EQBar 1.0.0

The first release of EQBar, a lean, native macOS menu bar equalizer inspired by eqMac by Roman Kisil.

Website: https://zephyrsai.github.io/EQBar/

What's in it

• Equalizer: Basic (bass, mid, treble), 10-band Advanced with 18 presets, and Expert with up to 64 parametric bands, drawn over a live spectrum analyzer
• AutoEQ: search the AutoEq project's headphone measurements and apply a correction in one click
• Spatial audio on Apple's AUSpatialMixer: HRTF for headphones, equal-power panning for speakers, 13 rooms, crossfeed and stereo width
• Per-app volume (0 to 150%), Audio Unit effect hosting, and an output format picker for sample rate and bit depth
• Volume keys that boost up to +12 dB past the Mac's maximum and work on HDMI and DisplayPort outputs
• Imports EqualizerAPO text and eqMac presets

Footprint

Measured on an Apple M4 Pro at 96 kHz:

• ~10 MB memory at idle, ~22 MB with the menu open
• ~0.1% CPU when quiet, ~0.5% playing through the EQ
• ~100 ms from launch to the menu bar icon

Install

1. Download EQBar-1.0.0.zip below, unzip it and move EQBar.app to Applications.
2. Open it. This build is a universal app (Apple silicon and Intel), signed ad hoc and not notarized, so macOS blocks the first launch:
   • macOS 15 and later: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway
   • macOS 14: Control-click the app → Open → Open
   • Or: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/EQBar.app
3. Allow System Audio Recording when asked, and Accessibility if you want the volume keys.

Requires macOS 14.4 or later. No account, no driver, no analytics.

SHA-256 EQBar-1.0.0.zip

418f292b2500c82962e5273d074433b4a98daadd7cf77884bd3ede6289b2e70d

Credits

EQBar rebuilds the features of eqMac by Roman Kisil (Apache 2.0). Headphone profiles come from AutoEq by Jaakko Pasanen (MIT). Crossfeed follows Boris Mikhaylov's bs2b, and filters follow Robert Bristow-Johnson's Audio EQ Cookbook.