Release LeadStinger 0.2.1 · weckere/leadstinger

Added

Whole sets from QuipClipper links. A leadstinger://quip link whose clip is a
set file (.lsset) downloads it and imports it as a set, which is what QuipClipper's
Send to LeadStinger opens with several lines ticked. Such a link takes only server
and clip; asking first works as for a single clip.
Drag a selection. Dragging a pad that's part of the selection moves the whole
selection together, as one run in the set's order: the board previews a ghost slot
for each of them (and the other pads shrink as they would for that many dropped
files), the pad under the pointer shows how many are moving, and the drop is one
undo step. Dragging a pad that isn't selected moves just that pad, as before, and
selects it. Pads dropped on another set in the sidebar move to that set's end. A
locked set's pads still can't be dragged, and nothing drops into a locked set.
tile.move takes tiles (several tiles, one undo step) and set (another set).
Check for Updates. Help ▸ Check for Updates… asks GitHub for the latest release
and, if it's newer, shows its version and release notes with a Download button
that opens the release page in the browser (nothing is downloaded or installed for
you); otherwise "You have the latest version". Settings ▸ Updates ▸ Check for
updates at launch checks once as the app opens and speaks up only about a newer
release; it is off by default, and with it off the app never goes online unasked.
New commands: app.checkForUpdates (the CLI waits and prints the answer) and
settings.checkUpdates.
The cue list plays like a list. Click a row (or move the focus onto it) and
Enter plays it and stops the rest of the list; Enter again stops it (a Pausable cue
pauses). The selection stays on the playing cue. Each row has an armed mark (a
filled dot, a turning ring while it plays, a hollow ring once it has played); played
rows are passed over, a click on a mark (or the row's menu) passes a cue over or arms
it again, and Reset List arms them all and selects the first. Continuous |
Queued replaces the Auto-advance check box: Continuous plays the next armed cue when
one ends, with an optional cross-fade (up to 5 s); Queued selects it and waits,
marked NEXT; the mode, cross-fade and Reset List sit in a bar under the list, which
has no GO button any more. Space is Pause All (Resume All) in every set, so Enter
alone plays a focused pad. The top bar has Previous and
Next (List sets), Pause All (Resume All while everything is paused) and Fade
All (2 s) beside Stop All, also in the Playback menu. New commands: cue.reset,
cue.arm, set.listMode, set.crossfade, transport.pauseAll, transport.fadeAll,
and cue.go --tile; tile.list reports armed, set.list reports list_mode and
crossfade. Shift+Enter and clicking a cue's number are gone (selecting the row does
it), and Back to Top gives way to Reset List (cue.top stays in the CLI). Grid sets
keep GO's order for the CLI, OSC and MIDI.
Pad keys follow the board's rows. Row 1 of the board takes 1 to =, row 2 Q
to ], row 3 A to ', row 4 Z to /, and rows 5 to 8 the same four with Option
(Alt on Linux) held, shown on the key cap as ⌥1 (or Alt+1). A pad's key is its
slot's, so it tells you where the pad is, and moving a pad changes it; Auto columns
fill the keyboard's rows in order, and a cue list has no automatic keys. A key you set by hand in the inspector
stays with its pad wherever it goes (Automatic gives back the slot's key, and
Settings ▸ Hotkeys ▸ Reassign this set by row drops every hand-set key). Your
library is re-keyed on upgrade: keys in the old straight-through order follow the rows,
any other key is kept as set by hand. leadstinger-cli tile.set "Ding" --hotkey alt+1,
--hotkey auto, key:alt+1 refs and /ls/key/alt+1 over OSC take the new keys; set
files (manifest version 3) carry only the keys set by hand.
A fade badge and a Random button. A pad whose clip fades out at its end shows a
small fade badge beside its option badges (not for a fade-in, a stop fade or a loop);
screen readers hear "fades out", the hover card says how long, and the cue list says
FADE OUT. A narrow pad now drops its badges one at a time, the fade first, instead of
all at once. Random, in the top bar (Panel: beside Stop All), plays a random pad
from the set, never the one it played last; it's Playback ▸ Play a Random Tile
(leadstinger-cli tile.random), which now says in the status bar what it played.
Set files carry a theme. Exporting a set while one of your own themes is in use
puts that theme in the .lsset file (manifest version 2). Importing the file installs
the theme and asks Use its theme?: Use It switches to it, Not Now keeps your look,
and Settings ▸ Theme lists it either way. leadstinger-cli set.import show.lsset --use_theme true (or false) answers from a script. So one file can hand someone a
whole themed board, and as a starter pack it opens in that theme. Older set files
import as before; older builds import a new file's sets and skip its theme.
A vamp you can let go. While a tile loops its vamp section, its next press (a
double-click, its key or pad, OSC) lets the vamp go and it plays on to the end; the
press after stops it. A Hold pad vamps while held and plays on when let go; Pausable
and One-shot pause and restart as usual once it's playing on. GO on a vamping cue lets
it play on and starts nothing else; the next GO goes on. The pad says VAMPING, then
PLAYING ON, and the inspector's Cue tab says the same. Release is now called
Play On everywhere: the inspector's button, the action tile's Play On kind (badge
PLAY ON), leadstinger-cli tile.playOn and OSC /ls/playon. tile.release,
/ls/release and action tiles saved as release still work.
No more Perform and Edit modes. Click a tile to select it; double-click to play
it (on a Hold tile, keep the second click down: it plays while held). Keys, Enter and
Space, MIDI, OSC, GO and the CLI play tiles as before. Dragging, file drops and the
inspector work at any time, unless the set is locked. The keyboard's focus selects the
tile it lands on. view.perform, view.edit, view.toggleEdit and view.lockEdit
still work for now, as the inspector's visibility and the set lock.
A bottom bar: Sidebar, Add Sound, Grid | List and Inspector, under the board
(⌘/Ctrl+B shows or hides the sidebar, ⌘/Ctrl+E the inspector; view.sidebar,
view.inspector). The top bar keeps the counter, the meter, Stop All and Settings. In
Panel they're blocks in the bottom of the frame, and hiding the sidebar narrows the
frame's column.
