The missing take counter.
Your DAW knows the take number. It just won't show it to you — not big enough to read from the couch, not anywhere a producer can glance at mid-session. The one place it reliably appears is in the names of the files written while recording.
Take Counter reads it from there. No plugins, no MIDI, no project changes — a small always-on-top window with the current take, huge, and red exactly when tape is rolling.
works with your DAW
- REAPERreads $recpass from recorded filenames
- Logic Proper-track take indices
- Pro Toolsper-track take indices, playlist-per-take aware
- Nuendoper-track take indices
- Cubaseper-track take indices
- Ableton Livecounts recorded files per track
made for the studio
- Always-on-top floating window, menu bar readout, live Dock icon.
- Paper and Poster styles — Poster floods the whole window red while recording. An on-air light, readable across the control room.
- Remote display: any phone or tablet on the studio network shows the take full-screen. No app to install.
- A local JSON API: wire the live take number into OBS overlays, tally lights, Stream Decks — anything your studio dreams up.
- Shows the piece name from your file naming, so the couch knows what's being tracked, not just which take.
native and light
Take Counter is native Swift — SwiftUI and AppKit, no Electron, no bundled browser, no runtime. The download is smaller than this page's fonts would be, if it had any. It behaves the way Mac apps should: one process, instant launch, and it stays out of your CPU meter while you record. Measured on Apple silicon with a live session and the remote display serving.
why this exists
This tool came out of frustration. I'm a classical music producer, and I record classical music in a number of settings, studios, and DAWs. The take number is the core concept of a classical recording session — and, dare I guess, probably of other genres too. Yet most DAWs make it hard to work with the score and keep track of the current take: you either glance at the tiny number at the end of the previously recorded clip (and hope the screen hasn't just rolled over), or at the track header, if you're using playlists. If you're an engineer cooperating with the music producer, it's even harder, and it often resorts to the conversation: "Which take are we at?" — "Umm… forty-two."
I finally decided to build the tool that eases my own life, hoping other engineers and producers will find it useful too. This is an initial public release: please read the docs, understand the heuristics and their limitations — and I'll welcome all feedback and suggestions at support [at] takecounter [dot] app.
— Antoni Grzymala
try it, then license it
Free for a week, fully functional — no account, no card. After that it nudges politely for three weeks before asking for a license.
One license, all your machines. The license is a small file — paste it in or drop it in your home folder. Works on air-gapped studio computers; there is no activation server to reach.