← Back to FLOATING

What you need

• macOS 11 Big Sur or later
• An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later). FLOATING is Apple Silicon only — Intel Macs are not supported, and support is not planned. The installer will decline to run on an Intel Mac rather than install something that won’t load.
• Ableton Live, Logic, or any other AU / VST3 host

To check which Mac you have: Apple menu → About This Mac. Anything listing an Apple M1/M2/M3/M4 chip is Apple Silicon; anything listing an Intel processor cannot run FLOATING.

1. Run the installer

Double-click FLOATING-macOS-latest-beta.pkg.

macOS will refuse to open it the first time. This is expected — see the next section for the two clicks that get past it.

Once the installer opens, click through it. You’ll be asked for your Mac password, because the plug-ins install into the shared system plug-in folders that every DAW already scans.

2. Getting past the macOS warning

You’ll see something like “FLOATING…pkg cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer” or “Apple could not verify it is free of malware”.

Why: Apple’s Gatekeeper only recognises installers that have been signed with a paid Apple Developer ID and submitted to Apple for notarization. FLOATING doesn’t have that yet — the developer account gets set up before the public release, not during a beta. macOS isn’t reporting that anything is wrong with the file; it’s reporting that it doesn’t recognise who published it. Every unsigned beta from every small developer behaves this way.

Two ways through it — try the first, fall back to the second:

Option A — Control-click → Open

1. Control-click (or right-click) the .pkg file in Finder

2. Choose Open

3. In the dialog that appears, click Open again

Option B — Privacy & Security (needed on macOS 15 Sequoia and later)

1. Double-click the .pkg normally and let macOS block it. Click Done.

2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security

3. Scroll down to the Security section. There’ll be a line saying FLOATING was blocked, with an Open Anyway button. Click it.

4. Authenticate with Touch ID or your password, then click Open in the confirmation dialog.

The warning appears once, for the installer file itself. The installed plug-ins are not affected by it and load normally afterwards.

3. Where it goes

The installer puts exactly two things on your Mac:

Nothing else is installed — no background processes, no login items, no licensing service.

4. Confirm it worked

In Ableton Live

1. Restart Live if it was already open — it only scans for new plug-ins at launch.

2. In the browser, go to Plug-Ins. FLOATING appears under Floaudio in both the Audio Units and VST3 lists.

3. If it isn’t there, open Settings → Plug-Ins and click Rescan Plug-Ins. Make sure Use Audio Units and Use VST3 Plug-In System Folders are both switched on.

In Logic Pro

FLOATING appears as an audio effect under Floaudio. Logic validates new Audio Units at launch, so give it a few seconds on first start.

From the Terminal (optional, if a DAW isn’t finding it)

ls -d /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/FLOATING.component /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/FLOATING.vst3

Both paths should print. To check that macOS itself considers the Audio Unit valid:

auval -v aufx Flt1 Floa

The last line should read AU VALIDATION SUCCEEDED.

5. If FLOATING doesn’t show up

• Restart the DAW. Most hosts only scan at launch.
• Check for an older copy. If you were sent a hand-built copy of FLOATING earlier in the beta, it may still be in your personal plug-in folder and your DAW may be loading that one instead. Look in ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components and ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3 and delete any FLOATING.component / FLOATING.vst3 you find there.
• Live’s VST3 folder setting. In Settings → Plug-Ins, Use VST3 Plug-In System Folders must be on. A custom VST3 folder setting will not find the system folder.

6. Uninstalling

There’s no uninstaller — deleting the two files is the whole job:

1. In Finder, press Cmd-Shift-G and go to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components

2. Drag FLOATING.component to the Trash

3. Go to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3 and drag FLOATING.vst3 to the Trash

4. Restart your DAW

You’ll be asked for your password, since these are shared system folders.

Terminal equivalent:

sudo rm -rf "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/FLOATING.component" "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/FLOATING.vst3"

Removing FLOATING will leave existing projects that used it with a missing plug-in, but won’t damage them — the settings come back if you reinstall.

7. Installing a newer beta

Just run the newer .pkg. It replaces both plug-ins in place. You don’t need to uninstall first, and your saved projects and presets are unaffected.

New in this build

• FREE | SYNC. The BPM Sync toggle is now a mode switch in the same place. FREE plays as before, with tempo playing no part. SYNC lands the next Capture on the bar and keeps it there whatever you move — Rate, Window, the Horizon, Shape and Stretch all hold the grid. The panel turns blue in SYNC.
• The knobs read what you hear. In SYNC they show 4/3X or 1 BAR instead of percentages, and the line under the switch says ON GRID, SYNCED or CAPTURE TO SYNC.
• Choir’s Shape changes the timbre. BODY leads with the octave below, GLOW with the octave above; the level holds.
• Fixed: a synced Memory held for a long time no longer drifts off the bar, and the Horizon’s LISTENING and REMEMBERING labels no longer overlap.
• Stretch’s top position reads DRIVE, its fastest forward progression, instead of CLEAN.

Earlier work still applies: prints that start where the loop starts, the first-run tour (replayable from the corner menu), keyboard access across both AU and VST3, and the Command-click recovery gesture.

Verify what you downloaded (optional)

Every release carries a SHA256SUMS.txt. Download it into the same folder as the installer — SHA256SUMS.txt — then:

cd ~/Downloads && shasum -a 256 --ignore-missing -c SHA256SUMS.txt

It should print FLOATING-macOS-latest-beta.pkg: OK.

Known issues on this beta

Reporting problems

When something goes wrong, the most useful things to send are:

• Your Mac (which Apple chip) and macOS version
• Your DAW and its version
• Which format — AU or VST3
• What you did, what you expected, what happened
• A screen recording if it’s something you can see or hear

Thanks — the point of this round is to find exactly this kind of thing.

Download for macOS