version history

What changed

homecrate 1.26 is the current release, from November 4, 2026.

1.26 November 4, 2026 An agent can change the video with the song, and Performance mode can resample live.

MCP

An agent can assign video effects, and point a section marker at a preset so the look changes with the song.

Performance

Rewind in Performance mode responds faster.
The send channel can feed the looper, so a layer can be resampled while you play.

Fixes

Monitoring no longer drops channels 3 and 4.
A screen-recorded session stays in sync with the audio.
Screen recording no longer lags button presses.

1.25 October 31, 2026 Harmony separation, and overlays that tuck into the Dynamic Island.

Studio

Harmony separation pulls the voices out of a vocal clip into their own layers, with MIDI behind them. Built for turning a vocal into notes and stacking the harmonies. Thanks to Billy Cardine for the idea.
Audio to MIDI has an Instrument tuning and a Vocal tuning.
Mute, record, and monitor are back on top of the channel controls.
Pitch bends are saved, and they show up in the MIDI editor.

Recording

The tuner, lyrics, and camera overlays drag up to the Dynamic Island to get out of the way, and drag back down to open.
MCP connection settings are on the General tab of recorder settings.

iPhone Duo

Duo layouts were tightened up.

Fixes

Buying Pro unlocks it without restarting the app. Restore purchases is more reliable.
A screen recording of a track with no effects or instruments is no longer a silent video.

Player

Settings has a link to leave a review.

1.24 October 28, 2026 iPhone Duo book pose, and a way to cancel a take.

iPhone Duo

The recorder layout fits the Duo's book pose.
The player layouts fit the folded pose and the book pose.

Performance

Retrigger assignments in Performance mode stay in time with playback.

Studio

Hit rewind during a take to cancel it.

1.23 October 27, 2026 Performance mode, and the recorder on iPhone Duo.

Performance

Performance mode is a looper for quick sketches. Open it from the library, next to Record.
Monitor the input live, run it through a NAM amp, and record that onto a layer while you play. Start with a drum loop and stack longer layers over it. The clock stays locked.
Each layer is a disk you can scratch on its own, like a DJ platter. Let go and that layer lines back up with the clock.

iPhone Duo

The recorder follows every mode and orientation of the iPhone Duo. A few of those layouts only exist on the Duo.
Tabletop fills the bottom half with a MIDI keyboard. Faders and the other controls stay down there. Transport stays on top.

Amp

The impulse response section of the amp was rebuilt, with lower latency and fewer artifacts.
An IR no longer adds 6 dB. If a preset is a little quieter, that is why. The extra gain was not part of the capture.
A NAM profile that finishes training as “Poor quality” is not saved automatically. Recapture it, or save it as it is.
The Amp screen can capture an impulse response of a speaker cabinet or a reverb.
The effect reverb can be bypassed for an IR of a room or another space.
The amp shows the order the effects and IR layers run in.

Studio

The MIDI pad drags with the keyboard. A button closes it. It can rotate so the knobs are easier to reach.
The clip drawer has an Add button. It imports audio so a sample or loop is available on every track.
Automation in the spatial editor was rebuilt.
Spatial view adds a re-render button on each mixer channel, for baking a fresh version of a layer when the take feels stale.
The new song screen has tap tempo and a key.

Fixes

A take interrupted by a phone call, another app, or an unplugged interface is kept, up to the moment it stopped.
Closing the recorder during a take saves the take.
Starting a new project from inside the recorder resets the playhead and applies that project's MIDI output.

Player

Lyrics in the player stay closer to the audio.
Music theory detection is more accurate.

1.22 October 20, 2026 Train a NAM model on the phone.

Amp

On-device NAM training, from the Amp screen on the library (the button beside Record). Capture the amp, train an A2 model on the device, and it lands in the amp library. Pro. Needs an A14, M1, or newer GPU.

Studio

Asking HC Crate to add and connect modules now follows through into the patch.
Section markers change tempo and time signature more reliably.

Fixes

MIDI clip preview no longer arms input monitoring.
Mixer VU meters show the level after the channel, not before it.
The recorder in the background no longer fights other apps for audio.

Player

Music games now open from the library chat.

