What’s new in Grit.

Improved

• On the Mac, each frame takes about a tenth less work while decks play: Grit now draws with a newer version of its window and graphics engine.

Fixed

• On Windows, a deck no longer drops out for a moment after an instant change, such as resuming a paused loop.

New

• The Mac app now has a full menu bar: File, Edit, View, Window and Help. Open tracks, save sets and switch between Library and Perform from there; Edit covers cut, copy and paste in text fields, and Help leads to the guide, the keyboard shortcuts and support. Menu keys never reach a deck.

Improved

• While decks play, Grit now draws at your display's full rate: 120 frames per second on a 120 Hz MacBook Pro.
• With eight decks playing, a frame takes about half the work it did.
• The status line stays calm: autosaves and library refreshes no longer push aside what it shows.

Fixed

• A change on a stopped deck shows at once instead of waiting for the next mouse move or key press.
• After you switch keyboard layouts, the key labels update right away.

New

• Bar juggles can now also land on 1/16 and 1/8, besides Free, 1 Beat and 1 Bar.
• The A–L pads can sit on parts of a bar: under Pads in the Juggle menu, choose Bar, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16, or press Option+; and Option+' to make them finer or coarser. The step applies to every deck, and the APC40's bar pads follow it.
• At a finer step, the deck's bar view zooms onto the nine pads your keys reach and draws a line at each jump. ; and ' move the view with the bank, and a new step keeps the bank where it was in the music.
• MIDI Learn has two new targets, Juggle pads finer and Juggle pads coarser, so the step fits on a controller button.

New

• Settings now has four tabs: Audio, Controls, Look and Account. Audio comes first, so your outputs are one click away during a set. While Grit runs, Settings reopens on the tab you last used.
• Join Discord in Settings → Account takes you to your account on mixwithgrit.com, where you can join the Grit community.

Improved

• The BPM field only takes numbers. A comma counts as a decimal point.
• When audio is running, the bottom bar shows just a green dot instead of "Audio ready". Problems still show as text. Click the dot to open the audio settings.

New

• The toolbar now has two launch grids instead of one. Sections, the button with section bands, decides when section pads, Enter, deck stops and scenes start. Juggle, the button with a hop between pads, decides when bar juggles, waveform clicks, play, resume and sync land. Option+Q switches Sections, Option+W switches Juggle.
• Sections can wait for the end of the section a deck is playing: choose End. A scene then starts at the first section end the music reaches.
• With Sections on End and Juggle on Free, the next section waits for the end of the phrase while bar juggles land at once.
• Both grids can be learned on a MIDI controller.

Improved

• Resume and Sync now wait at most a bar, however long section launches wait.
• Sets you saved before keep their launch setting, and bar juggles start out on the same grid, at most a bar.

New

• Grit for Windows now comes as an installer, and Grit for Linux as an AppImage. You no longer have to extract the download into a folder. If Windows warns about an unknown app, choose More info, then Run anyway.
• If Grit crashes, it sends a crash report to mixwithgrit.com with your account, so we can find and fix the cause.

Fixed

• If you queue a section while the playing one runs out, it now starts when that section ends instead of being dropped.
• Every key, click and controller press shows its result on screen at once, also while no deck is playing.

New

• Drag a track from the Library onto a stopped deck to load it there. The deck it would land on lights up; a deck that is playing, waiting to launch or loading keeps its track.

Improved

• The entries of the track menu in the Library start at the left edge.

Fixed

• Import audio opens a single dialog, and Cancel ends the import instead of opening a second dialog for a folder. On the Mac that dialog takes files and folders alike; on Windows and Linux, drag folders into the Library.
• Tracks that fade out to silence no longer fail while their stems are being separated.

New

• Beta testers can now download test builds for Windows and Linux from their account, next to the Mac build. Both run on 64-bit Intel and AMD computers; Linux needs an X11 or Wayland desktop and a Vulkan driver. Extract the whole download into a folder of its own and start Grit there. Shortcuts use Ctrl where the Mac uses Cmd. These are early builds: tell us how they run on your machine.

