Changelog

Site update — August 12, 2026 · Readable buttons and small print

• The buttons in the header say what they say. The Tip and Download pills were drawing their label at 55% opacity over a colored fill, which measured as low as 1.6:1 against it — well under the 4.5:1 the accessibility guidelines ask for. Their labels are now solid, and the fill behind them is set a shade deeper so the text genuinely clears that bar.
• The Subscribe and Support buttons too. Their labels were colored for one end of a two-color gradient and disappeared into the other end. Both now use a single fill that the label is legible on all the way across.
• The newsletter note, the “More apps” caption and the version line under the download button were all set too faint to read comfortably; each is now above the AA threshold.
• Keyboard shortcut chips are legible against their own background.
• The screenshot viewer no longer makes every visit quietly re-download this page as if it were an image — a wasted request on each load.
• No change to the app.

Site update — August 11, 2026 · Clearer search results

• The description under this site in Google is no longer cut off. It ran past the length Google shows and broke mid-word; it now reads as a complete sentence.
• Sharing a link to the privacy, terms or changelog page now shows a proper preview card instead of a bare URL.
• The sitemap now reports when each page actually changed, so search engines re-check pages that have been updated instead of assuming they are stale.
• No change to the app.

1.0.0 — August 11, 2026 · Initial public release

First release — an ordered preference for each audio role, enforced independently, so a monitor can't take your sound and a headset can't take your microphone.

• An ordered list per role — output, microphone and system sounds each get their own. Anchr uses the first device on the list that's connected, and falls through automatically when one is unplugged.
• Roles are enforced independently — the thing the Sound settings pane cannot express. Listen through AirPods while your microphone stays on a USB interface, so nothing ever opens an input stream on the headset and it never drops into hands-free mode.
• Never use a display's speakers — one switch covering HDMI and DisplayPort. It is a rule about the kind of connection, so it covers monitors bought after you flipped it.
• Never use a Bluetooth headset as the microphone — the same, for every headset you own and every one you will own.
• It never argues with you — CoreAudio reports a person changing a device and a program stealing one identically, so when Anchr puts something back it says so and offers the way out: choose that device a second time and it keeps it for the session. There is a one-click button in the menu, so the gesture works with notifications switched off.
• And it says when it's losing — something changing the same role faster than a person could, several times in a few seconds, makes Anchr stop rather than loop against it. It reports that once, in the menu and in a notification.
• Waits for hardware to settle — a dock brings three devices in half a second and a wake republishes the whole list. Anchr routes once instead of five times, and still routes eventually if the hardware never goes quiet.
• Menu bar only — the current device for each role at a glance, one-click switching, pause, re-apply, and a shortcut to macOS's own Sound settings. No Dock icon, and the menu-bar icon itself can be hidden.
• Needs no permissions at all — no microphone access, no Accessibility, no prompt of any kind. Anchr chooses which microphone your apps record from and never opens one itself; the build refuses to ship if a microphone usage string ever appears in the bundle.
• Priority lists reorder from the keyboard — ⌘↑, ⌘↓ and ⌘⌫ — never drag-only. Every control VoiceOver-labelled, every accent color generated to clear its contrast target in light, dark and Increase Contrast; full WCAG 2.1 AA.
• Settings import and export, to carry a setup to another Mac.
• Signed and notarized by Apple — macOS 13+, Apple Silicon & Intel, one universal build.
• Free for personal use forever, including updates; optional one-time $5-per-device commercial license for commercial use.

Known scope for 1.0: holding the microphone off a Bluetooth headset covers apps that record from your default input, which is nearly all of them. An app that selects the headset by name will still do so, and no app of this kind can prevent that.