Lock a set. File ▸ Lock Set, the lock in the set's settings, or set.lock /
set.unlock: a locked set can't be changed at all (its tiles, their order, its name,
rows, auto-advance and notes) from the window, the CLI, MIDI or OSC, which say
locked; its tiles still play. A padlock marks it in the sidebar. Locks are saved in
the library and in set files. This replaces Lock Edit Mode: a library that had it on
opens with every set locked.
Set settings in the inspector. With no tile selected (click the set in the
sidebar, or the board between tiles) the inspector shows the set: its name, the lock,
Grid or List, the row size, auto-advance and its notes.
A new inspector. The sound comes first: the waveform in the tile's colour with
the trim handles, the playhead and the tile's meter, then to start, a big Preview and
Fade Out, and the position, Edit… and length. Then the pad options and the volume, and
the rest in four tabs: Play (fades, stop fade, fade shape, ducking), Sound (gain,
Normalise, speed, pitch, outputs, the exact trim, channels), Cue (notes, pre-wait,
next cue, vamp and markers) and Control (hotkey, MIDI pads and keys, messages). The
colour is one swatch that opens the palette, the picture is in a pop-up, and what the
sound is, Replace Audio…, Record and Remove are pinned at the bottom.
view.inspector --tab sound picks a tab.
Pad options instead of a play mode. The inspector's Mode menu and Loop/Solo/Disabled
checkboxes are now a row of icon toggle buttons: Loop, Solo, Pausable,
One-shot and Hold, lit when on, and a smaller Disabled. With none on, a
press plays and a press while playing stops. Pausable pauses on a second press;
One-shot starts again from the beginning (Pausable and One-shot turn each other off).
Hold plays while held: with Pausable, letting go pauses and holding again resumes from
there; with One-shot, each hold starts from the beginning. Libraries, set files and
starter packs are read as before (Play / Pause becomes Pausable, Always Restart
One-shot, Hold to Play Hold), and the old mode is still written for older versions.
CLI: tile.set --loop --solo --pausable --oneshot --hold --disabled; --mode still
works; tile.get and tile.list report hold, pausable and one_shot.
A new pad face. The title bar is gone: a pad has a dark body with its colour on
the title, the waveform and the border, and the title at the top, up to four lines.
Each colour's title is as close to the colour as reads clearly (stronger in high
contrast). Icons at the top right show Loop, Hold, Pausable and One-shot; a Solo pad
has a ring inside its edge (a theme colour, mark/solo), and a disabled one keeps its
hatching. A selected or playing pad is outlined just outside its border. Panel keeps
its layout, with the same icons and ring and its label wrapping up to four lines.
Coloured pads (Settings, settings.coloredPads): pads in their colour all over
instead, lettered in black. Off by default; Panel's blocks don't change.
The editor of a locked set's tile is read-only, and says so with Unlock: its
handles, fields and trim actions are greyed, while previewing, Play Selection, Jump,
zooming and selecting still work.
A grid of slots, with a live drag preview. In the Rows layout a set is rows of
slots, and a slot can be blank: right-click a tile for Insert Blank
Before / After, or set.addBlank. Dragging a tile shows where it'll go before you let
go: drop it between two tiles and the row opens a slot for it, the others sliding
along; drop it on a blank and it fills it, nothing else moving; drop it between rows,
past a row's edge or at the bottom of the last row and a new row appears for it. Files
dragged from the file manager go in the same way, one slot per file. The rows share
the board's height, so a short set gets big tiles. Libraries are updated (version 4,
a copy of the old one is kept beside it), keeping every set's rows and order.
A starter pack can bring its own theme. A pack's manifest.json can name a
.lstheme inside the pack with theme_file; the first launch installs that theme and
opens in it (starter/README.md).
Connect to QuipClipper without its token. Click Send to LeadStinger on a clip, or
Connect LeadStinger in QuipClipper's settings: LeadStinger asks "Connect to QuipClipper
at …?", says where the server is, and sends it nothing until you click Connect. Then
it pairs: QuipClipper shows "LeadStinger on laptop wants access" with a code and Allow,
and gives this copy a token of its own, which you can revoke there (Disconnect does
too). A QuipClipper with no password and no pairing connects without any token. The
API token still works, for scripts (quip.connect --token -) and servers with a
password and no pairing. New: quip.pair (the CLI shows the code and waits),
quip.pairing, leadstinger://pair links. Cancel has the keyboard focus, so a key
pressed for the board never connects a server.
Find QuipClipper on the network: Settings ▸ QuipClipper and the QuipClipper window
list the QuipClipper servers that advertise themselves on your network (Bonjour,
QuipClipper's QC_ADVERTISE), each with Connect, and look by themselves when nothing is
connected yet. Also quip.discover.
Ask before importing each QuipClipper link (Settings ▸ QuipClipper,
settings.quipAskEachImport, off by default).
Your own themes (Settings ▸ Theme, View ▸ Theme ▸ Import Theme…, theme.list,
theme.use, theme.import, theme.export, theme.remove): a .lstheme is a
FigCraft or Figma variables export plus a name, on the Console or Panel design, and
can change colours, text sizes, corner radii, spacing and fonts. Name only what you
change. Console and Panel ship in the same format, so theme.export console is a
starting point, and examples/themes/harbor.py builds an example with FigCraft.
While a theme is in use, saving one of its files restyles the window. A theme below
WCAG AA contrast still works and says which colour pairs fall short; high contrast
stays the tested built-in unless the theme designs its own. View ▸ Theme lists the
installed themes to switch between. Status colours are themeable too: error text, the
file-drop frame, trim handles, markers and vamps, the input level and the veil over a
disabled tile (status/*, mark/*, input/*, disabled/*).
Level meters on playing tiles: a thin meter beside each playing tile's time, in
the grid and the cue list, in both themes. It shows the tile's own level (after its
volume, fades, ducking and the master volume) with the master meter's colours and
ballistics, so you can see which tile is making the noise, and that a tile in a quiet
stretch is still playing. Screen readers hear it in the tile's label ("level −18
dB"). View ▸ Show Level Meters (or Settings, or view.meters) hides them, and
status reports each playing tile's level_db.
