Kern is now Gridshift
We’ve renamed Kern to Gridshift. Same app, new name. Your workflow stays the same — just look for the new icon in your Dock.
- New app name: Gridshift
- New project file format:
.gsp (Gridshift Project)
- New website: gridshift.studio
New Audio Engine
We’ve completely rebuilt the audio engine from the ground up. The result is lower latency, tighter timing, and gapless plugin loading — adding or removing effects no longer interrupts playback.Smarter Keyboard Shortcuts
- Cmd+D now duplicates whatever you’re focused on — tracks in the sidebar, clips on the timeline, or plugins in the effect strip
- Opt+N normalizes track volume
- Keyboard focus automatically follows your mouse between Sidebar, Timeline, and Effect Strip
Improvements
- Redesigned transport buttons
- Info Bar toggle in the View menu
- Sidechain triggering is now perfectly timed
- Time-stretched clips play correctly in loop mode
Fixes
- Adding or removing plugins no longer causes a brief audio dropout
- Fixed a crash when switching time stretch modes during playback
- Fixed instrument tracks not playing back correctly in some cases
- Fixed metering (signal history, peak, LUFS) not updating in the inspector
- Fixed master bus effects not receiving audio
Timeline Redesign
Floating transport bar at the bottom edge of the window. Redesigned playhead as a persistent ruler marker with drag positioning. Alternating bar stripe backgrounds and aligned ruler ticks for a cleaner look.Mixer Overhaul
Vertical DAW-style channel faders replacing the old sliders. Smooth fader controls for volume and Dry/Wet mix during automation playback. Vertical Dry/Wet faders in mix popover with track color.New Features
- Limiter and Lookahead Limiter modes for track output clipping
- Cmd+right-click to slice a clip at any position
- Auto-merge overlapping MIDI clips when extending
- “Normalize Track Volume” command
- “Scan for New Plugins” command
- Contextual info bar in the inspector
- Command subtitle in Command Palette footer
- Octave number watermarks in the piano roll
- Note name labels on ghost note previews
- Visual mute state with consistent transparency
- Localization support
Fixes
- Fixed stuck MIDI notes when resizing or cutting clips during loop playback
- Fixed MIDI notes ringing past clip boundaries
- Fixed clip flicker when dropping files onto the timeline
- Fixed fade display on long clips
- Fixed fade preview interfering between clips
- Fixed inconsistent track height in focus mode
- Fixed piano roll octave numbering
- Fixed groove slider jitter during loop playback
- Fixed lag when changing BPM
- Fixed unmuted tracks not playing in loop mode until restart
- Fixed swing-aware clip selection and groove timing display
- Fixed keyboard interaction with dialogs
- Fixed Settings window closable with Escape key
- Replaced hardcoded German dialog strings with English
- Various performance and rendering optimizations
Automation Curves
Tension-based curve handles with mid-segment drag for shaping automation. Automation clips can now be duplicated with a curve preview in the ghost, and effect dry/wet mix parameters support automation.Snap and Selection
Multi-target snap with visual snap guide, ghost cursor line previewing the snapped position on iBeam hover, and unified selection visuals with white borders for clips and notes.More
- Visual clip trimming with overlap resolution
- Generic parameter UI for plugins without custom view
- Improved BPM detection with filename hints and transient-based estimation
- Time stretch support for streaming playback
Fixes
- Eliminated automation playback stutter with direct engine writes and binary search
- Smooth slider display during automation playback
- Preserved multi-note selection when dragging in piano roll
- Fixed focus mode background bleeding to non-focused clips
- Browser preview stops when drag session begins
- Fixed complex mode waveform display and mode-switch detection
- Fixed waveform reset when disabling time stretch mode
- Eliminated Observation overhead from automation hot path
- Fixed groove amount slider stutter with in-place GPU buffer patching
- Fixed vertical zoom slowdown in slice time stretch mode
- Virtualized parameter list with row recycling and momentum scrolling
Neural Network Transient Detection
Transient detection now uses a trained neural network for more accurate slicing results across a wider range of material.App Audio Capture
Record audio from other apps directly into Gridshift with a dedicated capture sheet and automatic switching to the target app.More
- Trim Silence command for selected clips
- Colored waveform curves using clip color instead of flat gray
- Window subtitle showing BPM, key/scale, and version
- Skip automatic transient detection for samples longer than 30 seconds
Fixes
- Seamless plugin insertion with no audible gap
