR BREAK WRAP UP STAND BY

Air Log + AI Session Coaching Pro

Every session, scored. The coach lives on your Mac.

Air Log records every session — integrated LUFS, loudness range, true peak, overs with per-clip timestamps, source, preset. Local SQLite. Optional iCloud sync uses your own private database.

Tap Generate Insight on any session and an on-device language model (FoundationModels) writes you a coaching note. Cached locally. Never sent off-device. A trends sparkline shows your last 10 sessions against your target.

2026-05-18 · 1h 12m Target −16 LUFS

I−16.4

LRA4.2 LU

TP−1.1

Overs0

★

"Consistent across the full session. LRA tighter than your trailing 5-session average. Headroom looks healthy — no overs."

AUv3 plug-in Pro

Open Logic. Open Final Cut. There it is.

flexMeter ships a self-contained AUv3 Audio Unit effect — type aufx, subtype fMtr, manufacturer pxLn. Load it on any track or bus in Logic Pro, GarageBand, or Final Cut Pro as pixeLantern: flexMeter.

Passes audio through unchanged. Renders a 480×320 metering palette in the DAW's plug-in window — RMS bars with peak hold, the same green/yellow/red color ladder you already know. One less window to juggle when you're mixing.

Logic Pro · Master · pixeLantern: flexMeter

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LUFS-I−16.4

TP−1.1

Overs0

LogicGarageBandFinal Cut

Modular strip chassis Pro

Three strips. One chassis. The whole broadcast desk.

flexMeter ships three strips that share one mental model. The meter shows levels. The Tally Light rides alongside as an on-air signal — red, green, amber, or any hex; steady, blink, or pulse. The Text Strip lives on its own dock edge for one line of styled text: segment name, guest name, cue, countdown.

Each strip is enabled, sized, and positioned independently. A common setup: meter on the right, tally riding alongside, Text Strip across the bottom. The whole broadcast control room, in three thin strips of screen edge.

CH1

CH2

SEGMENT 3 · A. LOVELACE

Meter Tally Text Strip

Complete grid below

Audio

Metering

Standards-grade ballistics, done to spec — not approximated.

Free

Real-time level display

Per-channel RMS rendered as segmented LED-style bars at the native screen refresh rate via CADisplayLink. vDSP-accelerated, clamped to −60 .. 0 dB.

Free

VU meter mode

ANSI S4.40-aligned VU ballistic — exponential moving average with τ = 65 ms (99% rise in ~300 ms) and symmetric release. The slow-bouncing classic, timed to the standard.

Free

PPM meter mode

IEC 60268-10 Type I (BBC PPM) fast-attack. ~6.2 ms attack reaches 80% in roughly 10 ms; ~0.49 s release yields the canonical 24 dB fallback in about 2.7 s.

Plus

LUFS meter mode

ITU-R BS.1770-4 K-weighting with both gates (−70 LUFS absolute, −10 LU relative), 4× oversampled true peak per Annex 2, EBU Tech 3342 LRA over a 701-bin histogram.

Plus

Peak hold + ghost peak overlay

Holds the highest level per channel for 1.5 seconds before decaying. Reset preserves the prior peak as a translucent segment that fades over 20 seconds.

Plus

LUFS target presets

YouTube/Spotify (−14), Apple Music/Podcast (−16), EBU R128 (−23), ATSC A/85 (−24), ARIB TR-B32 (−27). Custom integer stepper. Reference line on the strip.

Plus

LUFS countdown nudge

A trend arrow on the integrated cell shows whether loudness is tracking toward target. ↑ red, → green, ↓ yellow, threshold ±1 LU.

Plus

Loudness range (LRA)

Real-time EBU Tech 3342 LRA in LU, computed from a session-long short-term histogram with both gates and the 95th/10th percentile spread.

Plus

1 kHz reference tone

−20 dBFS line-up tone for confirming signal chain alignment. EBU/SMPTE badge lights when the smoothed input locks within ±0.5 dB for ≥1 s.

Pro

Standards Sweep diagnostic

Four PASS/WARN/FAIL checks against ITU-R BS.1770-4 and EBU R128 reference values: K-weighting coefficients, sample rate, true-peak/RMS, LUFS integration gate.