1.21 October 15, 2026 Sections can change the song. Instruments travel between projects.

Arrangement

A section marker can send several MIDI messages, and it can change tempo and time signature. Audio clips stretch to the project's root tempo.
The clip drawer groups clips more clearly.
Trimming a MIDI clip keeps the notes.
Generate Clip uses the lane you pressed.

Playing

The on-screen keyboard has an arpeggiator, and a pad you can teach any MIDI CC.
Long-press the audio or MIDI tab to open its settings.
A MIDI instrument can drive the song: stop, continue, and the rest of the transport.
Double-tap stop to rewind.
Save a track's plugin chain as an instrument. It stays available in every project.

Camera

A camera effect can draw the song from the MIDI clips or the audio clips.

1.20 October 13, 2026 A rebuilt recorder, multi-input takes, and a clip drawer.

Recorder

The recorder interface was redesigned.
Record every input of one interface onto its own track in a single take, on iPhone and on Mac. On iOS those inputs have to come from the same device.
New projects ask for a tempo, so a song no longer opens at 120 BPM, and the default name is the date.
Long-press a track number to loop that lane’s first and last clips, or to clear the lane.
Long-press mute to solo. Unmute other tracks to add them to the solo group. Releasing the original solo puts every track back where it was.
Selecting a clip, or tapping its lane, scrolls the mixer to that channel.
Track labels can take a color.
A handedness setting puts one-handed controls on the left or the right.
Metronome volume and default pitch. Haptics on a note, the count-in, and drag snapping.
Two new recorder theme colors. An option hides the clock and status icons and leaves the battery.
The recorder uses roughly 40% less compute under the same load.

Tuner and keyboard

A mini tuner can listen to one track, hold the chords it hears, and steer generated notes toward them. You do not have to press play.
The tuner layout is simpler, with a settings screen for colors and the default input.
The on-screen keyboard has microtonal and MPE options, and those notes record in the MIDI tab.

Looper, amp, and clips

The looper can retrigger a captured loop apart from the song clock, and it matches the track’s playback volume.
The amp has a PRE stage: a second NAM, such as a drive, in front of the main profile.
Grain has bloom settings. The synth filters its preset list, adds MPE presets, and follows microtonal notes.
A clip drawer holds takes, samples, and MIDI for another song. Long-press a clip to move it off the timeline and into the drawer.

Video

Video effects can be reordered.
The camera can render behind the recorder, as the background.

1.19 October 10, 2026 HC Crate: a patcher with 109 modules, inside the app.

HC Crate

HC Crate is the audiocrate engine as an AUv3 effect, MIDI effect, and instrument. 109 modules, clock sync, note passthrough, and the track’s own audio through the patch.
Example patches are included. Patches from the audiocrate web editor paste straight in.
On iOS 26 you can ask, on device, for modules to be added and connected. The same patch language runs on the web and in the app.

Studio

Double-tap a clip to start a selection, tap the last clip, then long-press to duplicate, copy, or delete.
The other tab shows through: a faint view of the MIDI while you edit audio, and of the audio while you edit MIDI.
On iPad, plugin screens can be moved and stacked, more than one open at once.

Help and video

Library chat can answer questions about homecrate and point at the docs. That needs Apple’s on-device model. If chat is missing from the recorder menu, the phone does not support it.
The video recorder can pick a connected camera, run shaders with the camera off, override rotation, and lock layers so Randomize adds on top instead of clearing them.
The viewfinder can collapse while recording, which saves processing and leaves the recorder usable underneath.

Tuner

David “Feet” Rogers’ D tuning is in the library.
The default meter is a ring that runs from red to green.
The tuning editor can change temperament, and a library tuning can be saved as your own.

1.18 September 9, 2026 Camera recording no longer doubles MIDI. p5 sketches can see your hands.

Camera

Fixed camera states that doubled MIDI instruments in the final mix.
p5 sketches blend with the layers behind them, and they can read hand data. Example presets are included.

1.17 September 5, 2026 A p5 layer on the camera, and imports that keep each album’s art.

Camera

A p5 / Processing sketch layer in the camera chain, with an on-device button that tries to fix a broken sketch.

