Privacy

Your Mac. Your audio.

Waves has no account, analytics, or servers. Here is what it accesses and stores.

What Waves accesses

App audio: Waves needs audio access to control individual apps. It asks first, and macOS may show its own permission prompt. Audio is processed live on your Mac, never recorded, saved, or sent anywhere. Adaptive Mix detects speech and volume changes as audio plays. It does not record or save anything.
Running applications: Waves lists your running apps (names and icons) so it can show them in the mixer.
Audio output devices: Waves reads available output devices to show the current one and, optionally, switch it.
Accessibility (optional): This is only needed for global keyboard shortcuts. Waves ignores unsupported key presses and never stores or sends keystrokes. Per-app audio control works without Accessibility access.

What Waves stores

Waves stores your preferences, profiles, app and managed EQ, content types, priorities, sidechain focus mode, per-device volume, and the last session in ~/Library/Application Support/Waves/ (or ~/.Waves as a fallback). This can include app names, bundle identifiers, route state, output device identifiers, diagnostic notes, and volume, mute, or boost settings. It stays on your Mac.

Copy Diagnostics puts a limited report on the clipboard. It never includes audio, but may include the Waves and macOS versions, capture permission, app and device names, route states, and short error messages. Potentially identifying fields are labeled. Review the report before sharing it.

What Waves does not do

No account, telemetry, analytics, crash reporting, or tracking.
No network requests except update checks and downloads you request or allow.
No audio recording or transmission.

Update checks

Waves makes no network request before you start an update check or allow automatic checks. An allowed check fetches the signed appcast from https://waves.jonathanrreed.com/appcast.xml. It sends no account, device identifier, audio, diagnostics, or telemetry. If you accept an update, Sparkle downloads the signed release from GitHub. Automatic checks can be turned off in General Settings.

Permissions

Permission	Why	Required?
Audio capture	Per-app volume, mute, boost, EQ, and Adaptive Mix	Yes, for control
Accessibility	Global keyboard shortcuts	Optional

This website

This static site uses self-hosted fonts. It has no analytics, cookies, or third-party requests. The optional audio demo generates sound in your browser and does not capture anything.

Questions or concerns: open an issue.