1 · install

Download the app, unzip, and drag Take Counter into your Applications folder. It's notarized, so it opens without warnings — on any Mac running macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon or Intel. The whole thing is under a megabyte; the download takes longer to find than to finish.

On first launch you'll see the floating window and a small readout in the menu bar. The window says "no daw" until one is running — that's expected.

2 · your DAW

Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Nuendo, Cubase, Bitwig Studio, Waveform, Studio Pro, Ableton Live, LUNA: there is no step 2. Open your project and record as you always do — the app detects the running DAW and the session folder by itself, and the number appears with your first take.

REAPER needs its one setting, once: open Preferences → Audio → Recording and set "Recorded filenames:" to

$rectag-$tracknumber-$recpass000

Optionally, set your project's recording tag (Project Settings → Notes → "Recording tag") to the name of the piece you're recording — it then appears above the take number, so the couch knows what's being tracked. No tag set? The counter works anyway; the piece line just stays blank.

3 · record

Roll a take. The number turns red the moment recording starts — red means recording, nothing else, ever. When you stop, the readout settles after a few seconds (that pause is deliberate; the docs explain it) and shows the next take so you know what's coming — or the just-recorded one, if you prefer, via Settings.

Two window styles live in Settings → Display: Paper, a warm light field where the numeral turns red while rolling, and Poster, a dark field where the whole window floods red — an on-air light readable across the control room. Try Poster in a dim room once; most people don't come back.

4 · the phone on the console

Turn on Settings → Remote Display, then open the address it shows (like http://yourmac.local:8787) in the browser of any phone, tablet, or laptop on the studio network. On an iPhone or iPad, use Share → Add to Home Screen for a clean full-screen display.

The page has its own quiet controls underneath: paper / poster, and card (a centered tile) / full (edge to edge, for reading across the room). Each device remembers its own choice — the wall iPad and the producer's phone can disagree in peace.

macOS may ask once whether to allow incoming connections — click Allow; that's the display being served.

5 · the trial, honestly

Everything works, fully, for 7 days — no account, no card, no sign-up. For the three weeks after that the app reminds you at launch, dismissably. Then it asks for a license before showing more take numbers.

A license is $15 (launch price $10), one-time. It covers you — or your whole small studio — on every machine; larger facilities license per studio seat (honor-based terms, three sentences). It arrives as a small text file: paste it into Settings → License, or just drop the file into your home folder — that path works on air-gapped studio rigs too, straight from a thumbdrive. There is no activation server; the app never phones anywhere.

stuck?

The documentation covers the heuristics and their limits candidly — if the number ever looks off, the answer is probably in the gotchas list or the take-numbering note. For anything else: Settings → Diagnostics → Copy Diagnostics Info, and paste it into a mail to support [at] takecounter [dot] app — that report answers most questions before we ask them.