The App Window and Tray

The App Window and Tray

AudioHub is two processes. The audio service owns the sound devices and the network; the window is a client that talks to it over a local channel. The service outlives the window on purpose.

That one fact explains everything on this page: closing the window does not stop anything, the tray icon is how you get the window back, and stopping the audio is a separate, explicitly labelled action.

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Closing the window hides it

Closing never quits. It does not matter which control you use:

Platform	The control	What happens
macOS	the red traffic light	the window hides
Windows	the ✕ the app draws itself	the window hides

The window is hidden, not destroyed. Whatever view you were on is still there when it comes back, and nothing in the audio path notices.

Getting the window back

• Both platforms — click the tray icon and choose Open AudioHub.
• macOS only — click the AudioHub icon in the Dock. It restores the window when no window is showing.
• macOS only — ⌘, (Settings… in the AudioHub application menu) restores the window and navigates to Settings.

There is no global hotkey that summons the window. The keyboard shortcuts you can configure act inside the window and only work while it has focus — see Settings Reference.

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The tray menu

Clicking the icon opens the menu — on both platforms, with either mouse button. The icon is a menu, not a window toggle.

Item
Open AudioHub	shows the window
(separator)
Status: Online · Port 47810	not clickable; see below
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Peer volume + slider	macOS only, and only sometimes — see The peer volume row
(separator)
Quit App (Audio Stays On)
Stop Audio & Quit

The menu follows the interface language, so changing the language in the app retranslates the tray immediately. Before the window has connected for the first time, the tray uses the machine-level language instead — the same setting that names the virtual devices.

macOS also gets a Settings… item in the AudioHub application menu, beside the Apple menu, with the standard ⌘, key equivalent.

The status line

It is informational and deliberately disabled, so it cannot be clicked.

Text	Meaning
Status: Connecting…	before the window has reported anything
Status: Online · Port 47810	the interface is talking to the audio service, on that control port
Status: Offline	the interface is not talking to the audio service

This line reports the interface's view of the local service, not any peer. "Offline" with audio still playing means the service is fine and only the window lost its connection. If it stays Offline, see Troubleshooting.

The icon

Four states, driven by the same report as the status line:

State	When
Offline	the interface is not connected to the service
Connecting	connecting, or anything it cannot vouch for yet
Idle	connected, no sessions
Active	connected, at least one session

On macOS this is a template image, so it follows the menu bar's light/dark appearance. The Dock tile (macOS) and taskbar icon (Windows) track the same state.

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The two quit items do different things

This is the part worth reading twice. The labels are accurate but the consequence of the first one is easy to under-read.

Item	The interface	The audio service	Peers
Quit App (Audio Stays On)	exits	keeps running	stay connected, audio keeps flowing
Stop Audio & Quit	exits	is asked to shut down, then the app exits	disconnected

Quit App (Audio Stays On) is the one to use when you are done looking at the app but want the machine to keep serving or using audio. Nothing about your audio changes.

Stop Audio & Quit is the only thing in the app that stops the audio service. It sends the same shutdown request the CLI's audiohub ctl shutdown sends, waits up to six seconds for it to finish, and then quits regardless — a service that will not stop cannot trap you inside the app.

Two consequences:

• If Start at login is on, the service comes back at the next login. Stopping it now is not the same as turning that off. See Settings Reference.
• To restart the audio service, use Stop Audio & Quit and then open AudioHub again — the app starts a fresh service on launch. See Troubleshooting.

macOS's application menu also carries the standard Quit AudioHub (⌘Q). It is not one of these two items and it does not run the service shutdown; Stop Audio & Quit is the only menu item that does.

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Quitting the interface also stops Web Access

Web Access — the browser view of the same interface — is served by the app, not by the audio service. Both quit items therefore close that port on the way out, and the browser tab loses its connection.

Closing the window does not, because closing does not quit. Web Access keeps serving with the window hidden.

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The peer volume row (macOS only)

macOS puts a Peer volume slider directly in the tray menu. Windows does not have one; that row is AppKit-specific.

What it controls

The peer's output level — the far end's speaker, the thing actually making sound. Not this machine's volume. It is the same control as the slider on the peer card in the window, driving the same request, at the same rate.

Muting greys the slider out but leaves the knob where it is. Muting is not a volume of zero, and dragging the slider does not unmute — that would silently undo a mute you set on purpose.

The three conditions for it to appear

All three must hold, or the whole row is hidden rather than shown at zero:

1. Mode A · Driverless. In Mode B the volume lives on the virtual device in the system, and in Share mode this machine is the one being used, so it owns no outbound speaker session of its own.
2. An outbound speaker session exists — this machine is sending audio to the peer's speaker right now.
3. That peer's volume is actually operable. Either the peer's real device has a writable volume, or AudioHub has taken the volume over as a send-side software gain because the peer's device has none. The second case still shows the slider, because the slider genuinely works.

Mode A uses one peer at a time, so at most one session can ever satisfy these. If the row appears and disappears as you change modes or start and stop a session, that is rule 1 or rule 2 doing its job.

For what the number on that slider means at the far end, see Volume.

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Related

• Settings Reference — what starting at login actually launches
• Web Access — the browser view and what it cannot change
• Volume — why the same slider position is not the same loudness on two machines
• Troubleshooting — restarting the service, and where the logs are