microphone level monitoring

Question

Created 3d

Replies 2

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Participants 2

This post is from the WWDC26 Audio Q&A.

My macOS app provides real-time microphone level monitoring, and I also have a macOS widget that shows recent audio level status.

Since WidgetKit widgets are snapshot/timeline based rather than continuously live SwiftUI views, is there any new capability in macOS 27 that allows a widget to show more responsive or animated audio-level changes?

If true real-time animation is still not supported in widgets, what is Apple’s recommended approach for displaying frequently changing signal levels, such as audio meters, in a macOS widget?

Answer 1

Frameworks Engineer OP

Apple

3d

Hi @patgov ,

Thanks for reaching out!

Since this is about WidgetKit capabilities, it would be best answered by their team. I'm looping someone in to reply to you shortly.

Thank you for your patience.

Answer 2

Frameworks Engineer OP

Apple

2d

From a WidgetKit standpoint:

There's no new capability for this, and it's not something widgets are designed to do.

Widgets are intentionally timeline based to protect battery and system resources. The system decides when a widget is refreshed, and updates are mostly budgeted. However, on macOS the cadence is somewhat more relaxed than iOS, but even that depends on device conditions.

In terms of how this can be achieved in general:

The recommended approach is to write the meter value from the audio thread to a thread-safe primitive such as an atomic variable or lock-free ring buffer, then have the UI thread poll and redraw on a timer. For Cocoa/AppKit, CADisplayLink is the right tool for this. For SwiftUI, the idiomatic equivalent is TimelineView.