Tile levels over OSC: OSC feedback sends each playing tile's level as
/ls/tile/N/level (and the counter's tile as /ls/now/level), 0-1 on the same meter
scale as the window, so a TouchOSC or Open Stage Control page can show a meter per
pad. It goes ten times a second while a tile plays, whatever the window's frame rate,
and drops to 0 the moment the tile stops. osc.enable --levels false leaves it out.
File drops on native Wayland: drag sounds, pictures and set files in from the file
manager without switching to X11 mode. They behave as on X11 and macOS: new tiles at
the drop position, one sound onto a tile replaces its audio, pictures onto a tile,
set files import as sets with the usual question, and the window highlights while a
drag is over it. X11 (XWayland) stays in Settings ▸ Window system as a fallback.
Grid rows of their own: drag more sounds into a row and its tiles narrow to fit,
keeping their height, so rows can differ (three wide stingers over eight narrow
reactions). Drop a tile or files between two tiles to put them there, or between rows
to start a new row; an accent bar shows where. In Edit mode ⌘/Ctrl+arrows move a tile along and between rows
from the keyboard, and screen readers say which row a tile is in. Set ▸ Columns evens
the rows out. Settings ▸ Grid layout also offers Auto columns (as many columns
as fit every tile without scrolling) and the old Fixed columns. Existing libraries
look exactly as before: each set's columns become rows of that many (the old file is
kept as Library.v2.json). The CLI has set.rows, settings.gridLayout, and
--row/--at/--newRow on tile.move and tile.add; set files carry their rows.
Browse QuipClipper (File ▸ Browse QuipClipper…, Settings ▸ QuipClipper ▸ Browse,
view.quip): a window onto a connected QuipClipper's clips library. Open folders,
search as you type, filter to audio, video or set files, newest first. Each row shows
the line, the show and episode (or the movie), its length and a 5.1 badge. Preview a
clip on the Preview output without adding it, then Add it (or drag it onto the board):
it arrives as FLAC with every channel, titled with the line, trimmed to it, with notes
saying where it's from. Set files import as sets. An "N new" badge counts clips cut
since you last looked. From the keyboard: Up/Down, Enter adds, Space previews. The
CLI has the same: quip.browse, quip.search, quip.new, quip.add,
quip.preview; quip.import takes --as flac and --notes.
New QuipClipper clips in the status bar: while the QuipClipper window is closed,
"3 new in QuipClipper" shows in the status bar (an amber block in the Panel theme);
a click opens the window on them. The app asks each connected server every minute,
quietly: a server that can't be reached never interrupts a show. Turn it off in
Settings ▸ QuipClipper. status has the counts (quip_new), and view.quip --new true opens the window on them.
Waveform editor (View ▸ Edit Waveform, ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+E, the inspector's Edit
Waveform… button, view.editor): the selected tile's waveform across the board's
space, zoomable from the whole file down to single samples with ⌘/Ctrl+scroll, a
pinch, the + and − buttons or keys. Drag or arrow-key the trim and vamp handles and
markers (10 ms steps, Shift 100 ms, Alt one sample), snap them to zero crossings so
cuts don't click, or type exact times in milliseconds or samples. Click to place a
cursor, then add a marker, or start or end the trim, there. tile.markerMove moves
or renames a marker from the CLI.
Selections in the waveform editor: drag across the waveform to select a stretch
(Shift+click extends it, a double-click selects between the marks either side), or
type its start and end. Then Trim to Selection, Vamp Selection, Play Selection (just
that stretch, once, on the Preview output) or zoom to it. Drag the ruler, or scroll,
to move along the file; ⌘/Ctrl+scroll and a pinch zoom over the handles too. Each
marker has its own row in the editor: type over its name to rename it, or type its
time. From the CLI: view.editorSelect, view.editorZoom and
tile.preview --from --to.
A new icon: a broadcast cart, the tape cartridge radio stations fired jingles and
stingers from, lit up in a burst of amber beams. It is the window, Dock and taskbar
icon, the macOS app's .icns, the Linux launcher icon (scalable, plus 16 to 512 px) and
the mark beside the name in the toolbar. A plain cart in colour and in one colour
(assets/icons/) is there for small buttons. scripts/icons.sh draws them all from
docs/design/logo.py with FigCraft.
Zoom (View ▸ Zoom, Settings, ⌘/Ctrl + / − / 0, view.zoom): 50 to 300 %, saved in
the library. A small window zoomed in scrolls rather than squeezing the layout.
High contrast appearance for both themes (View ▸ Appearance, Settings,
view.appearance high_contrast), meeting WCAG AA for every text and control colour; a
test checks every theme's colour pairs.
State without colour: playing, paused, next, disabled, selected, the current set,
toggles that are on and the clip light each also show a symbol, a word or a pattern.
Colour swatches name their colour and are 24 px targets, as are small buttons.
Hover text on every control, the in-window menus included, in one style: what it
does, then its keys ("Stop everything that's playing — Esc fades out…"); unavailable
controls say what makes them available. Hovering a tile shows its title, play mode,
key, length, outputs, cue link, notes and what a click does.
Keyboard-only use: Tab moves through every control, with a clear focus ring in
both themes; arrow keys move between tiles and cue rows; Enter or Space plays the
focused tile (Edit mode: selects it; Shift+Enter makes a cue the next one); in Edit
mode ⌘/Ctrl+Up/Down moves the focused tile instead of dragging; Left/Right nudge a
focused trim or vamp handle or the master meter. The Keyboard Shortcuts window and
README list the keys. Tile hotkeys still only fire outside text fields.
Screen-reader labels: every control has a role and a name for VoiceOver and Orca.
Tiles and cue rows read their title, number, key, play mode and live state ("Air
Horn, tile 5, key 5, Hold to Play, playing, 1.2 seconds left"), cue rows their notes
and link; GO names the next cue; sets, the Panel pills and the menus' check items read
their state; the master meter is a slider in dB. The toolbar, sets, board, inspector
and status bar are named regions that VoiceOver can move into (and lists in its rotor),
and the transport counter is readable too. The inspector's trim and vamp
handles are sliders too, and can be dragged one by one (the vamp handles are new to
drag) or moved with Left/Right once focused.
