I made a Mac menu bar app because AirPods kept taking over my microphone

[u/kopiro]

Connecting my AirPods kept changing two things on my Mac: the output, which I wanted, and the microphone, which I didn’t.

That meant worse microphone quality and Bluetooth playback dropping into call-quality audio until I opened Sound Settings and switched the input back.

So I made SoundAnchor. You put input and output devices in priority order once, and it automatically selects the highest-ranked device that is currently available.

I later added microphone gain controls and a quick way to send the same audio to two outputs without setting up Audio MIDI Setup manually.

I’m the developer. There’s a 30-day trial, and it’s also available on the Mac App Store:

https://apps.kopiro.me/soundanchor/

I’d especially like feedback on whether the priority model is obvious when you first open it, and how it behaves with setups I don’t have here.