Showboard is now free — every feature unlocked, no license or trial. Plus sharper Archive search, sort controls across browse and Song Versions, on-demand network access, and a faster library.
New Features
- Showboard is now free — no license, no trial, no nags. Every feature is unlocked for everyone.
- Year-jump era navigation for live-show collections — jump straight to a year instead of scrolling.
- Sort controls for Archive browse search and venue detail, with the fetch following the sort, plus sort and per-source paging on Song Versions.
- Qobuz artist pages gain a text filter and year grouping, matching Tidal and Nugs browse.
- On-demand network access — BluOS and the web remote start only on first use, with clear Local Network permission handling.
Bug Fixes
- Archive artist searches now match the exact artist instead of returning tribute bands, and handle multi-word queries and special characters without breaking.
- Bit-perfect mode is enforced at every processing stage, so EQ, crossfade, and upsampling can't silently re-enable.
- Now Playing shows a moving clock on the first streaming track, and playback no longer resumes tracks from a near-zero position.
- Deleting a playlist now confirms first and fully removes its tracks.
- Phish.in tour drill-down loads that tour's shows, and browse tabs page through the full catalog.
- Smart-playlist date rules show honest operator labels, and a dead "Volume leveling" toggle was removed from Preferences.
Performance
- A faster library that no longer re-sorts the whole collection on every keystroke.
- Batched database queries eliminate per-row lookups in playlists and queues, and a smarter image cache with size tiers and byte-budget eviction.
A whole new Tapers section for exploring the people behind live recordings, a redesigned cross-source Home, a full-screen "Tape" player, and iCloud-synced favorites.
New Features
- Tapers — a new Discover section to browse and follow the tapers behind the recordings, with a "Your Tapers" grid of the recordists already in your library, credited by name.
- Taper pages — a taper's cross-source discography in chronological order, with a Source Mix breakdown, best-of and Top Rated rails, and a sortable list.
- Recent Taper Submissions — see what's freshly circulating, using honest performance-date recency so vintage transfers no longer masquerade as new.
- Follow tapers with a dedicated "Following" lane, plus "Tapers Worth Knowing" and personalized "Tapers you'll love" recommendations, and opt-in Taper Starter Packs by jam band.
- Loved — a unified area for album, artist, and venue favorites, now synced across your Macs via iCloud.
- As-you-type search suggestions across artists, songs, albums/shows, and venues.
- Share a resolvable link to any track that opens on whichever source the recipient has.
UI Improvements
- Home, redesigned — cross-source Continue Listening and Most Played with cold-start support, cross-source de-duplication, and a compact, live-first layout.
- A new full-screen "Tape" player with a data-adaptive layout, a set-grouped source-agnostic tracklist, and "the jam, as interface" — sets, segues, and jams visualized on the timeline.
- Provenance you can trust — taper, transferer, and lineage surfaced legibly on show detail, with a "degrade, never fabricate" policy and full narrative taper notes.
- "Also available on:" makes it unmissable when a show exists on other sources.
- Sort an artist's content by date, plays, favorites, or rating, and hover paging arrows on horizontal rails throughout the app.
Bug Fixes
- Streaming queues now preserve disc and track order.
- Wider show-date parsing, including US M/D/Y formats.
- Numerous accessibility and reliability fixes.
Fresh Tapes cross-source discovery, one-show-every-source picker, a redesigned Concert Diary, and the Dark Glass Studio design refresh.
New Features
- Fresh Tapes — a cross-source feed of recently-added live recordings from Nugs, Archive.org, and Phish.in, on the Home rail and a dedicated Discover screen, with source-filter chips and artwork-led cards.
- One show, every source — live-show detail pages now show a unified source picker to compare and switch between every available recording of a show, with provenance as the hero.
- Concert Diary / My Shows — a year-grouped ticket-stub timeline with ratings and source pills, plus automatic Phish.in recording matching that syncs across your Macs.
- Refreshed Discovery — Most Played and Recently Played rebuilt as artwork-led grids and a timeline with rank badges and play-from-row.