Presence

Display & interaction

The strip lands where your eye lives. Skins, edges, multi-monitor, and the controls that stay out of the way.

Free

Four dock positions

Pin to left, right, top, or bottom. 16-point default thickness. NSScreen.visibleFrame respects the menu bar and Dock.

Free

Drag repositioning with snap

Press and drag the strip; a short threshold engages drag mode and the strip snaps to the nearest edge of the current display.

Plus

Multi-monitor with display affinity

When multiple screens are connected, choose where the meter pins. Repositions cleanly when screen parameters change.

Free

Adjustable opacity

30% to 100%, with quick presets in the context menu (30 / 50 / 80 / 100).

Free

Fullscreen + Spaces

canJoinAllSpaces · stationary · fullScreenAuxiliary. The meter follows desktop switches, stays during Mission Control, appears over fullscreen apps.

Plus

Meter skins

LED (default) on Free. Studer (industrial blue smooth gradient) and VU Needle (spring-physics palette centerpiece) on Plus. Engine identical across all skins.

Plus

Phosphor afterglow

CRT-scope-style decaying trail behind the peak indicator. ~100 ms exponential decay, color-matched to the peak. Off by default.

Plus

Calibration sweep on start

One-shot −60 → 0 → −60 dB sweep across 600 ms when the engine boots, lighting every segment. Confirms the rendering pipeline.

Free

Channel labels

Right-click → "Channel Labels…" to name each input channel. Stored per device; appear as small overlays when thickness ≥ 24 pt.

Strips

Modules

Three strips, one chassis. Each can be enabled, sized, and positioned on its own.

Pro

Tally Light

A colored strip alongside the meter for on-air signaling. Red, green, amber, blue, white, or hex. Three animation modes. Gradient fills. Brightness scaling. Screen Edge or Content Side.

Plus

Text Strip

One line of styled text on its own dock edge. Content, text color, background color, bold flag — all per message. Vertical strips rotate text −90°.

Pro

Air Log session recording

Every session saved to local SQLite: integrated LUFS, LRA, true peak, overs (with per-clip timestamps), source, preset, version. No data leaves your Mac.

Pro

Air Log browser + trends

Session list, overs timeline, detail pane, CSV export, and a trends panel sparklining your last 10 sessions against your target with a consistency label.

Pro

AI Session Coaching

On-device FoundationModels (macOS 26) generates a one-paragraph coaching insight per session. Cached locally; never sent off-device.

Pro

Dead Air alerting

Local time-sensitive notification fires when peak stays below threshold for the configured duration while on-air. Four presets: Spoken Word, Music, Strict, Custom.

Pro

Auto-cascade Tally → Air Log

When Tally goes on-air, an Air Log session begins automatically and ends when the tally clears. No manual start/stop during live production.

The palette

Pro analysis

Stereo correctness, frequency content, and a reference track you can A/B against the live session.

Pro

Stereo Suite

Pearson correlation meter, M/S level bars, mono delta, and a 3 000-point Lissajous goniometer. Catches phase problems before your broadcast folds to mono.

Pro

Spectrum Analyzer

4 096-point real FFT with 50% overlap, Hann window, per-bin smoothing. Log-frequency axis 20 Hz → Nyquist with labels at 50, 200, 1 k, 5 k, 10 k, 20 k.

Pro

Reference Track A/B

Drop any file and compare its integrated LUFS, true peak, and LRA against the live session. Same ITU-R BS.1770-4 processor — analysis runs offline.

Pro

Secondary input strip

A second AudioMeterEngine meters an independent input device on its own dock edge and thickness. Talkback, program-bus, anything.

Pro

Air-time clock

A live elapsed on-air timer appears at the bottom of the Metering Palette while the Tally is active. Clock text color matches the active tally signal color.

Six ways in

Automation surface

Pair any of them with macOS Focus Filters to apply a preset and tally state when a Focus mode activates.

Pro

flex:// URL scheme

A registered URL scheme handles tally and text strip commands. Works from Terminal, Stream Deck Open URL, Automator, anything that opens a URL.

