A menu-bar recorder for macOS
Record anything your Mac plays. Drag it anywhere.
PrintBus sits in your menu bar and turns whatever’s playing, from a reference track to a tutorial, into named, trimmed audio files you can drag straight into your DAW. No Loopback, no virtual devices, no routing.
- macOS 14.4 or later
- Apple silicon
- No account, no cloud
01The workaround
Skip the routing.
Recording what your Mac plays usually means a virtual audio device, a routing matrix, an armed track and a real-time pass, then trimming and renaming by hand. Miss one setting and you’ve recorded silence.
The old way
- Install a virtual audio device
- Route the player into it
- Set it as an input in your DAW
- Arm a track, record in real time
- Trim the silence, rename the file
With PrintBus
Press play.
The take is named, trimmed and waiting in your menu bar.
02Auto-record
Press play anywhere. The take names itself.
-
01Turn on AUTO once.
PrintBus waits in the menu bar, listening. There’s nothing to route and no track to arm.
-
02Press play. It’s already recording.
A take starts on the first sound. Spotify and Apple Music tracks are saved as “Artist - Title”; anything else gets the date and time.
-
03Next track, next take.
When the track changes, the take is saved and a new one starts, so each song lands as its own file.
-
04Your session stays out of it.
Audio from Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton and other DAWs is never recorded, so playing your session doesn’t make a take. Neither does a song playing on another device over Spotify Connect.
03Clean edges
Silence, trimmed.
-
01It starts on the first sound.
Nothing is written until audio arrives, so there’s no dead air at the top of the file.
-
02Quiet passages keep rolling.
A soft intro, a breakdown or a long fade doesn’t cut the take. Only real silence counts.
-
03Four seconds of silence, and it’s saved.
The silence is trimmed from both ends, so the file starts on the first sound and ends when the audio does. Blips under three seconds, like notification sounds, are thrown away.
04Takes
Drag anywhere.
-
01Pick one take, or several.
Shift- or ⌘-click to select a batch, right in the menu-bar panel.
-
02Drag them out together.
No export step and no bounce. The takes are already audio files.
-
03Drop them where you work.
Into Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, a folder or the desktop. It works with every DAW, including Pro Tools: no plugin, just drag.
Preview
Hear it before you drag it.
Press play on any take to preview it inside PrintBus, with a progress bar you can click to jump and live true-peak and LUFS metering. Previews are never recorded, so checking a take never makes a new one.
05Metering
True peak and LUFS, at a glance.
Each channel shows its true peak as the light bar, measured the ITU-R BS.1770 way so the peaks between samples show up too, over a solid body of momentary loudness in LUFS. A peak-hold tick, clip lights that latch at 0 dBTP until you click them, and a readout of short-term and integrated LUFS with the take’s highest true peak.
- True peak light bar, dBTP
- Momentary loudness solid body, LUFS
- Peak hold falls back after 1.5 s
- Clip light 0 dBTP, latches
- Readout short-term and integrated LUFS, max true peak
06Recording format
Your format, from the first take.
Out of the box, takes are 24-bit WAV at your Mac’s output rate. Choose another sample rate, bit depth or file type from the gear menu and it applies from the next take. Try it:
- Rate
- Your Mac’s output rate. No resampling.
- Depth
- The default. Plenty of resolution for references and samples.
- File
- Broadcast-standard WAV, opens everywhere.
Match your session’s sample rate and bit depth and there’s no conversion on import.
07Reliability
Built not to lose a take.
-
Saved before sleep
Close the lid mid-take and the take is saved before the Mac goes to sleep.
-
Picks itself back up
Capture recovers on its own after sleep, or if the audio stream drops out.
-
Safe when you quit
Quit PrintBus in the middle of a take and what was recorded is kept, not lost.
08Privacy
Your audio never leaves your Mac.
No account and no cloud. PrintBus doesn’t collect anything: no analytics, no tracking, nothing sent anywhere. Your takes are plain audio files in a folder you choose.
09Who it’s for
For the people who make records, and the people who teach them.
Producers & beatmakers
Pull a reference into the session and A/B it against your mix, or capture a sample you’re cleared to use.
Mix engineers
Grab the client’s reference, or the rough mix they sent as a streaming link, without a routing detour.
Audio students
Capture tutorial and lesson audio to study in your own DAW, next to your own work.
Educators
Get an example into the session in front of the class in seconds, on any DAW, including Pro Tools.
Use it responsibly. Record what you have the rights to use: references, study, and samples you’re cleared for.
10Early access
Be first to press play.
PrintBus is nearly ready. Leave your email and you’ll hear the moment it’s out.
- System
- macOS 14.4 or later
- Chip
- Apple silicon
- Lives in
- The menu bar
- Files
- WAV or AIFF
- Bit depth
- 16-bit dithered, 24-bit, 32-bit float
- Sample rate
- Match the Mac, or 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96 kHz
- Metering
- True peak per channel; momentary, short-term and integrated LUFS
- Works with
- Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton and every other DAW
- Privacy
- No account, no cloud, collects nothing