- Auto-recover audio engine when audio device changes
- Fixed waveform drift for non-standard sample rates
- Fixed ruler scrolling off-screen when entering focus mode
- Fixed waveform not updating when scrolling into uncached regions
- Improved command palette and plugin insertion performance
- Faster sample loading by moving it off the main thread
Sidechain UI
New sidechain panel in plugin strip cards with dedicated controls and descriptions for configuring sidechain routing.Welcome Experience
Welcome sheet on first launch with quick-start options and a new “Scan for Plugins” command for easy setup.Visual Refinements
- Appearance-dependent plugin opacity adapting to light and dark mode
- Inspector instrument hover overlay replacing sidebar expand
- Subtle brightness highlight for clip selection replacing white borders
- Reduced light mode transparency with thicker background material
- Renamed Groove section to Grid and reordered inspector layout
Fixes
- Fixed LUFS measurement ~3dB too low due to wrong stereo normalization and missing K-weighting
- Fixed crash when resizing clip shorter than grid division
- Fixed MIDI notes not moving with clip during keyboard shortcut move
- Fixed ruler numbers not updating during zoom and cramped for long projects
- Eliminated waveform wiggle with two-ring display architecture
- Fixed sidebar and inspector snapping to default widths
- Fixed window resizing with proper panel compression
- Hidden effect strip for automation tracks
- Improved signal history scrolling and metering performance
- Fixed critical performance bottlenecks with new guardrails
Crash Recovery
Gridshift now auto-saves your project in the background and offers to restore it if the app crashes or is force-quit. A save confirmation dialog also appears when quitting or creating a new project with unsaved changes.Track Inspector Visualizations
Dense waveform visualization with gradient fade and a scrolling signal history view in the track inspector for real-time monitoring.Per-Plugin ALC
Automatic Loudness Compensation now operates per-plugin with individual gain nodes, and supports graph-level bypass for master, listen, and group bus plugins.More
- MIDI files shown in sidebar file browser
- Refined plugin strip visuals (opacity, padding, empty state)
Fixes
- Fixed offline bounce for instrument tracks with AU warm-up and trim
- Fixed transport bar clicks blocked when plugin strip visible
- Eliminated scroll jitter with O(1) ring buffer and Retina rendering
- Uniform MIDI note color on timeline, velocity shading reserved for focus mode
- Eliminated MIDI drag ghost lag by moving parsing off main thread
- Fixed crash when creating new project
Plugin Strip Meters
Real-time peak/RMS level meters in the plugin strip with smooth CALayer rendering and display link callbacks.Visual Refinements
- Liquid Glass effect on plugin strip cards
- Plugin strip sidebar with ALC toggle, Mix control, and level meter
Fixes
- Fixed plugin UI knobs not updating during automation playback
- Fixed meter colors not adapting to dark/light mode changes
- Matched left sidebar width to right sidebar
Per-Track Groove
Assign individual swing/groove patterns to each track. Each track can use the global groove or have its own template and amount. Grid rendering, snapping, and audio playback all respect per-track settings.Sample Rate Control
Project-level sample rate picker with direct CoreAudio device control. Falls back gracefully to the next lower supported rate when the device doesn’t support the requested rate.Plugin Strip Improvements
- Drag effects from browser directly to the plugin strip
- Drag-to-reorder plugin strip cards (homescreen-style)
- Keyboard navigation with Tab, Enter, and Delete
- Insert effects between existing plugins with animated insertion line
- Click to toggle full-view plugin windows, close with ESC
More
- Key/scale and tempo/groove settings moved from transport bar to project sidebar
- Automation grid increased from 8 to 32 rows for finer vertical resolution
Fixes
- Fixed clip offset not honored in all playback modes after clip split
- Fixed piano roll ghost notes snapping to wrong grid with per-track groove
- Fixed keyboard MIDI events not routed through full-view plugin windows
- Fixed Mix sliders too narrow in inspector
Plugin Strip
A new plugin strip sits at the bottom of the main window with a card-based UI and frosted glass material. Plugin windows are now resizable with proportional scaling. Instrument plugin UIs have moved from the plugin strip to the inspector panel.Mixer Automation
Volume, pan, and mid/side parameters in the mixer now support automation.On-demand full-resolution waveform loading for deep zoom levels, smooth rendering with adaptive anti-aliasing, and cached mastering-quality sample rate conversions at load time.More Features
- Apply fade in/out to all selected clips simultaneously
