Cross-platform & sync

The three platforms

CatchIt! lives on three surfaces:

Deep curation happens on macOS. Capture happens everywhere — and your tracklists come with you on the iPhone. The web is mostly a sign-in surface today.

The sync engine

Every track captured on any device flows to the cloud in real time. Every classification flows the same way. When two devices are both online, changes propagate within seconds. When one is offline, changes queue locally and sync the moment it reconnects.

You don't need to think about it. Capture wherever; classify on your Mac, or a tracklist on your iPhone; sync keeps everything in step.

A few surfaces reflect sync state:

• macOS status strip (top-right): Not signed in — you're local-only and sync is dormant; Syncing — actively pulling or pushing changes.
• iOS network overlay: when connectivity drops, a banner tells you you're offline. The Share Extension and Shazam keep working — captures queue locally and flush when you're back online. The Tracklists tab is the exception: it needs a connection (see below).
• Settings → Sync: a Status row (Active, Syncing..., Retrying, Paused, or "N changes not uploaded"), the last-sync time, a Sync Now button, and Retry Failed when some changes couldn't be uploaded — see Settings.
• Pause Cloud Sync (Settings → Sync): stops your Mac from sending new captures and classifications to the cloud. Useful for working offline-then-bulk-sync or debugging; the app reminds you while sync is paused.

Audio is local on macOS

Important fact for privacy: Audio never reaches our servers. Any audio CatchIt! processes on your Mac — your own recordings, online DJ sets — stays on your Mac. Only the recognized track metadata (title, artist, IDs) syncs to the cloud.

If you delete CatchIt! macOS, all local audio files are gone. There's no cloud copy because there was never an upload.

What's not on iOS — and why

Deep curation is keyboard-driven, listen-intensive work that benefits enormously from a big screen and shortcut keys: the Inbox, Research, the Wishlist, imports. That stays on the Mac, and so does classifying your Mobile Shazams. On the go, the phone does what mobile is uniquely good at — capture (your phone is in your pocket at the club; your Mac isn't).

Tracklists are where the iPhone joins in. An imported tracklist is a ready-made, ordered run of tracks — exactly the kind of listening you can do on a walk or a train. So the iPhone app plays your tracklists through Apple Music and lets you classify them green or red, and every verdict lands in the same library as the ones you make on the Mac.

Tracklists on iPhone

Tracklists is the third tab at the bottom of the iPhone app. It lists the tracklists you've imported on your Mac, newest first — each row shows the title, the source, and how many tracks it has, how many are done, and how many are playable.

Apple Music access. The tab plays through Apple Music, so it needs your permission — and, to play anything, an Apple Music subscription.

• Until you allow access, the tab shows Connect Apple Music. Tap Allow Apple Music and accept the system prompt.
• If access has been turned off, you'll see Apple Music access is off. Tap Open Settings and enable Media & Apple Music for CatchIt!.
• Without an Apple Music subscription the list still shows, with the note "An Apple Music subscription is required to play tracks. You can still browse."

Getting a tracklist onto the phone. Import it on your Mac as usual (see Importing tracklists & playlists); after a sync it shows up here. Opening the tab syncs (at most once a minute), and pulling down on the list refreshes right away. Tracklists you've marked completed on the Mac (Mark Completed) are hidden on the phone.

Listening and classifying. Tap a tracklist to open it. The filter — All, To do, Green, Red — starts on To do, so you only see what's left. The Now Playing bar reads "Nothing playing" until you tap a playable track (if a Shazam recognition is running, it stops first). It has RED on the left and GREEN on the right:

• Tap GREEN or RED to classify the current track. CatchIt! then plays the next track further down the list that's still unclassified, playable, and visible under the current filter.
• Tap the active colour again to clear the verdict. That doesn't advance.
• When there's nothing left to play, you'll see "All playable tracks classified" and playback stops.

Leaving the tracklist stops playback — unless you're going into Walking Mode.

Seeking. The ±15 s buttons either side of play / pause jump back or forward 15 seconds; a forward jump stops 3 seconds before the end of the track. Once the track's length is known, a timeline appears: drag to scrub, and the track jumps there when you let go. Elapsed time sits on the left, time remaining on the right.

Not on Apple Music. A track without a playable Apple Music match carries a Not on Apple Music tag and can't be tapped. The iPhone only plays what your Mac has matched on Apple Music — if more rows show the tag than you expect, see Troubleshooting.

Offline. The tab needs a connection. Offline, the whole tab is covered by "Tracklists need a connection", and going offline stops playback. Anything you already marked is saved and syncs when you're back online.

Walking Mode

Walking Mode turns the screen into one big gesture pad, so you can classify a tracklist without aiming for buttons. Open a tracklist and tap the walking-figure button at the top right — it's disabled when there's nothing to play. If no track is loaded yet, Walking Mode starts one: the current track, or else the first track still to do. A paused track stays paused.

A card shows the title, the artist, and a progress bar; it follows your finger and flies off when a swipe counts. Swipes need to be mostly vertical — a short, fast flick counts too, and a tap that wanders a little still counts as a tap. Right after a verdict, and while the next track loads, swipes are ignored for a moment, so one gesture can't classify two tracks. On screen you'll see the GREEN (up) and RED (down) hints, Hold to play / pause, and a count such as 5 left — the playable tracks still to classify after this one.

You can feel what happened without looking: a light tap when you seek, a tick as a swipe passes the point where it counts, a success buzz for green, a heavy thump for red, a soft tap when a swipe was too short, a medium tap for play / pause, a warning buzz when something can't happen or a track is skipped, and a success buzz when the tracklist is done.

While Walking Mode is up, the screen stays awake, and swipes from the screen edges don't open Notification Center or send you to the Home Screen.

• A track that won't play is skipped automatically: "Couldn't play that track, skipped".
• When everything's classified: "All playable tracks classified" — "Tap Exit to go back to the list."
• Offline, the top bar stays but the gesture area is replaced by the offline notice.
• Tap Exit to go back to the list.

VoiceOver. The pad reads out the title, the artist, whether it's playing, and how many tracks are left. Double-tap to play or pause; Green, Red, Back 15 seconds and Forward 15 seconds are available as VoiceOver actions; the escape gesture (two-finger scrub) leaves Walking Mode.

Pre-CatchIt! Shazam history is not imported

If you used Apple's Shazam app for years before installing CatchIt!, those Shazams are not automatically pulled in. From the moment you install CatchIt!, every Shazam you do via CatchIt! (the iPhone app, iOS Control Center handed to CatchIt!, macOS Apple Shortcut, etc.) syncs to your library. Old Apple Shazams remain in Apple's app.

Apple's Shazam app has no export feature. If you want your old Shazams in CatchIt!, the routes are: sync Shazam to a My Shazam Tracks playlist in Apple Music or Spotify and import that playlist on macOS (Streaming Playlist import, up to 500 tracks); request your data at shazam.com/privacy (Apple doesn't document the file's contents, but a file with title and artist columns can go through Tracklist File); or, for a few tracks, add each one to CatchIt! by link, since Apple's app only shares tracks one at a time. See Importing tracklists & playlists and Capturing tracks.