Pro

WebSocket API

Local server on port 9812. Per-machine Keychain token. Origin-blocked at the handshake. Four-client cap. Bonjour discovery as _flexmeter._tcp.

Pro

WebSocket v3 — levels subscription

10 Hz push stream of per-channel RMS, peak, true-peak, LUFS M/S/I, and clip state. Drives the iPhone Companion live status and Live Activities.

Pro

OSC over UDP

OSC server advertises as _osc._udp via Bonjour. TouchOSC, Lemur, QLab, MA Lighting consoles can address flexMeter without manual IP entry.

Pro

Outgoing webhooks

Make, Zapier, Slack, or any HTTP endpoint receives tally / Air Log / dead-air events. "Send Test Event" button in Settings verifies delivery.

Pro

AppleScript dictionary

Tally, Text Strip, Air Log, and preset commands. ProPresenter cues, OSAScript, Script Editor — anything that scripts macOS.

Pro

App Intents (Shortcuts + Siri)

Five intents: Go On Air, Go Off Air, Toggle Tally, Show Text, Clear Text. Three read-only UI Snippets: Get Current Loudness, Get Tally State, Get Session Summary.

Pro

Focus Filter integration

Each macOS Focus mode can apply a workflow preset, tally state, Air Log behavior, and Metering Palette visibility — without launching the app.

Wherever the work is

Hardware & DAW

Footswitch. Phone call. Logic plug-in. iPhone in your pocket.

Pro

AUv3 plug-in

A self-contained AUv3 Audio Unit (type: aufx, subtype: fMtr, manufacturer: pxLn). Appears under Audio Units → Effect in Logic, GarageBand, Final Cut.

Pro

CoreMIDI control

Bind note-on/off or CC from any footswitch or controller to Tally On/Off/Toggle, Pre-roll, Text Presets 1–4, Air Log Start/End, Reset, Lock/Unlock. Virtual destination appears in MIDI Studio.

Pro

CallKit auto-Tally

When a phone or FaceTime call begins, Tally switches to amber-blink automatically and restores prior state on hang-up.

Pro

Push to Talk

Hold any configurable key to activate Tally; release to clear. Global NSEvent monitor — no special entitlement, just Accessibility permission.

Pro

Mute Detection

When system input is muted but signal persists above threshold, fires a time-sensitive notification. Catches hot-mic bypass on interfaces with hardware monitoring.

Pro

iPhone Companion

Free App Store app pairs to a Pro Mac. Live status, cue pad, Tally Light Mode, Live Activities, Dynamic Island, Lock Screen widgets. Multiple Macs, Keychain-stored.

Set it once

Workflow & accessibility

Workflow Presets, Smart Presets, and accessibility primitives that take the work seriously.

Plus

Workflow Presets

Streaming, Podcast, Broadcast, Classic VU, Peak Watch. Each bundles meter mode, target, dock position, opacity, and effects.

Plus

Smart Preset from App Context

When OBS, Zoom, Logic, or Pro Tools takes focus, a banner offers the matching preset. Confirm once and flexMeter remembers the mapping per app.

Free

Living menu bar icon

Two mini vertical bars run at 30 fps in the menu bar with the same green/yellow/red ladder and peak ticks. Tally border rings the icon when on-air.

Free

Keyboard shortcuts

Ten global shortcuts: toggle visibility, reset, lock meter, show palette, find meter, toggle tally, four dock-edge commands. Remappable on Pro.

Free

Triple-click quiet zone

Three clicks within 600 ms shifts the color ladder to −20 / −14 dB for low-level monitoring. "QZ" badge appears; haptic and VoiceOver confirm.

Free

VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, Reduce Transparency

Channels report level and peak in dB. Console-room vocabulary: "Standing by," "Holding for signal," "No source." Decorative motion is fully suppressible.

Plus

Notification Center widget

Three sizes show the last-known metering snapshot in macOS Notification Center. Refreshes via WidgetKit Timeline. Pro data dimmed on Plus.

Free covers most days. Plus unlocks the working creator's tier. Pro is the broadcast desk.

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