A thin audio meter pinned to the edge of your Mac's screen, floating above every window — fullscreen included. It never takes focus, it never steals clicks, and it reads VU, PPM, and LUFS with the ballistics each one is supposed to have. You work in OBS, in Logic, in the game. Your levels stay in peripheral vision.
What flexMeter is about
The rod-dominated peripheral retina is highly tuned to motion and saturated red. flexMeter is designed for that part of your vision — the part doing the watching while the rest of you is doing the work.
A thin strip on whichever edge you pin it to. It rides above every window, including fullscreen apps, follows you across Spaces, and passes clicks through to whatever is underneath. It is built to live in peripheral vision, where motion and color shifts are noticed before you stop working.
VU with broadcast-standard 300ms integration. PPM with IEC 60268-10 Type I fast-attack ballistics. LUFS with ITU-R BS.1770-4 K-weighting and momentary, short-term, and integrated readings. Real standards, real ballistics — not a colourful gradient someone called a meter.
Everything lives in the menu bar and on the strip itself. Right-click for quick settings, keyboard shortcuts for the rest. It runs locally, records nothing, has no cloud service behind it, and is priced as a one-time purchase.
Meter modes
The mode you pick changes the ballistics, not the drawing. VU reads average loudness the way broadcast engineers already know. PPM is a peak meter that actually catches peaks. LUFS is the one streaming platforms check your show against when nobody is watching. All three use the correct smoothing and decay — we looked up the numbers so you didn't have to.
Exponential moving average with 300ms integration. Peak decay at 26 dB/s.
The classic VU response broadcast engineers grew up on. Slow enough to read at a glance, fast enough to catch the shape of a voice. We didn't reinvent it — we just shipped it with the ballistics it's supposed to have.
Use it when: Mixing voice, monitoring a stream, running levels on anything where average loudness is what you actually care about.
IEC 60268-10 Type I peak programme meter. Fast attack smoothing, 7 dB/s decay.
A PPM catches transient peaks that a VU politely ignores. If a snare or a gate-slam is going to clip, PPM sees it before you do and sits on it long enough for you to react.
Use it when: Tracking drums, capturing dialogue in rooms with surprises in them, or anywhere a single sharp transient would ruin the take.
ITU-R BS.1770-4 with K-weighting, 100ms step, 75% overlap. Momentary, short-term, integrated.
Cascaded biquads handle K-weighting (high-shelf + RLB). Gated loudness runs over 400ms (momentary), 3s (short-term), and the full session (integrated). Absolute gate at -70 LUFS. Platforms care about this number. Now you can, too.
Use it when: Mastering a podcast, checking a stream against a platform target, or meeting a broadcast spec without opening a plugin.
Loudness presets
LUFS mode ships with platform and broadcast targets, and draws a cyan reference line on the strip at whichever one you pick. You can see, at a glance, whether your integrated reading is sitting where it's supposed to.
Reset the integrated measurement between takes from the settings panel or the right-click menu. No plugin, no host, no extra window.
The loudness target most streaming services are quietly measuring you against.
The target Apple's podcast and music teams publish, and the one to hit if you want to stop hearing "your podcast is quiet."
The European broadcast reference, and the default broadcast target in the current build.
The U.S. television loudness target for program delivery.
The Japanese broadcast loudness target for ARIB-aligned workflows.
Features
Nine of the 39 that ship in the current public beta — the rest live on the features page. Every one earns its place by staying out of your way until the levels actually move.
Per-channel RMS rendered as discrete LED-style segments, clamped to -60 to 0 dB. Colours step from saturated green to yellow to red so a clip reads in peripheral vision.
See every channel without taking your eyes off the app you're actually working in.
Broadcast-standard 300ms integration via an exponential moving average (alpha 0.3). Peak decay at 26 dB/s. The ballistic response VU meters are supposed to have.
The meter your ears are already calibrated to.
IEC 60268-10 Type I peak programme meter. Smoothing alpha 0.6 for a fast attack, 7 dB/s return. Built to catch the transients VU meters read past.
Short, sharp peaks stay visible long enough to react to.
ITU-R BS.1770-4 loudness. Cascaded biquads for K-weighting, 100ms step with 75% overlap, absolute gate at -70 LUFS. Momentary (400ms), short-term (3s), and integrated (full session) all visible in the settings panel.
Three loudness readings without opening a plugin host.
A bright segment marks the highest level per channel for 1.5 seconds before decaying at the active mode's return rate. Peaks above -6 dB render red, below -6 dB render white.
See where the spike actually was, not just where the meter is now.
Per-channel true-peak tracking with a user-set clip threshold (-1, -2, or -3 dBTP). Reported in dBFS alongside momentary, short-term, and integrated values.
Catch inter-sample peaks that a gated loudness number would otherwise miss, and choose the headroom your delivery target asks for.
Counts every sample above the active true-peak threshold, in real time. Visible in the Metering palette and resettable per session.
A running tally of the moments you'll need to know about after the take, not a vibe.
EBU R128 loudness range over the integrated window. Reported next to the M / S / I readouts in the Metering palette.
Know how dynamic your program is, not just how loud.
A unified floating panel that brings the VU needle hero, the LUFS triptych, true peak, LRA, the overs counter, the target indicator, and reset together. One place to glance, no scattered HUDs.
Every number you trust in a single, peripheral surface — never a second window to manage.