- Nugs "Recently Posted" — a hero section sorted by true posting date.
UI Improvements
- Dark Glass Studio — a new design-system foundation: refined theme, brand typography, custom sidebar icons, recording-source badges, and provenance blocks.
- Up Next — the queue page reworked to the new design language with real artwork and source/format badges.
- Archive provenance moved to a full-width strip with verbatim monospace taper notes ("Show more" for long notes).
Bug Fixes
- Qobuz — transient auth failures no longer delete your iCloud-synced token, fixing spurious logouts.
- Tidal — "New Releases" now uses the real global feed instead of a 12-item editorial scrape.
- Now Playing — the bit-perfect and sample-rate badges now reflect the actual output engine state across all surfaces, not your preferences.
- Cross-source recency cleanups for Qobuz and Phish.in.
The Continue Listening handoff card now shows artwork.
Improvements
- Continue Listening shows artwork — the handoff card on Home now displays the track or show cover from your other Mac instead of a blank placeholder. Works across all sources (local, Tidal, Qobuz, Nugs, Archive.org, and Phish.in).
Cross-Mac handoff now resumes streaming tracks, sync errors are visible, and a missing sync zone recovers on its own.
Bug Fixes
- Now Playing handoff resumes streaming tracks across Macs — Tidal, Qobuz, Nugs, Archive.org, and Phish.in. Tapping Continue Listening on another Mac previously showed "Unavailable on this Mac"; it now resumes playback.
- Sync errors are now visible — any sync failure appears in Preferences → Sync instead of failing silently.
- Automatic sync-zone recovery — if the iCloud sync zone goes missing, Showboard recreates it instead of getting permanently stuck.
- APNs push registration is now recorded in the app log for easier diagnosis.
iCloud sync across your Macs, Now Playing handoff, AirPlay output, and native BluOS streaming.
New Features
- iCloud sync — Favorites, playlists, My Shows, track ratings, and play counts now sync across all your Macs.
- Now Playing handoff — Start a track on one Mac and pick it up on another right where you left off, from the Continue Listening card.
- iCloud Keychain logins — Tidal, Nugs, and Qobuz sign-ins sync securely between your Macs.
- AirPlay output — Play to AirPlay devices with latency-compensated progress and automatic recovery when the route drops.
- BluOS streaming — Native BluOS output through a new gapless-aware streaming engine.
- Redesigned Venues — A faster, library-first Venues page that loads progressively.
Bug Fixes
- Playlist detail no longer shows the previously selected playlist's tracks.
- iCloud-synced streaming logins are no longer wiped across devices.
- Fixed a CloudKit conflict loop that could stall Now Playing handoff.
- Fixed a track-finish race that could skip a track in the queue.
- AirPlay routing, gapless boundaries, and progress-bar stability fixes.
Ends the keychain "allow access" prompts when updating the app.
Bug Fixes
- No more keychain prompts after updates — stored streaming-service logins now live in the system's modern keychain, where access follows the app's signature instead of per-item approval. Existing logins migrate automatically on first launch.
Restores phish.in playback after a CDN-side change broke streaming.
Bug Fixes
- Phish.in playback restored — tracks were silently skipping after phish.in's CDN moved to Cloudflare HTTP/3; the streaming layer now sizes files via a one-byte ranged request.