Accessibility check (for contributors): cargo test opens every screen of the
window in both themes with egui_kittest (grid, cue list, search, each menu, Settings,
About, Keyboard Shortcuts, and the inspector for one tile, several, an action tile and
a 5.1 tile) and walks what a screen reader sees. A control with no name, no role or no
hover text fails it, unless it's on the test's list of known gaps, which only shrinks.
Export audio (File ▸ Export Audio…, tile.render, set.render): tiles, or every
tile in a set, written to 24-bit stereo WAV or FLAC with the trim, fades, volume,
gain, speed, pitch and channel mix applied, once through (a loop plays once). The
render is the audio engine itself run offline, so it matches what plays. It runs in the
background with progress and Cancel (render.status, render.cancel); the CLI waits
for it. A set's files are named 01 Title.wav… and never overwrite anything. FLAC is
encoded by the pure-Rust flacenc crate.
Clips from QuipClipper (docs/QUIPCLIPPER.md): its "Send to
LeadStinger" button opens a leadstinger://quip?… link, and the clip is downloaded in
the background into a new tile trimmed to the line, with its handles kept for
fine-tuning, in the named set (created if missing). Connect a server once with
quip.connect <url> --token <t> (the token is kept in the data folder, owner-only,
never in the library or set files); links from servers that aren't connected are
refused and never fetched. Also quip.import, quip.list and quip.disconnect. The
macOS app and the Linux launcher entries register the scheme; leadstinger --register-links does it for the AppImage and tarballs.
Settings ▸ QuipClipper: connect a QuipClipper server with its address and API
token (a masked field, cleared once it connects), see the connected servers and
disconnect them, without the CLI. The token is tried on the server first and a
refusal shows right there. On Linux, Register Links does --register-links.
Announcements for screen readers: VoiceOver and Orca hear "Playing …" when tiles
start (however they were started), the next cue after GO, Stop All, imports that
finish or fail, an opened set file and every status-bar message, without the focus
moving (an AccessKit live region).
Spoken cue names (Settings ▸ Speech, settings.speakCues), off by default: the
system voice says a tile's title when it starts. macOS say, on the Preview output's
device when one is chosen; Linux speech-dispatcher (spd-say), on its own output.
Accessibility docs: README and SPEC have an Accessibility section: screen readers
(VoiceOver, Orca), the keyboard map, zoom, high contrast, announcements, spoken cue
names, and leadstinger-cli as a complete non-visual way to run a show.
Open set files with a double-click: .lsset files are a document type of the
macOS app and a MIME type (application/x-leadstinger-set) of the Linux launcher
entries, the Nix package and the release tarball; leadstinger --register-links adds
it for the AppImage. An opened set file goes to the running app (a second launch hands
it over and exits) and is imported after the app asks ("Import this set file?",
Import or Cancel). set.import with ask does the same from a script. QuipClipper's
batches arrive as set files, so a download opens straight into LeadStinger.
Cue linking in the cue list (inspector ▸ CUE, tile.set --preWait --link --postWait, set files): a pre-wait before a cue starts; Continue starts the
next cue a post-wait after this one starts (overlaps and stacked sounds), Follow
starts it when this one ends. Linked cues show what comes next, with a countdown, and
GO moves the pointer past the whole chain.
Accident guards (Settings ▸ Guards): Hold Esc for Stop All (Esc must be held
for 0.3 s; settings.stopAllHold) and Lock Edit mode (also in the View menu;
view.lockEdit), which keeps the app in Perform mode during a show.
AC-3, E-AC-3, DTS and video files: with ffmpeg
installed, they're converted once at import to FLAC in the library, keeping every
channel for the channel mix; a video file keeps only its sound. Any other file the
decoder can't read is tried through ffmpeg too. Without it, the app says how to
install it. ffmpeg is found at $LEADSTINGER_FFMPEG, on PATH, or in the usual
Homebrew, MacPorts and Nix folders; the Nix package brings ffmpeg-headless, the other
downloads don't bundle it.
Imports run in the background: tiles appear at once while their files are copied
or converted on a thread of their own, with progress on the tile, in the inspector and
in the status bar, and Cancel (File ▸ Cancel Import, import.cancel). status
lists the imports under way; tile.get says "audio": "converting" with
import_progress.
Control-surface layouts in examples/: a Bitfocus Companion page (tile keys in
their colours with titles and countdowns, GO, Stop All, talk-over, volume, a big
countdown), a TouchOSC layout and an Open Stage Control session, all generated by
examples/make-layouts.py from the shipped OSC addresses.
Recipes (docs/RECIPES.md): a Stream Deck key, Companion keys with countdowns, OBS
with LeadStinger on its own track, a virtual microphone (BlackHole, or a PipeWire null
sink as an Output) and event hooks with leadstinger-cli watch.
MIDI pad pages and colours: midi.autoMap --bank 16 makes 16 pads page through
the set (midi.pageUp / midi.pageDown on two more pads), and
midi.feedback --colors launchpad (or apc-mini, apc-mini-mk2, or a table of your
own) lights each pad in its tile's colour, pulsing while it plays. Both are in
Settings too.
Messages: a tile can send OSC or MIDI messages when it starts and when it stops, to
cue lights, video or another app (osc://host:port/address args, midi:note:60:ch1,
midi:cc:20:val64 @port, ...). Set them in the inspector's MESSAGES section or with
tile.set --onStart/--onStop; set files carry them. OSC messages stay on this machine
unless OSC may use the network, and a preview sends nothing.
Richer OSC feedback for Companion, TouchOSC and the like: each tile's colour
(/ls/tile/N/color, /ls/tile/N/rgb), remaining time, progress and a countdown label
(/ls/tile/N/time), the tile count (/ls/tiles), the cue pointer and next cue's title,
and the tile in the counter (/ls/now/...). A controller sends /ls/resync to get the
whole state at once, and a removed tile's addresses are blanked. All of the addresses
are listed in docs/CLI.md.
Gain and Normalise: a tile's gain goes from −24 to +24 dB on top of its volume, so
quiet clips can be raised. Normalise (in the inspector, File ▸ Normalise Set Loudness,
or leadstinger-cli tile.normalize) sets the gain so a clip, or every clip in a set,
plays at the same loudness (−16 LUFS by default, EBU R128) or peak level. Set files
carry the gain.
A peak limiter on the output, so a boosted tile or many tiles at once don't hard-clip.
