Barry does it all with the same main features. With a simpler, more minimal view. I used it for the last 5 months and tried the 2 others. I keep implementing features from requests. The plan is to bring more features over time from user needs. I plan to launch a plugin surface with marketplace (free plugins or by donation only) for power users, example are streamers, creators, ... that might need extra things that the general public doesn't need, keeping the app itself small by default.
Barry comes with a Quick Mixer, that opens from the right side of your screen by hitting the edge or via a keyboard shortcut, useful when you're watching a movie, playing audio in background of a fullscreen app, or gaming while listening to music / podcast / video as it makes it easy to lower or increase the sound of any app directly in a super minimal view.
Quick Mixer interface
Pricing
It's $19 USD once or 29$ for a duo license, with a 14-day free trial that needs no account or card. License key is manageable and secured by Keylight, uses Stripe for checkout. Includes all future versions, your license will always work even if some day the app will get a full rework, unlike SoundSource that makes new versions a new license.
Trust/Transparency
I'm Nico, a solopreneur and developer. I'm the founder of keylight.dev and also maintaining UsagePal, a fork of OpenUsage kept on the Rust side
The app runs locally, I have an Apple Developer membership, so the app is notarized etc, only a few MB in size and is built 100% in Swift.
The differentiation atm is the Quick Mixer. I know it’s a small thing. But the roadmap and ongoing dev is where most will happen. The marketplace with plugins as the biggest differentiator.
okay, then maybe spend more time on showing the difference between QuickMixer ON/OFF to truly see its potential - not a gif, but as a video. Best of luck 👍
Honestly the edge trigger is probably the most interesting part to me. I use a bunch of apps with different volume levels and having to keep opening some mixer/window gets annoying fast. If this works as smoothly as it looks in the video, I can actually see myself using it.
That architecture detail may be a stronger differentiator than it sounds. Does “tap + real output” mean Barry avoids installing a virtual audio device or creating a persistent aggregate device? If so, I’d say that explicitly because it lowers the perceived system risk and makes uninstall behaviour easier to understand.
The edge case I’d still test hard is route churn: AirPods connect or disconnect, a USB interface disappears, the Mac sleeps and wakes, an app quits and relaunches, or a browser changes helper processes. Does each slot reconnect automatically, or can the slider remain visible for a tap that is no longer attached? A small per-slot health state and one-click reconnect action would make that failure visible.
Does Barry follow the same app across relaunches automatically, or does the user need to add it again?
Barry doesn't install any driver, virtual speaker, or fake device you have to select in System Settings. You keep your real output (MacBook speakers, AirPods, USB interface) as-is. Barry just quietly taps each app's sound and puts it right back to the same real output at your chosen volume.
Barry reconnects automatically, the slider would technically never get stuck:
- You switch output (AirPods on/off): Barry moves the sound over in ~50ms with a short crossfade, so you don't hear a cut.
- Device disappears: If the headphones/interface vanishes, it falls back to the Mac speakers automatically.
- App quits and opens again: No need to re-add it. The slider disappears when the app quits, and comes back automatically when it plays again.
- Weird cases (browser helpers, Mac waking up, audio glitching): Barry checks if something looks wrong and rebuilds that app's connection in the background.
Your idea of adding a small per-app "health dot + reconnect button" is really good though. Right now it fixes itself silently, but making it visible when a reconnect is happening would be clearer. We'll add that.
Thanks for the detailed answer. Avoiding a virtual device entirely and recovering automatically across route changes are both stronger trust points than the original post makes obvious. The ~50 ms crossfade is a nice detail too. I appreciate you taking the health-state idea seriously; even if recovery is automatic, a brief “reconnecting” state would make unusual audio behaviour easier to understand.
Nice touch that the license survives future major versions — that's rare enough these days that I'd advertise it harder.
Question about the Quick Mixer edge trigger: does it work when the frontmost app is in native full screen (its own Space), or only over regular windows? Getting a panel to show over someone else's full screen Space is its own little adventure (non-activating panel, the right collection behaviors), and it's exactly the moment I'd want a mixer: video in full screen, music too loud behind it. If it already handles that, put it in the marketing copy.
Nice, I didn't knew I needed this app until now, can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent time searching the tab that has the sound lol. deff going to try it. Good luck!
SoundSource versions are infrequent. Every 3 years odd and you get a discount with the upgrade. I'm about to upgrade to the next version and trying to figure out what your app does better. Do you have a comparison?
3
u/Sri_Krish 1d ago
congrats with the app release! Also nice subtle integration of your another app with Barry 😁
Though you've just listed the existing apps under comparison, the question of "but why?" is still remains unanswered for me. Like,
Thanks 😉