Audio pipeline rewrite, gapless transitions, DSD import, and a unified streaming layer across all five online sources
Audio Engine
- Rewritten audio pipeline on AVAudioEngine for real-time stability and lower-latency device switching
- mainMixerNode SRC quality raised to maximum — cleaner playback when device rate ≠ source rate
- Multi-buffer scheduler eliminates SRC-boundary dropouts
- Gapless transitions reworked end-to-end
- HAL listeners react to system sample-rate and default-device changes without restart
- Stream byte prefetcher for faster network playback startup
Sources & Formats
- DSD import — .dsf files now ingest and play cleanly (DFF deferred to v1.3)
- Streaming pipeline rewrite — unified byte-stream layer across Archive.org, Nugs, Tidal, Qobuz, Phish.in
- Phish.in MP3 reliability improvements
UI
- Auth-expiry overlay — clear indicator and one-click reconnect when a streaming session expires
- Stream download progress fill on the playback scrubber
- Double-click track-row gesture fix
- File → New Playlist… (⌘⇧N)
- “Play Album” context menu now actually plays (was navigating only)
- Home YOUR PLAYLISTS refreshes immediately when a playlist is created from anywhere
- On This Day cards open show detail directly (no longer routed through global search)
- Menu-bar popover redesigned as vertical mini-player
Accessibility & VoiceOver
- Transport controls have explicit a11y labels (Previous Track / Next Track / Play / Pause)
- Album track titles reachable via VoiceOver
- Menu-bar player track title surfaces to the accessibility tree
Fixes
- m4a / ALAC playback failure with kAudio_ParamError -50 fixed (full-buffer read contract)
- Resync delay defaults to 0.3 s for DACs that need lock time after rate changes
- “Add to Queue” with no prior playback no longer leaves the queue inconsistent
- Session restore correctly brings back the currently-playing track on relaunches within 30 s
- Menu-bar popover Tahoe layout-cycle crash class ended
- Nugs.net artists appear in global search rollup
- Phish.in tracks correctly bucketed by source in source breakdown
Network share resilience and 14 bug fixes
New Features
- Network share resilience — keep-alive pings, auto-remount, and better reconnect UI
- Add showboard.app URL to share card viral loop
- UX improvements and back navigation fix
Bug Fixes
- Progress bar seek near end no longer advances track, prevent double-fire
- Playlist artwork on home screen for Phish.in, TIDAL, and Qobuz tracks
- Crash in artworkForArtists — partial select decoded as full Album record
- Check for updates automatically preference not persisting
- Share card picker reliability and app icon usage
- Menu bar Open Showboard when main window is closed
- Reopen main window from menu bar after window closed
- Clear local selection unconditionally in all browse view onBack closures
Performance
- Parallelize API calls and batch DB queries for Artist and This Week views
The first public release. A native macOS audiophile music player built for bit-perfect playback and live concert recording library support.
Bit-Perfect Audio Engine
- Exclusive mode: audio goes straight to your DAC with no OS-level processing
- Automatic sample rate matching (44.1, 48, 96, 192 kHz+)
- Gapless playback across local and streaming sources
- All formats: FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, OGG Vorbis, Opus, WavPack, Musepack, DSD
- Signal path visualization with quality indicators
- ReplayGain, 10-band parametric EQ, crossfeed, and upsampling
Audio Device Support
- USB, Thunderbolt, AirPlay, Bluetooth, and built-in audio with hot-plug detection
- USB, Thunderbolt, AirPlay, Bluetooth, and built-in audio with hot-plug detection
Five Integrated Streaming Sources
- Phish.in — Complete Phish live archive with source quality badges
- Nugs.net — Hi-Res FLAC 24-bit streaming with your subscription
- Archive.org — Free access to the Live Music Archive with download support
- TIDAL — Lossless and Hi-Res streaming
- Qobuz — Hi-Res streaming with quality display
Local Library Management
- Multi-folder library with network share support and automatic file watching
- CUE sheet support, live show detection, full-text search
- Manual and smart playlists with rule-based filtering
Discover & Browse
- Home — Continue Listening, Recently Added, Most Played, On This Day
- This Week in Live Shows — aggregated from all sources, grouped by day
- Venue Explorer — browse recordings by venue across your entire collection
- Song Versions — compare performances across sources and eras
- Favorite Shows & My Shows — save and log concerts
- Listening Stats — time, tracks, top artists/albums/venues, format breakdown
Remote Control & System Integration
- Web remote from any device on your network
- Menu bar player with artwork and transport controls
- Media keys, macOS Now Playing, automatic updates via Sparkle
- Data export/import as .showboard bundles
Design
- Dark Glass Studio — glass material backgrounds, dynamic artwork tinting, blurred album art, designed for dimly lit listening rooms