Ducking: mark a tile as a bed, and another as one that ducks beds; while a ducking
tile plays, the beds dip (−12 dB by default; amount, attack and release in Settings).
Duck Beds (Playback menu, or leadstinger-cli duck.hold on/off from a key bind
and its release bind) holds them down while you talk.
Voice ducking: turn on Duck beds while I talk in Settings (or
leadstinger-cli duck.voice on) and the beds dip whenever the microphone is above the
threshold; a level meter under the slider helps set it. Choose the input in Settings or
with settings.inputDevice.
Recording into a tile: Playback ▸ Record New Tile, or ⏺ Record in a tile's
inspector to replace its audio; Stop Recording saves it as a WAV in the library and
the tile plays it at once. leadstinger-cli record.toggle starts and stops from one
pad or key.
Instant replay: keep the last 30 seconds (5 to 300) of the input, and Save Instant
Replay (Playback menu, leadstinger-cli replay.save --seconds 10, or a pad) makes it a
tile at once.
Vamp: tick Vamp under a tile's trim to loop a section until you let it go (the
Play On button, leadstinger-cli tile.playOn, or a bound pad or key); it then
plays on to the end. The section shows on the waveform; tiles show VAMP.
Fade shapes per tile: Gentle (as before), Linear, Equal power, Exponential (even in
dB, natural on long music fades) or S-curve, in the inspector or tile.set --fade-curve.
Speed per tile, 0.5× to 2× with the pitch following (tape style), in the inspector
or tile.set --speed 1.5. Tiles show the speed; times and fades count real seconds.
Pitch per tile, −12 to +12 semitones without changing the speed, in the inspector
or tile.set --pitch -2. The shifted audio is rendered once in the background
(Signalsmith Stretch), so triggering stays instant; tiles show the shift and set files
carry it.
Markers: named points in a tile's audio. + Marker at playhead (or tile.markerAdd --at 42.5 --name Outro) adds one; Jump (tile.jump Song --marker Outro, or a pad)
plays from it, or moves a playing tile there with a short crossfade. Jumping past a
vamp lets it play on.
OSC control for TouchOSC, Companion and friends: off until turned on (Settings or
leadstinger-cli osc.enable --port 9000), localhost only unless allowed on the network,
never destructive. /ls/tile/1/trigger, /ls/go, /ls/stopall, /ls/master, /ls/cmd
and your own addresses through bindings.
OSC feedback (osc.enable --feedback 127.0.0.1:9001): tile states and titles, the next
cue, master, duck and recording go to a Companion or TouchOSC layout as they change.
Outputs and routing: add outputs in Settings (a device and a channel pair each) and
send tiles to them from the inspector, e.g. music on channels 1–2 and effects on 3–4
of an interface. Preview to plays the inspector's Preview on headphones.
leadstinger-cli output.add Phones --device "…" --channel 3, tile.set --output Phones.
Sends: a tile can play on several outputs at once, each at its own level, e.g. the
house at full level, a headphone cue mix at −6 dB and a stream feed at −3 dB. In the
inspector, "Also send to…" under Output adds one; leadstinger-cli tile.send "Bed" --output Stream --gain-db -3 and tile.unsend do the same, and tile.set --sends
sets the whole list. Stop, fades, solo, ducking, vamps and markers act on every send
together, and sends on one device stay sample-aligned. Set files carry them.
Channel mix for surround and other multichannel files: the inspector's Channels
section (shown only for files with more than two channels) sends each channel left,
right, to both or nowhere, at its own level, instead of the automatic stereo downmix;
e.g. drop the LFE, or play only the dialogue in the centre channel. leadstinger-cli tile.set "Bed" --channels "left,right,both:-3,mute,left:-6,right:-6"; --channels auto goes back. Set files carry it. Such files now use about three times the memory.
Undo and Redo (Edit menu, ⌘/Ctrl+Z and ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+Z outside text fields,
leadstinger-cli edit.undo / edit.redo) for changes to sets and tiles, including
removed tiles and sets. A slider drag is one step; the last 50 are kept.
MIDI controllers: click Learn in a tile's inspector and press a pad to play the
tile from it (Hold to Play follows the pad). Any command can be bound with
leadstinger-cli bind.add, faders included (--value volume), and auto-map plays
tiles by position from a base note. Works with the window hidden and in headless
mode; controllers can be plugged in at any time. Settings lists ports and bindings.
Pad lights: with Light pads on (Settings, or leadstinger-cli midi.feedback --lit 5 --unlit 1), pads bound to tiles light up while their tile plays.
System-wide keys on macOS and in X11 sessions: click Key… in a tile's inspector and
press a combination such as Ctrl+Alt+1 or F13, and it plays the tile from any app.
leadstinger-cli bind.add key:Ctrl+Alt+1 --tile "Air Horn" binds any command.
System-wide keys on Wayland through the desktop's global-shortcuts portal (KDE
Plasma, GNOME 48 and later, xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland): the app asks for each key
binding and the desktop confirms it. Binding keys in the compositor to
leadstinger-cli works as before.
Cue notes: a tile's notes (in the inspector, or tile.set --notes) show under its
title in the cue list and under the next cue beside GO; a set's notes (typed above the
cue list in Edit mode, or set.notes) show above it. Set files carry both.
Previous and next cue without playing: the arrow keys beside GO, Up and Down in the
cue list, the Playback menu, or cue.prev / cue.next. Clicking a cue's number makes
it the next cue without playing it (cue.set --tile "Door Slam").
Disable a tile: the inspector's Disabled box, the tile's right-click menu,
tile.disable / tile.enable (bindable to a pad or key) or tile.set --disabled. Keys,
pads and clicks skip a disabled tile and GO jumps over it; it draws dimmed. Preview
still plays it, and set files carry it.
Find tiles (⌘/Ctrl+F, View ▸ Find Tiles…, view.search): a box above the board
filters it to the tiles in every set whose title or notes match, the current set's
first; Enter plays the top hit and closes the box, Esc closes it. tile.list --query
now matches notes too.
Set switching: ⌘/Ctrl+] and ⌘/Ctrl+[ (View menu, set.next / set.prev, bindable)
move to the next or previous set in the sidebar, stopping at the ends. Tile keys work
in every set (Settings, settings.tileKeysAllSets): a tile's key plays it from any
set, the current set's tile first.
