Apply a headphone correction EQ profile system wide without a virtual audio driver.
Boost system volume safely with automatic clipping protection.
Keep separate EQ profiles for headphones and speakers that switch automatically.
Exclude specific apps, like a DAW, from the system EQ to avoid audio conflicts.
| zollans/onlyeq | alamofire/rdar-urlsessiontaskmetrics | nilava/tabtype | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Language | Swift | Swift | Swift |
| Last pushed | — | 2017-12-15 | — |
| Maintenance | — | Dormant | — |
| Setup difficulty | easy | easy | moderate |
| Complexity | 2/5 | 1/5 | 2/5 |
| Audience | general | developer | general |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
Requires macOS 14.4 or newer, the app is unnotarized, so the install script clears the quarantine flag itself.
OnlyEQ is a system wide parametric equalizer for macOS that lives quietly in the menu bar. Most similar tools require installing a virtual audio driver like BlackHole, which the author found messy and prone to breaking. Instead, OnlyEQ uses a process tap feature Apple added in macOS 14.4: it taps into the system's audio output, runs it through digital filters, and sends the adjusted sound back out. There is nothing extra to install, no admin password needed, and it adds only about 10 milliseconds of delay, which is fine for music or video but something to watch for latency sensitive recording work. The app gives you a full parametric equalizer with a draggable curve editor, supporting peak, shelf, high and low pass, notch, and band pass filters, with as many bands as you want. It can import headphone correction profiles from a long list of existing formats, including AutoEq, Equalizer APO, peqdb, and several others, either by dropping in a file or searching built in databases. Different audio devices can each keep their own EQ profile, so headphones and speakers do not share settings. Extra touches include volume boosting with automatic protection against clipping, a safety limiter, quick A/B comparison, one click bypass, an exclude list for apps like DAWs that handle their own audio routing, and global keyboard shortcuts. Under the hood, a muted system audio tap and the real output device are combined into a private aggregate device, and an audio callback runs the signal through standard filter math before writing it back out. This approach avoids the common failure points of older virtual driver tools, such as Bluetooth devices distorting or the driver breaking after a macOS update. The tradeoff is that macOS always shows its recording indicator while the app runs, older macOS versions are not supported, and some professional audio software may not get along with the tap approach. Installation is a single shell script, or you can build it from source with the Xcode Command Line Tools in about a minute. It requires macOS 14.4 or newer, and it is released into the public domain under the Unlicense, so there are no restrictions on how you use it.
A menu bar app that adds a system wide parametric equalizer to macOS using Apple's audio tap API, with no virtual driver install needed.
Mainly Swift. The stack also includes Swift, Core Audio, SwiftPM.
Released into the public domain under the Unlicense, so you can use, modify, or redistribute it for any purpose with no attribution required.
Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.
Mainly general.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
Verify against the repo before relying on details.