How it fits into a session
Pin the strip to the right edge. Fire up the game. OBS can go behind every window it wants — your mic levels stay at the edge of your monitor, click-through, never flashing the desktop mid-stream when you glance over.
Four-person call, four channels, four bars. Switch to LUFS, pick the -16 preset, and watch the integrated number settle in as the episode goes long. Hit Reset Integrated at the top of each take so the math starts clean.
PPM mode on, -23 LUFS preset as the reference line. The strip rides over your automation software, stays across Spaces, and gives you a standards-correct read without a rack.
Virtual audio device comes in from a capture rig; flexMeter picks it up through CoreAudio like any other input. Pin the strip to the secondary display and keep the main monitor for work.
Opacity at 30%, top edge, VU mode. A room-tone meter that disappears into the wallpaper and only shows up when something in the room gets loud enough to matter.
In the landscape
Foveal meters live in a window the user has to surface and read directly. flexMeter is the one that lives on the edge of your screen, in the room you were already in.
Vs.
Logic, Ableton, Pro Tools. Excellent — and trapped inside the DAW window. flexMeter is the meter you have when you're not in a DAW.
Vs.
Only visible when OBS is the active app. flexMeter stays on screen while you're in the game, the slide deck, or the call.
Vs.
Useful for system health; not metering. No broadcast-standard ballistics, no LUFS, no target presets.
Vs.
Same peripheral behaviour, fraction of the cost. The trade-off is that flexMeter shares a CPU with the rest of your work.
Vs.
Require a DAW host. Can't float system-wide. flexMeter measures whatever the CoreAudio input device is hearing.
Vs.
Lovely. Also a desk full of monitor. flexMeter is the option for the one screen you have.
Where the app is, right now
Today: VU, PPM, and LUFS in a click-through screen-edge strip that floats above every window — including fullscreen. CoreAudio input-device fallback, platform and broadcast LUFS targets, calibration sweep, reference tone, quiet zone, skins, diagnostics, real ITU-R and IEC ballistics, no Dock icon.
Pricing: $29.99 one-time. The public beta is free through 1.0, with a $19.99 launch promo planned for the first release window.
Input-side VU, PPM, and LUFS. Consolidated Metering palette with True Peak, LRA, and an overs counter. Workflow presets. Skins, quiet zone, diagnostics, reference tone, click-through strip.
Gain calibration assistant, numeric readouts inside the strip at high thickness, session report export, overs log with timestamps, channel labels.
Stream Deck plugin, OBS browser source, custom mini-meter in the menu bar icon, output and per-app program metering, stereo correlation, on-air mode, dead-air watchdog.
Direct download and Mac App Store, same price. 14-day full-feature trial in the direct build; 30-day refund on direct purchases.
flexMeter 2.0 — a Pro tier with a modules architecture (Tally Module, a WebSocket control API), and vintage skins led by the VU needle. Existing customers get this update free.
For the record
Naming the limits is part of saying what the app is.
For the record
flexMeter measures CoreAudio input devices — your mic, your interface, your aggregate. It doesn't yet read system output, per-app audio, or the OBS program bus directly. Output and program metering are on the roadmap, not on the box.
For the record
No Intel. No older macOS. No Windows. The floor is high on purpose — every modern Apple-platform primitive flexMeter relies on lives above this line.
For the record
LUFS measurement uses incremental gating — the right tool for the meter that sits on your screen edge while you work. For strict EBU R128 delivery checks, confirm with your delivery toolchain. flexMeter is the room. It isn't the inspector.
Where it doesn't fit
flexMeter is one floating strip with standards-correct ballistics. The room for the rest of your tools stays empty.
Questions we get a lot
No. It reads levels from your input device in real time and does not record, store, or transmit any audio. macOS requires microphone permission for any app that opens an audio input — flexMeter installs a tap on the input device to calculate levels, and that's all.
macOS requires microphone permission for any app that accesses audio input devices, even if the app only reads signal levels. flexMeter uses that permission solely to calculate the meter levels shown on screen.
VU (300ms integration) is slow and reads average loudness — it's what broadcast uses for voice. PPM (IEC 60268-10 Type I) has a fast attack and slow return, so it catches short transient peaks a VU reads past. LUFS (ITU-R BS.1770-4) uses K-weighted gated loudness and is the measurement streaming platforms actually check against — momentary, short-term, and integrated readings all update in real time.
M (Momentary) is loudness over the last 400ms — it reacts almost immediately. S (Short-term) is loudness over the last three seconds, which smooths out brief fluctuations. I (Integrated) is the gated loudness across the whole measurement period — the number to match against a platform target. Hit Reset Integrated to start a new measurement at the top of a take.
Switch to LUFS, pick the preset that matches your target — YouTube/Spotify (-14), Apple Music/Podcast (-16), EBU R128 (-23), ATSC A/85 (-24), or ARIB TR-B32 (-27). A cyan reference line appears on the strip at that target level. Aim to keep your integrated (I) reading near it.
Green below -12 dB (safe). Yellow between -12 and -6 dB (warm). Red above -6 dB (approaching clipping). Peak hold indicators turn red above -6 dB too, so a glance tells you the same story.
Yes. flexMeter detects every input device macOS sees via CoreAudio — built-in mic, USB interface, Thunderbolt interface, virtual audio device. It supports 1 to 8 channels per device.
The current build is looking for real rooms, real interfaces, and real shows. Tell us what you record, stream, or broadcast — and where the meters in your current setup are hiding.
No waitlist form. No tracking. No recording — of your audio, or of your visit.
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