Improved

• Grit runs on the latest release of its interface toolkit.

New

• A deck's Stop button now stops on the next launch boundary, like a clip stop in Ableton: it pulses on the beat while the playing pad counts down. Press it again to stop at once. Alt+S works the same.
• On the APC40, Clip Stop and Stop wait for the boundary too, and the Clip Stop light blinks until the deck stops. A MIDI-learned Stop does the same.

Improved

• Section pads no longer carry numbers; the trigger key leads each row.
• The status line at the bottom describes the control under the pointer instead of a tooltip popping up.
• New libraries start with four decks. Choose eight in Settings → Decks.

New

• With stems selected, the section pads and deck waveforms show what the deck plays, in the stem colours, in front of a quiet outline of the full mix. You see where the vocals are before you launch.

Improved

• Stop All asks first: click it again within four seconds to stop every deck. MIDI mappings still stop at once.
• Signing in opens as a dialog over the dimmed workspace.

New

• Choose Sign in with browser, confirm on mixwithgrit.com, and Grit continues on its own. The same works on every computer Grit will run on. Signing in with an emailed code still works.
• Grit for Mac comes as a disk image: open it and drag Grit into Applications.

Improved

• Every imported file is decoded in a separate helper process, so a damaged file can't take Grit down.
• Tracks imported before this change are converted in the background.
• Very long recordings import now, including sources over 47 minutes at 192 kHz.
• The Prepare preview keeps playing while analysis runs.
• If a separate headphone device drops out, Master keeps playing, and the headphones return once they run stably again.
• An audio driver that hangs while stopping can no longer block quitting or restarting audio.

Fixed

• A full disk or failing drive no longer sets tracks aside for good. Importing a set-aside file again retries it.

New

• Loop any passage on the beatgrid, from 16 bars down to 1/16 beat. ½ and 2× resize it, and it engages on the next beat.
• Section pads show energy at a glance: drops and choruses stand out most, builds and verses less, intros and breaks stay plain.
• Each deck number opens a track menu with Browse, Edit and Eject.
• Alt+G cycles a deck's crossfader assignment.

Improved

• Without a headphone output, previews play on Master while all decks are stopped.
• Section end is now three one-click buttons: Continue, Loop and Stop.

Fixed

• Loading a set over unsaved scenes asks first, and quitting keeps an unsaved set draft.
• A launch queued on a lane now fires even if that lane's section or track ends first.
• A missing headphone device no longer keeps Master silent.
• Re-analysis keeps hand-edited cues and grids, and covers survive stem preparation.

New

• Eight tempo-synced scratch patterns under Shift+Q–I: Baby, Chirp, Transformer, Flare, Two-click Flare, Crab, Tear and Scribble.
• Hold Shift+O for half speed or Shift+P for double speed.
• Waveforms colored by stem, so drums, bass, vocals and other parts are visible at a glance. The scratch view zooms to 2× and 4×.
• Click a section in the track overview to launch it.
• Scenes can recall the tempo and each deck's mix, and have their own editor.
• Sort the library by track, artist, BPM, key or state.
• Settings shows the app version for bug reports.

Improved

• Scratch patterns keep their rhythm and sound on pitched and transposed decks.
• Detail waveforms are cached, and scratch audio preloads in the background.

Fixed

• Playback, library and MIDI regressions found in a quality sweep.

New

• Key Sync: choose a master key from all 24 tonalities or take it from a loaded deck. Connected decks follow with the smallest pitch shift, and a minor track follows a major master through its relative minor.
• Scratch on any deck by dragging its waveform, also while it is stopped or paused.
• Slip returns to the running track after a scratch. Pin holds a passage for repeated scratches.
• Hold Shift+Space for a momentary cut on the focused deck.
• Enhance pending prepares every track still missing its analysis and stems.

Improved

• Space always plays or pauses the focused deck, including in the Library and the track editor.

Fixed

• Playback, text input and track loading issues found in review.

