FOfootlooseboss·Nov 29, 2022
In A curated directory of 700 Mac menu bar appsExistentialAudio
BlackHole
C2019–2025
ExistentialAudio / BlackHole
BlackHole
BlackHole is a modern macOS audio loopback driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.
19Distinct people
20Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
20KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
BlackHole is a modern macOS audio loopback driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year20 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-10-29 06:36:08 UTC to 2025-08-26 10:56:05 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
3 sourcesIf you want to record sound generated by the computer itself only (not the microphone), you can use a tool like BlackHole [1].
BlackHole adds a loopback audio device which can be used with the default video capture tool (select the loopback device in the options menu after pressing shift-command-5).
To be able to play audio from the speakers while you're recording, you need to add a multi-output audio device in the macOS "Audio MIDI Setup" app. Switch to the multi-output device by option-clicking the audio icon in the top menu bar. Now both the speakers as well as the BlackHole audio device will receive audio.
[1]: https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole
In Tool beeps every time data is sent to GoogleThis (commercial) program[1] does the job for Spotify. I think what it does is just play the given playlist then it sets Spotify's audio output to a virtual audio device similar to BlackHole[2], then reads from it, encodes the audio, fetches the metadata (including album art) and sets it. There are open source[3] alternatives[4] but I haven't tested them.
[1] https://www.noteburner.com
[2] https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole
[3] https://github.com/jwallet/spy-spotify
[4] https://github.com/richardk80/spotify-ripper
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