Fixes

Importing an archive with several albums keeps each album’s cover, instead of copying one cover onto all of them.
Chords and simultaneous drum hits sent to hardware MIDI are no longer dropped in those edge cases.
Monitoring no longer drops silently after some playback interruptions.
The assistant no longer fails outright when a project is in an unusual state.

1.16 September 3, 2026 A real import, and two MIDI tracks on the free tier.

Music import

M4A, AAC, AIFF, and AIF join FLAC, WAV, and MP3, so an iTunes or Apple Music library can come over whole.
Artist, album, title, track and disc number, genre, year, lyrics, and cover art are read from the file.
A mixed selection files as one album per artist, instead of collapsing into a single album.
Fix artists and albums re-files albums that came in wrong, keeps the artwork, and splits a merged album back apart.
Bit depth and sample rate are read from the file.
Fixed missing cover art, genre, lyrics, and track numbers, and fixed All Tracks playing the wrong song on tap.

Camera

Aim each half of a dual-camera shot by dragging its crop onto the subject.
The framed crop is what records, in the preview, the effects, and the export. Framing is remembered, and locked while a take is rolling.

Recording and sessions

Hard panning no longer pushes the level up. Pan survives loading a plugin and an audio restart.
A plugin added to an armed track is heard live, without a reinit. Monitoring recovers after playback interrupts it.
The looper records at the right level. Opening the camera no longer changes monitoring latency or tone.
Playing MIDI drums while monitoring a guitar no longer cuts the live signal at Play.
A session shows the host’s loop region on your timeline. Mute host MIDI stops doubled notes. The looper follows the host’s downbeat.
Plugin automation chases and then holds, and it stops fighting a knob you turn by hand. Gestures can drive effects.

Free tier

The tuner needle reads correctly through a USB interface.
Clips draw at their real length. Tapping a transient while warp is locked tells you why, with a tap to unlock.
The free tier includes two MIDI tracks, up from one.

1.15 August 28, 2026 Visuals on a projector, MIDI generators, and the steel tuning library.

Visual stream

Send the camera and effects to a big screen. The Companion App opens a Visuals window: fullscreen for a projector, with rotate, mirror, fit or fill, zoom, and pan.
More than one phone can stream at once, each in its own tile. Performer mode hides the phone UI and suspends the on-device preview so the phone runs cooler. Needs the Companion App, and Pro.

MIDI generators

Chord, arpeggiator, and sequencer plugins can play your tracks. A generator on one track can drive the instrument on another.
Split one plugin by MIDI channel: bass on 1, keys on 2, pads on 3, each with its own instrument, effects, fader, and pan.
Generated MIDI can leave the app to hardware. Arm a track and record what the plugin plays as an ordinary clip.

Tuner

A free library of established tunings: standards, drops, opens, modal, lap steel, pedal steel, bass, and an artist section. Guitar 6/7/8, bass 4/5, lap steel 6/8/10, pedal steel E9/C6.
Detection tracks past a 5-string bass’s low B. The steel tunings were checked against John Ely’s list and the Papa Dafoe database.

Camera and performance

DAW Mirror composites the device’s own screen into the video chain, so a tutorial can be recorded on the phone. Screen capture starts only after you tap Grant Screen Capture, and the grant lasts for the session.
Every effect layer has an eye. Long-press an eye, or a preset, to assign a MIDI control. One pad can fire several assignments, so a pedalboard can flip a whole scene.
Effects compose over the combined front-and-back camera. The visible crop is the edge of the canvas.
The amp’s fast path applies to amps restored from a saved session. High-gain captures that never go fully silent still idle when you stop playing.
Screen capture stays off the CPU, which fixed the heating with DAW Mirror on.

Fixes

Monitoring no longer goes silent when you arm a track and then start playback.
MIDI recording no longer drops notes when a part repeats the same pitch with overlapping gates.
Silenced tracks no longer return at full volume when a Screen+Cam or camera recording starts. Screen+Cam mic capture is a setting.
Fixed Drafts reordering when opened, a crash pasting some published ISF shaders, the rear camera rendering upside down, and camera rotation on iPad.