Play a random tile (Playback menu, tile.random, bindable to a pad or key): every
tile in the set (or --set "*" for all sets, --color red for one colour) plays once
before any repeats; disabled tiles are left out.
Edit several tiles at once: ⌘/Ctrl-click tiles to add them to the selection (or
take them out), Shift-click to select a run. The inspector then edits their colour,
mode, loop, solo, disabled, volume, gain, speed, fades and ducking together, showing a
dash where they differ; each change is one undo step. tile.set --tiles and
view.select --add/--range do the same from the command line.
Action tiles, like theatre fade and stop cues: a tile with no audio that fades out,
stops, pauses or plays on other tiles (or every tile in a set) when it's triggered or
GO reaches it in the cue list. File ▸ New Action Tile, a tile's right-click menu (Add
a Fade-Out Cue for It, Add a Stop Cue for It), or tile.addAction --kind fade --targets Music --fade 3; the inspector picks the action, the fade time and the targets. Set
files carry them, targets included.
Group tiles: one tile that fires several, each after its own offset in seconds
(File ▸ New Group Tile, or tile.addAction --kind play --targets '["Thunder", "Rain@1.5"]').
The inspector sets each target's offset; Stop All drops starts still waiting.

Changed

Setlist, with arrows. The bottom bar's Sidebar button is now Setlist (and the
sidebar's heading, the View menu item and the Panel frame say Setlist too), with an
arrow that points the way a click moves the panel: left while the setlist is shown,
right while it's hidden. Inspector gets the same arrow on the right. Grid and
List are icons now, a grid and stacked lines, with their names in the hover text.
Both themes; the view.sidebar command keeps its name.
Pads get much narrower before the board scrolls sideways. In Rows layout a full
row's pads now narrow down to 64 px (was 120 px) in both looks, so a row of 12 fits a
laptop window; the drag preview and Finder-drop ghosts follow the same minimum. A pad
too narrow for its title beside the key cap starts the title on the line below and
runs it on down the pad, over the waveform, as far as it needs, a size smaller when a
word wouldn't fit. A narrow Panel block puts its time under the key code and its play
state under the time. The add slot's label shortens to fit.
Lock a set from its right-click menu. Right-click a set in the sidebar (either
theme) for Lock Set, or Unlock Set on a locked one.
Panel's High Contrast does much more. Black lettering reaches 7:1 on every block
(violet, blue, red and rose turn paler; the others keep their colour), lettering on
black is white and the dim lettering peach, waveforms are solid at rest, idle controls
have a lilac outline and white lettering, fields are black, small print is peach, an
empty pad is lettered white and the idle countdown is lit.
Panel's selection outline is white. A selected block's outline was amber, so on an
amber, gold or peach block it looked like the block's own edge with a dark line
through it by the label. It's now white (3 px in high contrast), still outside the
block with a black gap.
A narrower inspector. It opens 260 pt wide instead of 372, so the board gets
more room; drag its edge to widen it (240 to 520 pt). Everything in it fits the
column instead of pushing it wider: sliders and menus take the room there is,
Normalise, Reset, Automatic and each send's level sit on a row under their field, a
long output or target name is cut short, and Remove moves to a row of its own when
the footer is full. The pad options are three by three with Disabled the sixth (one
row of five again when the column is wide enough), Preview fills the room between
⏮ and Fade Out, and while a tile records, Stop Recording takes that whole row.
Stops never click or pop. Every stop now fades over at least 0.1 s instead of a
5 ms de-click: a pad stopped by a click, its key, Enter or Hold's release, Solo,
tile.stop, Stop All with no Stop All fade, Stop All's second press and Shift+Esc
(stop-all --immediate). A longer stop fade or Stop All fade still wins. A pause fades
out over the same 0.1 s and resumes from where it was paused; a One-shot restart starts
at once while the old play fades out under it. The stop fade slider reads "De-click"
where it said "Hard stop". Nothing stored changes.
Pad titles no longer block the waveform. On a dark pad the title, its badges and
the detail line are a little brighter than the waveform, in the same colour, with a
soft dark edge, instead of sitting on solid patches of the pad: the waveform shows
behind them, and they still read where they cross it. Titles reach 4.5:1 on the pad
(7:1 in high contrast), hovered or paused included. Coloured pads are unchanged.
Rows never wrap. A row of the grid is always one row on screen. When a row holds
more than the row size, every pad in the set shrinks so it fits (they all stay one
width, so columns line up), down to 120 px; past that the board scrolls sideways. A
fuller row no longer narrows only its own pads.
Shift-click selects a rectangle of pads (the rows and columns between the selected
pad and the clicked one) instead of every tile between them in set order;
Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-click adds the rectangle to the selection. view.select --range does
the same, with --add, and --columns for Auto/Fixed columns.
status reports locked, sidebar, inspector and inspector_tab in place of
edit_mode, and the mode.changed event is gone. Settings ▸ Guards no longer has Lock
Edit mode (see the set lock). Blank slots show faintly whenever the set isn't locked,
and not at all in a locked set.
Dropping a sound on a tile adds it beside the tile instead of replacing that tile's
sound; Replace Audio… (the inspector or the tile's menu) replaces a sound. Several
files dropped on a tile now land after it, not before.
tile.move and tile.add take slot (a blank one fills); at is the gap in the
row, counting blank slots. tile.get/tile.list report slot, set.list blanks.
The icon has a waveform: the dark line along the cart's top edge is now a
waveform, in the app icon, the launcher icon and the toolbar's mark.
An AppImage shows its icon: Register Links (or leadstinger --register-links) run
from an AppImage also adds LeadStinger's launcher entry and icon to your data folder,
so docks, taskbars and launchers (Hyprland's waybar or walker, GNOME, KDE) show the
icon on its window and list the app.
A recording is hard to miss: Record New Tile scrolls the board
to the new tile and opens it in the inspector. While it records, the tile pulses red
with "REC 0:12", the input's level and "From "; the status bar reads "Recording
0:12 from " with the level and a Stop button (Panel: a STOP RECORDING block); the
counter shows REC; and the inspector's Preview becomes Stop Recording. The Record item's
hover text names the input, and screen readers hear "recording from ".
