Privacy
mixr works entirely on your Mac. Nothing about your audio, your apps, or your devices leaves your machine. This isn’t a setting you turn on — it’s how mixr is built.
No account
mixr doesn’t have accounts. You don’t sign in, you don’t create a profile, and there’s no server holding your information — because there’s no server involved in using mixr at all.
No analytics, no telemetry
mixr collects nothing. It doesn’t track how you use it, what apps you run, what devices you have, or anything else. There’s no usage reporting, no crash telemetry phoning home, no “anonymous statistics.”
If you watch mixr’s network activity, you’ll see it isn’t talking to anyone while you use it. That’s the point.
What about the audio permission?
To give each app its own volume, mixr needs macOS permission to see your system audio. This lets it observe audio levels so it can adjust them — it does not record anything, and it does not send anything anywhere. The permission is about controlling levels on your Mac, not capturing audio off it. See: First launch & permissions
The Stream Deck socket
If you turn on Stream Deck support (Settings → Integrations), mixr opens a local socket file so the Stream Deck plugin can tell it “turn Spotify down.” It’s worth being precise about what that is, because “socket” sounds like networking and this isn’t:
- It’s a Unix domain socket — a file at
~/Library/Application Support/mixr/ipc.sock, not a network port. There’s no address to connect to, nothing is listening on your network, and nothing on your Wi-Fi or the internet can reach it. A web page can’t open one at all. - Access is decided by file permissions: the socket is owner-only, inside a folder only your user account can open. Another user on the same Mac can’t reach it.
- It exists only while the feature is on. Switch it off, or quit mixr, and the file is gone.
The honest part: while it’s on, any program running as you can use that socket to drive mixr, the same way the Stream Deck plugin does. That’s a real capability, and it’s the price of letting an outside surface control your mixer — the same trade you make with Shortcuts. Specifically, it can set app volumes, mute and unmute apps, mute and unmute your microphone, change your microphone’s input gain, and read the list of apps mixr knows about.
What it deliberately cannot do is listen. mixr’s one-shot “Set My Level” button reads your microphone for a few seconds to pick a gain — and that button exists only inside mixr’s own window. There is no socket command for it, on purpose: a control that starts your microphone shouldn’t be reachable by anything except you, in the app, on purpose.
Muting is worth calling out in both directions: something using this socket could mute your mic without you pressing anything — and equally, could unmute it. mixr’s menu bar icon always shows the true state, so a mute you didn’t ask for is visible rather than silent. What the socket cannot do: record audio, listen to your microphone, reach the network, or read anything else on your Mac.
If you’d rather not have any of it, leave Stream Deck support off — it’s off until you turn it on, and turning it back off closes the socket immediately.
The only time mixr uses the network
There’s one exception, and it’s deliberate and rare: when you buy or activate a license, mixr contacts our server once to confirm your license. That’s a purchase confirmation — like downloading a receipt — not ongoing tracking. After that, your license is verified on your Mac, offline, with no further network contact. mixr never checks in while you’re using it.
Why we build it this way
Audio is personal. What you listen to, who you talk to, how you have your setup — none of that is our business, and we’ve made sure it can’t become our business by not collecting it in the first place.
The best way to protect your data is to never have it. So we don’t.
If mixr ever does something on the network you didn’t expect, that’s a bug — tell us, and we’ll fix it. Our commitment is simple: nothing about your use of mixr leaves your Mac.