1.14 August 21, 2026 Timed lyrics, a rebuilt clip editor, and eight new video effects.

Lyrics

Time lyrics line by line: type a time, or stamp the playhead onto the line under the cursor.
A preview strip follows the song and highlights the current line.
Mixdowns sent to the library carry the lyrics. Timed lines show up as synced lyrics in the player.
A Lyrics video effect draws the timed lines on the camera, live.

MIDI clip editor

Tools are Move, Erase, and Length. Double-tap an empty cell to add a note, double-tap a note to delete it, and drag to move it.
Randomize re-rolls the part in the project key, and can lean toward what the song is already playing.
Actions are labeled: Reverse, Invert, Quantize, and octave shifts. Every piano-roll row is labeled, with the C notes standing out.
In the drum grid, Length shows each hit’s real gate.

Video

Effect settings are a sidebar of the effects you added, and a full-height panel for the one you are editing.
Randomize rolls a new look. Preview an effect with the eye before you add it.
Color Splash keeps one color and turns the rest black and white.
Custom Shader runs pasted ISF or Shadertoy code. The shader’s inputs become controls, and compile errors show in the drawer.
Media Overlay adds photo or video layers, each with its own alignment, offset, scale, and rotation. Videos loop muted.
Eight new effects: Halation, Tie-Dye, Film Burn, 16mm Reel, Liquid Light, Pixel Sort, JPEG Crush, and NTSC Composite.
A section marker can switch the video preset as playback crosses it.
A third camera mode keeps the video rolling while the recorder handles audio, then combines the final mixdown into the video.

Fixes

Instrument tracks no longer jump to full volume when you move the playhead during playback.
The amp and grain plugins idle more quietly when nothing is playing.

1.13 August 8, 2026 HC Grain, and stem separation on A14 and newer.

HC Grain

Grain delay, reverb, and texture. Play first, then catch the moment as a loop, without arming record.
Freeze holds a chord while you play over it. The cloud has size, density, spray, pitch quantize, and reverse.
MIDI play mode freezes a chord and plays it from a keyboard. You can load your own audio as the grain source.
Eleven factory presets. Three are free.

Editing

Pull a transient to fix timing without changing the clip’s length.
Long-press a clip or the timeline for duplicate, copy, split, reverse, and more. Bake Clip renders a split clip to its own file.
Audio editing has its own undo and redo, pinch-to-zoom, and solo or mix preview. Loop points save with the project.
A selected clip gives the assistant context: insert silence, duplicate this, split this. New actions include key detection, clip gain and fades, and converting a clip to MIDI.

Fixes

Stem separation runs on A14 and newer. The CPU path no longer fails on older devices that can use it.
Rapid pause and play no longer freezes the interface.
A large cut in UI work: audio processing is now the heavier task, with about a 76% reduction in UI load.

1.12 August 3, 2026 Gesture control, a bridge to desktop plugins, and faster exports.

Plugins

HC Gesture watches the camera and turns hand poses into MIDI: palm, fist, pinch, rotate. Assign them to notes or to an effect.
hc vstpipe streams audio and MIDI to a VST or Audio Unit running in the Companion App on your Mac, and streams the result back. The Mac can also paste an audio clip onto the phone’s timeline.
The vocal plugin adds a lofi section.

Camera and MIDI

Dozens of real-time video effects, with body occlusion, face pixelation, blend modes, and parameters driven by the mix.
A headstock filter can blur a headstock you would rather not read on camera.
The MIDI editor gains invert, reverse, octave shifts, and a CC editor. Note lengths can be dragged. Hardware MIDI misses fewer notes.
Amp, drum, dynEQ, synth, and vocal expose CC for common parameters.

Fixes

Exports dropped from minutes to seconds in the cases this release was chasing.
On-device stem separation no longer crashes in some cases. A mixdown bounce no longer plays through the speakers while it renders.
Looper overdub in loop mode, amp phase when blending dual A2 NAM morph, and audio-to-MIDI accuracy were all corrected.

1.11 July 18, 2026 Stem separation and audio-to-MIDI, on the device, with no credits.

On device

Split a song into stems on the phone. GPU or CPU, 4-stem or 6-stem with a dedicated guitar stem. Stems land aligned on tracks. No upload, no account, no monthly cap.
Convert an audio clip to MIDI from the clip editor. Built for vocals and isolated parts.