Settings ▸ Voice always shows the input, ducking on or off: recording and instant
replay use it too. "System default input" names the device it is (input.list reports
default; status reports input and recording_seconds).
Preview is at the top of the inspector, beside the tile's title, instead of below
every setting.
Settings ▸ Voice warns when the microphone hears the board (the input's level
rises and falls with the board's, near the threshold), which makes ducked beds pump:
use headphones or a close mic, or raise the threshold. status reports hears_board.
Console Light's dim text is a little darker (#404246), reaching 4.5:1; Panel tiles
with nothing to play are lettered in peach, which reads on their darkened colour.
Stopping is a hard stop by default. A tile's new Stop fade (inspector,
tile.set --stopFade, set files) is how long it fades when stopped; none cuts at
once. Fade out is now only the fade at the end of the clip. Every hard stop and
every Always Restart ramps over about 5 ms, so a stop no longer clicks, and Solo
stops the others with their own stop fade (it used to fade them for at least 0.25 s).
Stop All is immediate by default (Esc); a fade can still be set in Settings.
With one set, Esc is two-stage: the first press fades, a second press while it
fades stops at once. Shift+Esc always stops at once.
Your library is migrated (version 2) the first time this version opens it: every
tile with a fade-out gets the same stop fade, so it still fades when you stop it, and
the stored Stop All fade (1 s, the old default) becomes immediate. Set it again in
Settings ▸ Stop All fade if you want one. The library as it was is kept beside it as
Library.v1.json.
A tile's output is now the first of its sends: libraries and set files store sends
(older ones, with a single output, still load). Removing an output drops the sends
to it; a tile with none left plays on Main, as before.
Building from source needs a C++ compiler and libclang, for the pitch shifter; the Nix
flake provides both.
The interface toolkit moved from egui 0.31 to 0.37, so building needs Rust 1.95 or
newer. The app looks the same apart from slightly sharper, better-kerned text and, in
the Panel theme, rounded-square checkboxes. leadstinger-cli view.screenshot waits
for the window to settle, so it shows what is open even while the window is
minimised or covered; the file is written a moment later (up to a second when hidden).

Removed

One app. The source no longer builds a second, privately named edition of the app
(its cargo feature, icons, AppImage, Nix packages and macOS bundle option are gone),
nor the starter-pack folder, environment variable prefix and library copy that came
with it. A themed set file does that job now.

Fixed

Panel's selection outline fits List rows and the sets column. A selected or focused
cue row, and a set with the keyboard focus, now have the white outline inside their own
edge, following the row's rounded end or the set's square block, with the black gap
inside it. Drawn outside, it was covered by the next row, cut off at the top of the
list, and left a stray arc; a set got a rounded ring that crowded its lettering, which
now keeps clear of the outline. A pad or row whose window is in the background no
longer shows the focus ring's rectangle as well as its outline.
The inspector's option buttons don't crowd. Loop, Solo, Pausable, One-shot, Hold
and Disabled put their icon over their name with a gap, sized to the button (a button
too short for both shows the name alone), and a mixed selection no longer adds a "—"
after the name: the accent edge, the hover text and the accessible state say it.
set.import --useTheme works from the CLI. The parameter was spelled use_theme,
which leadstinger-cli turns into useTheme like every other parameter, so a script could
never answer the "Use it now?" question: the theme was installed but not used. It is
useTheme now, in the command's help and the gift's instructions.
Panel's lettering is centred in its blocks, pills and buttons. Antonio's capitals
sat 0.08 em below the middle of their line, so every label centred by its line looked
low, and the pills set theirs bottom right. The fonts are now set up with their
capitals in the middle of the line (any theme's own faces too), and every Panel pill,
bar block, Settings cap and button letters its label in the middle both ways.
A bottom-bar block that's on keeps its ring off the lettering. The black ring of
an "on" block (Sidebar, Grid, Inspector) ran into the label in High Contrast; the
ring sits closer to the edge and the lettering is a size smaller, 2 px clear.
One outline on a selected Panel pad, whole in the first column. Clicking a pad
also drew the light-blue focus ring round its rectangle, and the white selection
outline was cut off at the left of the board. A Panel pad (or cue row) now has one
mark: the white outline that follows its shape, while it's selected or has the
focus; the board keeps room round its pads for it. Console's ring is unchanged, and
Panel's ring on its other controls follows their shape.
High Contrast can be turned off in Panel. Dark, Light and System are greyed in
Panel, so once High Contrast was on, the only way out was to switch to Console. Panel's
Settings row and View ▸ Appearance now offer Standard beside High Contrast
(view.appearance standard).
The tile menu's Edit… opens the waveform editor. Right-click a pad and choose
Edit… to open its trim, vamp and markers in the full-window editor (read-only in a
locked set), like the inspector's Edit… and ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+E; before, it only selected
the pad. It is greyed out for an action tile or a pad with no sound, and says why.
Panel's key codes clear the pad's corner. The key code sat close to the top edge,
and on taller pads its first character (the ⌥ of an Option key) ran into the rounded
corner. It now sits level with the badges and clear of the curve, and a wide pad's time
clears the bottom corner the same way.
A pad drags into the empty slot at the end of its own row. In the Rows grid,
dragging a row's last pad right, onto the empty slot after it, now moves it there and
leaves a blank where it was (before, only a pad from another row could be dropped
there). Any pad dropped over an empty slot past a row's end lands in that slot, with
blanks filling the space before it, just as the board previews it;
leadstinger-cli tile.move --row R --slot S past the row's end does the same.
That now works in a row as wide as the board too, where no empty slot is drawn after
the last pad: a pad of that row dropped on the last pad's right half takes a new slot
after it and leaves a blank where it was, instead of swapping with the last pad, and
the last pad dragged past its own middle moves one slot right. A pad dropped on a blank
of its own row changes places with the blank. Only a drop between two pads reorders
the row and closes it up. tile.move --leaveBlank true does the same from the CLI.
Long status-bar notices no longer cover "Idle". A notice too long for the status
bar (such as the one after a library update) is cut short with "…" and shows its whole
text on hover, staying up while the pointer is on it. Before, it ran off to the left
and was drawn over the playing status. Panel's status strip gets the same hover text.
