Support

Getting started

Sugar lives in your menu bar — look for the candy icon. There's no window and no Dock icon. It starts equalising the moment it opens; there's no play button to press.

Left-click the icon to open the dashboard. Right-click it for Launch at Login and Quit.

The first launch asks for a permission

macOS will ask for permission to record your Mac's audio. Grant it. That's how Sugar reads what's playing so it can equalise it — it isn't recording anything, and nothing leaves your Mac.

This is the System Audio Recording permission, which is separate from the microphone. If you dismissed the prompt, you can grant it later under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording.

The two modes

Sugarfree is a true bypass — audio comes out exactly as it went in, unchanged.

Sugar is a gentle smile curve: slightly more bass and treble, slightly less midrange. Because it's balanced around zero rather than boosted, switching between the two changes the tone without one simply sounding louder than the other.

Your choice is remembered, so it comes back the way you left it.

Reading the dashboard

The spectrum

The bars show how much energy is playing in each frequency band, live. The gold line drawn over them is the EQ curve currently being applied, on those same bands — a straight line across the middle in Sugarfree, a curve in Sugar.

The lamps

• POWER — the audio engine is running.
• EQ — a non-flat preset is engaged.
• SIGNAL — audio is genuinely flowing through Sugar right now.

Troubleshooting

I can't hear anything

This is worth spelling out because macOS doesn't report an error in that situation — it simply hands the app silence. Sugar watches for exactly this: if it captures nothing for a few seconds while something else is demonstrably playing, it puts your audio back to normal on its own and tells you what to grant, rather than leaving you with a silent Mac.

Nothing changes when I switch modes

Check SIGNAL is lit. If it isn't, see above. If it is, try material with real bass and treble content — the Sugar curve is deliberately gentle, and on a thin recording or small laptop speakers the difference can be subtle.

I use Boom, Background Music, or another audio app

Sugar won't route into another audio app's virtual device, and will fall through to your real hardware if one of those is selected as your output. Running two system-wide audio processors at the same time is worth avoiding in general — they fight over the same audio and the results are hard to predict. Pick one.

How do I change output device?

The normal way — the Sound menu, or System Settings → Sound. Sugar follows whatever you choose and never changes it. There's no separate output control in the dashboard for this on purpose; if something's actually wrong with output, a line explaining it appears in that same spot.

Where's the volume control?

Use your Mac's own volume keys. Sugar leaves your real output device selected, so they work exactly as they always have — a second volume control in the app would just be a duplicate of the one you already have.

Does it work with Bluetooth headphones?

Yes. If macOS switches output when they connect or disconnect, Sugar follows the change automatically.

Can I keep the dashboard open while I work?

Click the small window icon beside the ? in the dashboard (or right-click the menu bar icon → Floating Window) to pop it out into its own window. Drag it anywhere; it stays open until you close it. Once open, that same spot shows a pin — click it to keep the window on top of everything else — and a close button to send it back to the menu bar.

Uninstalling

Quit Sugar and drag it to the Trash. It doesn't install a driver or a background service, and it changes no system settings, so there's nothing else to clean up. If you turned on Launch at Login, macOS removes that entry with the app.