Questions, answered plainly.

A Mac app that listens to a DJ mix and works out the tracklist — where each track starts and ends, and what it is. It matches against your own music library on-device, and can identify tracks you don't have through online scans.

The Mac installer is coming to this site very soon. Once it lands: open the .dmg, drag MixSleuth to Applications, and on first launch start your free month or paste a licence key you already have. A Mac App Store version is planned later.

On your own audio: anything. For online matches, it works best with modern and classic electronic dance music. We're into trance, progressive house, techno and drum & bass — it finds almost all tracks except exclusives and mashups. If MixSleuth can't find a track, please let us know about any other tool that can ([email protected]) — we'll try to improve, and may even send you some credits for the bounty!

Your mix as an audio or video file: WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, AAC — and video like MP4 or MOV. If your mix lives online, save it as one of those with your favourite tool first.

Download or convert the mix to an audio or video file, then just point MixSleuth at it. There are plenty of tools for saving a mix as a file — here's a handful we've come across. We're not associated with these and can't endorse them; always check their terms (and the platform's) before using:

• yt-dlp — free, open-source command line — Mixcloud, SoundCloud and many more
• Stacher — free point-and-click app built on yt-dlp
• Downie — paid Mac app — paste a link, get the file
• Audio Hijack — records whatever your Mac is playing — works for any source

Only use mixes you have the right to use — your own sets and uploads, or with the creator's permission.

Point MixSleuth at the folders that hold your music (or let it search your library locations). It matches the mix against your actual files on-device — unlimited, covered by the membership, no credits involved. This is the most precise mode: it can tell your Extended Mix from the radio edit.

Yes. In "Search my libraries" mode there's an Exclude folders field: give it comma-separated folder names (say mixes, samples, stems) and any folder with a matching name is skipped entirely, wherever it sits — case-insensitive, and the scanner never even descends into it, which also speeds up big network libraries. It's worth doing for folders full of long recordings: matching wants individual tracks as candidates, not other mixes. Video files are never indexed as library candidates, so those need no excluding. And in the point-at-folders mode, only the folders you picked are scanned in the first place.

Choose the online-only path and MixSleuth listens to the mix and identifies tracks against online catalogues. An online scan spends credits (or your monthly member credit), and the exact cost is shown before anything is charged.

The everyday mode: your library is matched first (free, unlimited), then online identification fills the gaps in the same pass. You only spend credits on the online part, and you'll see the cost up front.

It depends — and the first time is the slow one. The very first scan of your library has to analyse every track, which takes a while; after that the analysis is cached, so every later scan is much quicker. Once that's done, a library scan of a 75-minute mix against around 1,000 tracks takes about 3.5 minutes on a Mac mini with the music kept on a separate machine over the local network — if your library lives on the same Mac as the app, expect it to be a little faster. An online scan of a 75-minute mix takes around 6–7 minutes (and in the combined library-plus-online mode it runs after the free library scan, so allow for both). And if you already have the mix's playlist — say you're a DJ who built the set in Rekordbox, which doesn't record where each track starts and ends — you can hand that playlist to MixSleuth and it's very fast — well under a minute (around 20–30 seconds for a 75-minute mix), and the result is near-perfect.

Every download starts with a 30-day free trial — unlimited scanning of your own library, unlimited single-source online identification, and unlimited exports, with no credit card and no sign-up. Multi-source Deep digs aren't part of the trial — those need MixSleuth Credits. When the trial ends, upgrade to Pro ($4.99/year) or Studio ($29.99/year) to keep online identification and exports going. Checkout is handled by Polar, our merchant of record. Your licence key is created the moment checkout completes — the app picks it up and activates itself; you can also find the key any time in your Polar account.

In your Polar account, under purchases — log in with the email you used at checkout (the receipt email links straight there). You normally won't need it: after checkout the app activates on its own, and the key stays stored on your Mac.

A licence key supports a limited number of activations. You can see and free up activations in your Polar account if you move machines.

Log in to your Polar account and cancel the subscription — two clicks, no email required. The app keeps working until the end of the period you've paid for. Your credit balance is never deleted: it pauses if the membership lapses and reactivates the moment you're back.

Online identification — the scans that name tracks no library ever matched. Everything you do with your own files (library scans, exports, editing results) is covered by the membership and never touches credits.

One credit covers one online scan of up to 60 minutes of mix. Longer mixes scale — a 90-minute mix costs 1.5 credits. The app shows the exact cost and asks before charging, and the charge happens once at scan start, not per track.

Members get one credit each month on the house — enough for an online scan of a mix up to 60 minutes. It doesn't stack; use it or it refreshes next month. Purchased credits are separate and never expire.

No. Buy a pack today, spend it next year. If your membership lapses your balance is preserved and comes back when you resubscribe.

A scan that fails before doing any paid identification work refunds its credit automatically — no support ticket needed. A scan that runs but comes back without a match is different: it still uses its credit. The credit pays for the search itself, not a guaranteed result — some tracks simply aren't in any catalogue.

Use the player bar on the results screen — play the whole mix, or jump straight to any detected track to audition the match at the exact spot it plays.

Results open as a waterfall timeline — one row per track laid over the mix. Use the view toggle at the top to switch to a plain table when you want a sortable list instead.

Hit Export on the results screen and pick your formats: Mixcloud timestamps, a CUE sheet, CSV, or a ready-to-paste YouTube comment. You'll see a live preview before saving, and you can export the same result in several formats at once.

DJ mixes are hostile territory, and a few things commonly beat a match: poor sound quality in that stretch; two or more tracks blended at once, so the matcher hears a blend that cleanly belongs to neither; or simply not enough of a clean sample to lock onto. DJ effects are a big one — delay, flanger and phaser, reverb, spinbacks, loops and edits all alter the original audio enough that the recogniser can no longer match it, so a heavily-worked section identifies far less reliably than one played clean. For online identification there's one more, and it's out of our hands: the external catalogues we query may not hold the track at all, or may not recognise it from that snippet. When the real track isn't in a catalogue, a service will sometimes return the wrong track — and do it confidently — and because it reports full confidence we have no reliable way to tell. That's a limit of the providers' catalogues, not of MixSleuth's analysis. MixSleuth tells you honestly where it isn't sure rather than guessing; you can run a per-track online check on any unknown, or fix a row by hand — the timeline is editable.

Email [email protected] — billing, licence trouble, anything. A human reads it.

Email [email protected]. Bug reports land best with the mix length, what you expected, and what happened instead. Feature ideas are very welcome — the roadmap has been shaped by them already.