Every one of these is in the 1.0 build. None of them are "coming soon" — if something's on this page, you can use it today. The list is short on purpose; a screen-edge meter should not have a feature matrix that takes a minute to scroll.
Metering
The parts that draw the meter. LED segments that read at a glance, ballistics that match the standard you picked, and peak indicators that hold just long enough to be useful.
Per-channel RMS rendered as 3-point segments with 1-point gaps, clamped to -60 to 0 dB. Colours step from green to amber to red so a clip is a clip whether you glance or stare.
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.
Sample-peak tracking per channel with slow decay. Reported in dBFS alongside momentary, short-term, and integrated values.
Catch inter-sample peaks that a gated loudness number would otherwise miss.
Loudness
Everything that happens in LUFS mode. Targets for the platforms most people actually ship to, and a reset so every take starts clean.
One-click targets for YouTube/Spotify (-14), Apple Music/Podcast (-16), and Broadcast (-23). A cyan reference line draws on the strip itself at the chosen level.
Aim for a number, not a feeling.
One action in the settings panel or the right-click menu clears all LUFS accumulators, biquad state, and the true-peak value. Available only in LUFS mode, because it shouldn't be anywhere else.
Start every take on a clean integrated measurement.
Devices
How flexMeter sees your audio. Whatever macOS can enumerate, flexMeter can meter — up to eight channels at a time — and it doesn't fall over when you unplug something.
CoreAudio enumerates every input device — built-in mic, USB interface, Thunderbolt rig, virtual audio. Device lists appear in the menu bar settings and the right-click menu.
Whatever you already plug in will show up here.
Channel count is taken from the input device format. Each channel gets its own meter bar, arranged side-by-side on a vertical strip or stacked on a horizontal one.
A four-person podcast rig reads at a glance.
CoreAudio property listeners watch the device list. If your selected device vanishes, the engine swaps to the system default and surfaces a brief status message.
A pulled USB cable doesn't end the session.
Display
Where the strip lives on your screen, how you move it, and how it behaves when you go fullscreen or rearrange your monitors.
Left, right, top, or bottom. Left and right strips span the full visible height at 16 points wide. Top and bottom span the full width at 16 points tall. The menu bar and the Dock's space are respected, not overlapped.
Fit flexMeter into whatever screen real estate you actually have.
Hold the strip for half a second; it gains a shadow and accepts mouse events. Drag it anywhere; on release it snaps to the nearest edge. Then it's back to click-through.
Move the meter without opening a menu.
The panel uses canJoinAllSpaces to follow desktop switches, stationary to stay during Mission Control, and fullScreenAuxiliary to float over fullscreen apps.
You keep your meter when your game, DAW, or OBS goes fullscreen.
A display picker appears the moment a second screen is connected. The chosen display ID is remembered, and the strip re-positions itself when you rearrange screens.
Meter on the monitor that isn't hosting your work.
A slider in settings for 30–100%, plus 30 / 50 / 80 / 100% presets in the right-click menu. The current percentage shows next to the slider.
Make it quieter without making it useless.
Controls
The surfaces for changing anything. Menu bar, right-click menu, keyboard. Pick one and never think about it again.
Click the speaker icon for device picker, position, meter style, LUFS controls (when in LUFS), peak hold, opacity, launch-at-login, and quit. Every setting persists.
One dropdown holds the whole app.
A native AppKit menu on the strip itself, with submenus for input, position, meter style, peak hold, opacity, LUFS reset (when applicable), and quit. Checkmarks mirror state.
Change anything without leaving the meter.
Command-Shift-M toggles visibility. Command-Shift-Arrow moves the strip to a different edge. The M key is matched by character, so non-QWERTY layouts are fine.
Hide and move the meter without touching the mouse.
A single toggle in settings, backed by SMAppService. flexMeter comes up with the rest of your desktop.
You set it once, and it's there every morning.
A small titled panel appears next to the strip the first time you launch the app, listing the three things you need to know: right-click, keyboard shortcut, long-press-to-drag. It never appears again.
Enough onboarding to get going; not enough to be a tutorial.
Access
The quieter features. VoiceOver labels, Reduce Motion, Reduce Transparency — the system settings your Mac already respects, respected.
Each channel has a label and reports its current level and peak in decibels. In LUFS mode, momentary, short-term, and integrated values are read out.
The meter reads to assistive tech the same way it reads to you.
With the system setting on, the LED glow behind active segments is suppressed in favour of flat colour.
A calm meter for a calm setup.
With the system setting on, the ultra-thin material background is replaced with solid black at 90% opacity.
Readable in the high-contrast configurations your OS already knows about.
What it doesn't do
The FAQ covers the usual ones — meter standards, microphone permissions, fullscreen behaviour, multi-monitor pinning, and what happens when your USB cable gives up.