- Zoom to fit clip when entering focus mode
- Contextual grid opacity — subtle at rest, full during interactions
- Piano roll ghost note preview now shows grid
- Instant out-of-process plugin restore via offscreen parking
- Plugin strip panel caching for instant track switching
- Hardware MIDI input with automatic device connection
- Track type selection menu on sidebar plus button
Fixes
- Resolved dark/light mode crashes and ghost plugin windows
- Fixed Shift+click clip multi-selection accumulation
- Fixed MIDI note grid alignment in arrangement clips
- Fixed note name labels during keyboard zoom in piano roll
- Fixed right-click deleting clips in piano roll mode
- Eliminated waveform flicker on drop and blocking cursor during drag
- Eliminated data races in PlayheadCoordinator, SeamlessLoopPlayer, and StreamingTrackPlayer
Per-Track Plugin Windows
Plugin windows have been redesigned with a per-track layout. Each window now includes an effect chain sidebar, making it easy to switch between plugins without leaving the window. Borderless panels allow click-through on the titlebar.Automatic Loudness Compensation (ALC)
Adding or removing plugins no longer causes sudden volume jumps. ALC measures per-plugin loudness using K-weighted LUFS and automatically applies gain correction in real time.Seamless Clip Move Playback
Moving clips on the timeline no longer interrupts playback. A streaming track player keeps audio running while you rearrange your arrangement.Drop Ghost Previews
Dragging audio or MIDI files into the timeline now shows a waveform or MIDI preview in the drop ghost, so you can see exactly what you’re placing before you commit.MCP Server Redesign
The MCP server has been consolidated from 23 tools down to 8, with better LLM performance. New capabilities include MIDI clip creation and editing, plugin discovery, and plugin parameter control.More Features
- Bar selection expand/shrink (
⌘⇧. / ⌘⇧,)
- Vertical zoom modes (Compact/Normal/Focus) without requiring clip selection
- Tempo-independent MIDI clips via
durationBeats
- Command palette pre-warmed for instant open
- Swift 6 language mode migration with full strict concurrency
Fixes
- Stem splitter sample rate, memory, and waveform performance
- Zero-length loop selection handling
- Stale hover states in sidebar during trackpad momentum scrolling
- Ghost note not clearing when CMD key released
- Option key now bypasses grid snap when dragging MIDI notes
- Streaming players stop correctly when activating loop during playback
Quantize Selection
Press ⌘U to snap selected clips to the nearest grid position. Works with any grid resolution.Audio Diagnostics
Built-in CPU load and audio glitch detection. Monitor engine health in real time to catch performance issues early.Shortcut Improvements
- Section key (
§) shortcuts remapped to mnemonic Option keys (e.g. ⌥E for effects chain) for better international keyboard support
- Select All in Track (
⌘A scoped to active track)
- Documentation link added to Help menu
Fixes
- Clip gain applied correctly to seamless loop buffer
- Removed duplicate Zoom to Fit shortcut
- Sandbox file access cleaned up with default folder support
- Improved impulse pre-activation alignment for sidechain timing
Claude Desktop Integration
Gridshift now ships with an MCP server that connects to Claude Desktop. Install it in one click via Help → Install Claude Extension. Claude can read your project state, control transport, adjust plugin parameters, and more.MIDI Clip Stamping
Hold ⌘ and click to stamp duplicates of the selected MIDI clip — the same workflow that already existed for audio clips. A ghost note preview shows where the clip will land before you commit.Per-Clip Velocity
Set clip volume directly with the number keys. Quick access without opening the inspector.Slice Navigation
Z and X now switch between pages of slices in Audio Focus Mode, making it possible to play back samples with more than 24 slices from the keyboard.Sidechain Timing
Sidechain triggers are now sample-accurate with inline impulse rendering. Loop boundaries are handled automatically — triggers repeat correctly without gaps.Waveform loading is significantly faster through disk caching, vDSP acceleration, and parallel processing. Grid lines now update in real-time during pinch-to-zoom.Fixes
- Plugin windows stay in front when switching between apps
- Transport shortcuts work while a plugin window is focused
- Cmd-click stamp on sample tracks uses full sample duration
- Clip duplication produces audio on playback
- Clip colors update immediately when group color changes
- File-dropped tracks no longer inherit group membership
- Transient markers follow clips during drag in focus mode
- Instrument plugins restore correctly when loading projects
- Instrument tracks included in offline bounce
Last modified on March 9, 2026