Enter stops the pad it started. On a focused pad, a second Enter (or Space) stops
it while it plays, One-shot pads included; their hotkey still starts them again.
Tile keys work with a pad selected. Clicking a pad gave it the keyboard focus,
and then no tile key played anything (and ⌘/Ctrl+Z and ⌘/Ctrl+V did nothing) until the
focus left. Only a text field stops them now.
Play On works in a locked set's inspector. A locked set still runs, so the Cue
tab's Play On button and its markers' Jump buttons stay live there; the tab's edits
stay greyed.
Panel's keys are readable. Grid and List in the set settings, and the hotkey cap
beside a tile's title, drew peach or white lettering on lilac and amber (1.5 to 2:1);
they're lettered black now, as Panel's pills are. Console is unchanged.
⌘/Ctrl+arrows move a tile you clicked. Before, only a tile reached
with Tab took them, and the arrows changed the master volume instead.
Linux: .lsset files are recognised. The set file's MIME type, installed by the Nix
package and by --register-links, had a double hyphen inside an XML comment, so
shared-mime-info rejected the whole file. And --register-links from a Nix install now
starts the program through its wrapper (on the profile's path when there is one), so the
link handler finds ffmpeg and survives an upgrade.
A preview never plays on the house speakers. With Settings ▸ Preview to on and its
device unplugged or missing, the inspector's Preview, the editor's Preview and Play
Selection, tile.preview and the QuipClipper window's Preview play nothing, and the
status bar says why ("Preview's device External Headphones isn't connected: nothing
played"; code preview_unavailable). They used to play on Main. When the device is
back, previews play on it again (D-136).
An empty or relative XDG_DATA_HOME counts as unset, so the AppImage's launcher entry
and icon (and --register-links) go to ~/.local/share instead of the working folder.
On macOS the Dock and the app switcher show the icon at the same size as other apps'
while LeadStinger runs. They showed the Linux artwork, which fills its square, so it
looked bigger.
Importing a set file into a new library no longer leaves the library's empty "Set 1"
above the imported sets.
Surround files (5.1, 7.1 and other layouts) keep their centre and surround channels:
they are downmixed to stereo the ITU-R BS.775 way (centre and surrounds at −3 dB, LFE
left out) instead of playing only the front left and right.
macOS no longer asks for the microphone every time LeadStinger starts. Only
playing sound never needs it now; macOS asks the first time voice ducking, a
recording or instant replay opens the input. While that question is up, the app,
leadstinger-cli and the control socket keep working (they used to stop answering
until it was dismissed), and Settings and status say it's waiting for microphone
permission. A recording started meanwhile begins when the input opens. (The audio
library, cpal, moved from 0.15 to 0.18; device names, sample rates and latency are
as before.)
Unplugging an output's device no longer stops everything. Pulling the headphones
that an output (or Preview) plays on used to stop every tile, on Main too, and the
output stayed closed after they went back in. Now only the outputs on that device
close: Main and the others play on without a gap, and a tile whose Output was there
carries on on Main. When the device comes back the output reopens on its own within
a few seconds (Main returns to its own device too), and the status bar says what
went and what came back and names the outputs still closed.
The macOS menu bar now shows Stop Recording in the Playback menu while a recording
runs; it kept saying Record New Tile, so a recording could only be stopped from the
tile's inspector.
Settings ▸ Voice ▸ Input device lists the inputs straight away; it used to offer only
"System default input" until Refresh was clicked. Launching still never asks for the
microphone.
macOS: a file dropped from Finder lands where it's dropped. Every drop used to be
added at the end of the set, so one sound dropped on a tile became a new tile instead
of replacing that tile's sound, and a picture dropped on a tile was refused. The
window now asks macOS where the drag is, so the tile under it is hit, and the Rows
drop marker follows the drag.
macOS: a MIDI controller plugged in while LeadStinger runs now starts working within
two seconds, and one unplugged and plugged back in comes back, in the app and in
leadstinger-cli serve. It used to stay out of midi.ports until the app was
restarted. Tile MIDI messages reach an output plugged in late too.

Developer

Background runs: LEADSTINGER_BACKGROUND=1, on by itself in every
LEADSTINGER_SNAPSHOT run (LEADSTINGER_BACKGROUND=0 shows a snapshot run). On macOS
the app opens without activating: it takes no focus, has no Dock icon, leaves the menu
bar to the app in front, and its window is fully transparent and lets clicks through,
so screenshots, scripted checks and the CLI work without the window showing up in
front of whoever is using the computer. The window keeps painting while covered, so
LEADSTINGER_SNAPSHOT and view.screenshot capture fresh frames. Launch a bundle
for such a run with open -g -n (-g keeps it in the background). On Linux the
window manager decides focus, so there it only keeps painting while covered.

Downloads

macOS (Apple silicon and Intel): LeadStinger-…-macos-universal.zip. The app isn't
notarised, so the first time, right-click LeadStinger.app in Finder and choose Open.
leadstinger-cli is inside the bundle, in Contents/MacOS/.
Linux AppImage (x86_64, aarch64): one file with everything inside; chmod +x it
and run it. It starts through an unprivileged user namespace, which Ubuntu 24.04 and
later block by default: there it stops with cannot write uid_map: Operation not permitted. Use the tarball instead, or let LeadStinger's AppImage (and nothing else)
use user namespaces with this AppArmor profile, keeping the file named
LeadStinger-….AppImage:
```
sudo tee /etc/apparmor.d/leadstinger-appimage >/dev/null <<'EOF'
abi <abi/4.0>,
include <tunables/global>
profile leadstinger-appimage /**/LeadStinger-*.AppImage flags=(unconfined) {
  userns,
}
EOF
sudo apparmor_parser -r /etc/apparmor.d/leadstinger-appimage
```
Linux tarball (x86_64, aarch64): bin/leadstinger and bin/leadstinger-cli, a
.desktop entry and an icon. It uses your system's ALSA, GTK 3, X11/Wayland and OpenGL
libraries, and needs glibc 2.35 or later (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12 or newer). On NixOS,
use Nix (below) or nix-ld.
Nix: nix run github:weckere/leadstinger.

SHA256SUMS lists the checksums.

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