App · v1.0 · macOS · Apple Silicon · Intel

Iriscord

One click in the menu bar captures whatever your Mac is playing. Straight to the Desktop, in the format you want.

Iriscord records the audio your Mac is already playing. A radio set streaming in a browser tab, a reference track on a page with no download button, a synth demo buried in a video — click the menu-bar icon to start, click it again to stop. The file is on your Desktop before you've switched windows.

No window, no project file, no export dialog. It lives in the menu bar as a small purple square, and the dot goes red while it's running. That is the entire interface.

Right-click the icon to choose a format: MP3 at 320 kbps, or WAV and AIF if it's going into a session. Everything captures at 48 kHz, 16-bit stereo, straight off the system mix — no aggregate device, no loopback driver, no cables.

macOS routes system audio through its screen-recording permission, so Iriscord has to ask for it. It never captures your screen. The video stream is set to two pixels by two and thrown away — audio is the only thing written to disk. Its own output is excluded from the mix, so it can't record itself.

Built for my own sessions, mostly for pulling references fast. Free, and it uninstalls itself from the same right-click menu.

Requirements

macOS 13 Ventura or later. Universal binary — Apple Silicon and Intel. Needs Screen Recording permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security), which is how macOS gates system-audio capture. Signed with a free certificate rather than a paid Apple Developer ID, so the first launch needs a right-click → Open instead of a double-click. The disk image includes a read-me with the steps.