Visuals from your Mac’s sound: BlackHole or the AVIZ app
Music on a Mac usually comes from an app: Spotify, Apple Music, rekordbox, a browser tab. A visualizer has to hear that sound to move with it, and macOS doesn’t hand it over by default. There are four ways to get it into AVIZ. Here they are, from the simplest to the most hands-on.
The four routes at a glance
| Route | Hears | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| AVIZ for Mac, system audio | Everything that plays on the Mac | Apple silicon, macOS 14.2 or later |
| Tab audio in the browser | One browser tab | Chrome or Edge |
| BlackHole in the browser | Everything sent to the multi-output device | BlackHole 2ch, a few minutes of setup |
| Mic or line input | The room, or a mixer’s output | A mic or an audio interface |
1. The AVIZ Mac app: system audio in one click
The simplest route. Download AVIZ for Mac (Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later; system audio needs macOS 14.2 or later), open Audio input in the player and press Listen to system audio. Whatever plays on the Mac drives the visuals: the Spotify or Apple Music app, rekordbox, Serato, Traktor, a video call, a browser tab.
The first time, macOS asks for permission. If you said no by accident, open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, allow AVIZ and try again.
Compared with BlackHole, nothing changes in your sound settings: your speakers stay your output and the volume keys keep working. The app also keeps rendering when its window is hidden, so you can switch to the music app while the visuals run on a projector or into Resolume or OBS over Syphon and NDI®.
2. Tab audio in Chrome or Edge
If the music plays in a browser tab (the Spotify web player, YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp), AVIZ in the browser can listen to that tab:
- Start the music in another tab of the same window.
- In AVIZ, open Audio input and press Choose a tab….
- Select the tab with the music, keep Share tab audio on and press Share.
This tab listens to AVIZ’s own tab, which is handy for an embedded player. Safari and Firefox don’t pass tab audio to web pages, so use Chrome or Edge for this route.
3. BlackHole: any app, in the browser
For desktop apps without the Mac app, route the sound through a virtual device. BlackHole 2ch is free:
- Install BlackHole 2ch from its site, or with
brew install blackhole-2ch. - Open Audio MIDI Setup, press + → Create Multi-Output Device, and tick your headphones or speakers and BlackHole 2ch.
- In System Settings → Sound → Output, choose that multi-output device. Now you and BlackHole both get the sound.
- In AVIZ, open Audio input, choose BlackHole 2ch in the list and press Listen to this input.
The catch: macOS can’t change the volume of a multi-output device with the keys, so you set the level in the music app itself. Switch the output back to your speakers when you’re done. On Windows, the same job is done by the Stereo Mix input or VB-CABLE.
4. A microphone or a line input
Choose the input under Mic or another input and press Listen to this input. Browsers show device names after the first microphone permission. A built-in mic hears the room, so it works for a party with speakers nearby. For a DJ booth, a cable from the mixer’s booth or record output into an audio interface gives the cleanest signal.
What happens to the sound
AVIZ analyses the sound in memory on your Mac and doesn’t send it anywhere. It ends up in a file only if you press Record yourself. Live sound can’t be analysed ahead of time, so for a video use Record, or load a track file and use the export, which renders every frame in sync with the music. Streaming services don’t allow their music to be recorded into videos: for anything you publish, use your own tracks.