New

• MIDI Learn: map buttons, faders and endless encoders of any controller, globally or per deck. Faders pick up from the current value instead of jumping.
• Transpose each deck up to 12 semitones up or down. The deck header shows the resulting key.
• Arrow keys move between decks and sections, and Enter launches the selected section.
• Appearance settings for tone, contrast and the accent, playing and queued colors.
• Alt+Q cycles through launch quantization.

Improved

• Shift+X or Mixer shows the mixer across all decks, and the Scenes strip can be hidden.
• Resume waits for the matching beat within the launch quantization.
• Better first cues, without artificial one-beat opening sections.
• Short detected sections are merged only when their boundaries are weakly supported.

The app formerly known as Beatgrid is now Grit, with a new icon to match.

New

• An always-on master limiter catches peaks without adding delay. LIMIT lights up while it works.
• Import whole folders, including subfolders, up to 128 tracks at a time.
• Re-importing a folder adds only new files. Exact copies are recognized even after renaming.
• Delete tracks from the library.
• A metronome click in the track editor for checking the beatgrid.
• Enhance every track that needs review in one go.

Improved

• Your whole library, including audio, stems and sets, now lives in one folder: ~/Music/Grit.
• Connect or power on the APC40 after Grit has started.

New

• Up to eight decks. Choose four or eight in Settings.
• Akai APC40 MK1 support: faders, knobs with LED rings, the clip matrix and bar juggling, ready without any mapping.
• A Library workspace with playlists, saved sets and a track editor. Tab switches between Library and Perform.
• Chop and Fade on every deck: a tempo-synced rhythmic gate, and a Fade to Grey style delay transition.
• Choose separate audio devices for master and headphones.
• Cover artwork from your files. Missing covers are looked up on MusicBrainz using only artist and title.
• Lane, master and cue levels in dB, from silence up to +6 dB.

Improved

• Loading a new track resets its EQ, filter and effects. Fader, mute and trim stay where they were.
• On the APC40, bar banks follow the waveform and keyboard, and Shift + Cue Level sets the headphone Cue / Master mix.

New

• Tap tempo: four taps set the session BPM, more taps refine it.
• Scenes capture the sections playing across your lanes and launch them together on the next boundary. Load prepares their tracks in stopped decks first.
• Headphone cue with its own level and a Cue / Master blend.
• Preview tracks from the Perform library on headphones without loading a lane.
• Deck headers show each track's original tempo.

Improved

• Mashup crossfader: the center keeps the full mix, and moving away fades out the opposite group.
• Tempo changes keep the current bar and beat, and retime queued launches.
• After Stop All, the next launch starts on beat one.
• A new section-end mode takes effect at the section boundary without restarting the audio.
• Knobs and tempo: drag up or down, hold Shift for fine control, double-click to reset.

New

• Roll: hold Shift+A–J for a momentary repeat from one bar down to 1/64, or set it with the Roll knob.
• Queued pads count down in beats until they launch.
• Import and analyze new tracks while decks are playing.

Improved

• Every lane stays locked to the session grid, and keylocked tracks follow the session tempo.
• The three-band EQ now has real kill slopes, and the low-/high-pass filter has been reworked.
• Playheads move at your display's refresh rate.
• More reliable downbeats and section juggling.

Fixed

• Conflicting keyboard shortcuts in Perform.

The first builds: a native instrument for playing sections and stems of your tracks against each other.

New

• A native Mac app built around a real-time audio engine written in Rust.
• Performance lanes where every detected section of a track is a pad, launched in time on the next bar.
• Section end modes per lane: Continue through the track, Loop the section, or Stop at its end.
• Full, Vocals and Instrumental stem presets, with all four stems mixed live.
• Native analysis of tempo, beatgrid, key and song sections, and stem separation on Apple Silicon with MLX.
• Separated stems are stored as FLAC and reused, so each track is prepared once.
• A Prepare workspace for cues, BPM and grid edits. Tab switches to Perform without stopping the audio.
• A searchable track library with a review filter.
• Pitch lock keeps a track's key when the tempo changes.
• Separate master and headphone cue outputs, and light, dark and automatic themes.