TrackForge 1.1.0 — now on macOS

TrackForge now runs on the Mac.

It is a native SwiftUI app, not a port of the Windows UI and not Electron. The
four pages, the grab pipeline, the match scoring, the Title Case convention and
the filename patterns are the same, so a library maintained from either machine
looks identical.

Download

macOS — TrackForge-1.1.0.dmg below. Universal, Intel and Apple silicon,
macOS 13 or later. Open it and drag TrackForge to Applications.

First launch: macOS will say it can't check the app for malicious software.
Right-click TrackForge → Open → Open. It launches normally after that.
Notarising needs a paid Apple Developer membership; this is a free project.

Windows — the 1.0.0 MSI from the
previous release
is unchanged and still current. Nothing in this release touches the Windows app
beyond the version number; a 1.1.0 MSI will be attached here when it is next
built.

Neither build needs anything installed first. yt-dlp and ffmpeg are fetched on
first run into TrackForge's own folder — no admin rights, no Homebrew.

What is different under the hood on macOS

• Tags are read and written by hand. There is no Swift TagLib worth a
  dependency, and letting ffmpeg write the tags loses TKEY and TSRC — it
  demotes anything it doesn't recognise to a TXXX frame. TrackForge reads
  ID3v2.2/2.3/2.4 and writes v2.3, dropping any ID3v1 trailer. Verified against
  ffmpeg reading the results back.
• The analyser runs on Accelerate. Same spectral-flux tempo detection and
  Krumhansl-Kessler key detection; a four-minute track now takes about three
  seconds instead of eight.
• MP3 duration and bitrate are parsed directly from the MPEG frame header,
  plus Xing/VBRI where present. Opening an AVAsset per file made a large scan
  unusable.
• An ffmpeg you already have wins over the downloaded one. Homebrew paths are
  searched explicitly, since an app launched from Finder doesn't inherit your
  shell's PATH.
• djay's BPM is imported from the Mac library locations, including the
  sandboxed App Store containers.

Full notes in macOS/README.md.

TrackForge 1.0.0

First release.

Install

Download TrackForge-1.0.0-x64.msi below and run it. Windows 10/11 64-bit.

Nothing needs to be on your machine first:

• No .NET install — the app ships self-contained.
• No yt-dlp or ffmpeg install — TrackForge downloads them itself the first time you
  open it (about 40 MB, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\TrackForge\tools, no admin rights).
  Settings → Install / update tools re-runs it, which is also how you keep yt-dlp
  current when YouTube changes something and downloads start failing.

The MSI is unsigned, so SmartScreen will warn on first run — More info → Run anyway.

What it does

Grab — paste links or a whole playlist, review the tags it found, download at
320 kbps with cover art, BPM and key filled in.

Library — scans your music folder and shows what's missing: no art, no year, no
genre, no BPM. Filter to the broken ones and fix them in bulk from iTunes, Deezer and
MusicBrainz.

Find — search YouTube for tracks by name and feed the links straight into Grab.

Worth knowing

BPM detection is written from scratch. Measured against tracks Algoriddim djay had
already analysed: 3 exact, 1 octave error, 1 genuine miss out of 5. Good enough to
sort a library by tempo, not good enough to beatmatch on blind. Run
TrackForge.exe --selftest to see the numbers on your own files.

Tag writes go straight to disk. There is no undo, so leave Overwrite off on bulk
operations unless you mean it.