Plugins

homecrate vocal: pitch correction, compression, doubling, de-esser, and reverb.
homecrate dynEQ: dynamic EQ and compressor with sidechain. homecrate send drives it from any track.
The amp’s dual NAM or IR mode maps input dynamics onto the blend between two profiles.
Drum patterns can be pasted from the timeline into the plugin, and each pad has a sample editor.

Editing and sharing

Time-stretch is pitch-preserving and honored through spatial export. Slice at the playhead, audio or MIDI, with undo.
Crossfades, pinch-to-zoom, and automation shapes: linear, exponential, s-curve, swell, with range and offset.
MIDI clips can send AUv3 parameter automation. The spatial editor has a 3D view.
Export a project as one file, plugins included, and import one a friend sends.
A rotate toggle lets a horizontal third-party AUv3 fill the plugin view sideways.

1.10 July 11, 2026 Stereo NAM, a live looper, and 16 tracks.

Amp

Stereo NAM, with one profile for both sides or an independent profile per channel, plus a pad for hot signals and optional linked volume.
EQ and reverb can sit before or after the amp. Reverb can gate so it only speaks above a threshold.
Delay: mono and stereo, ping-pong, tape, and duck, with tempo sync and a momentary infinite-feedback control.

Recorder

A live looper on monitored tracks: overdub, sync, and MIDI assignments.
Tracks go from 8 to 16. Projects still open at 8, with a plus for the rest. The master track has volume and plugin slots.
Sessions can sync transport only, or a follower’s recording can land on the host’s timeline.
Spatial exports can carry a video file.
New projects no longer die if the interface is unplugged mid-monitor. A reinitialize button recovers a hung engine.
Undo after an audio take quarantines the file and returns the playhead to the start of the take. Undo after MIDI returns the playhead to the start of the clip.

Drum

Pan per sample.
Paste a MIDI pattern from the timeline into the drum sequencer.

1.9 June 22, 2026 A2-slim amp profiles, section MIDI, and stem export.

Instruments

The synth adds 100 presets and a rebuilt reverb. The amp’s reverb decays longer, and the amp interface was redesigned.
A2-slim NAM profiles ship beside the full ones. A loaded NAM or IR can be unloaded.
The drum machine has an init kit recorded from a real kit, and a Character knob for velocity variance.

Recorder

Generated clips can limit which note lengths appear, and can skip notes by probability.
A section marker can send a MIDI message when the playhead crosses it.
Reverse an audio clip. A project can have album art, and that art can sit behind the recorder.
The assistant can move the whole song by a number of measures, and it can undo its last action.
Export stems: every track bounced at its volume.

Performance

VU meters, the playhead, and hidden plugin editors use less CPU.
Fixed crashes in panning and in plugins that had not warmed up before playback.

1.8 June 5, 2026 The amp moves to NAM A2. Spatial mixes can move.

Amp

The amp simulator runs NAM A2. Saved tones still load. Five updated factory presets ship with it: Red Face 75, Soy Milk 12AT7 RCA, and three Soy Milk 12AX7 variants.

Recorder and spatial

Plugging or unplugging an interface is more stable. Monitoring is its own control, the speaker icon beside the track name.
An always-count-in setting. Count-in is skipped when playback is already running.
Bounce a project to spatial and place each track in the soundfield, including height. Draw position automation on the timeline. MIDI tracks are included in the spatial export.

Player

CarPlay’s merged artists match the in-app library.
Artist details you edit by hand are kept if you refresh the metadata.

1.7 May 28, 2026 Multi-track monitoring, and a 12-bit sampler character in the drums.

Recorder

Monitor and record more than one track at a time.
The drum plugin can do the 12-bit sampler thing.
Fixes for panning, crashes when switching inputs, amp IR volume stacking into distortion, clip trimming, MIDI recording latency, and duplicate clips that did not play.

1.6 May 20, 2026 The Pro purchase is wired up.

Purchase

In-app purchase is ready. No other changes from 1.5.

1.5 May 18, 2026 Devices in the same room can share a clock.

Recorder

Cross-device audio sync, with a clearer host and follower setup.
Multi-channel recording and monitoring.
MIDI can be assigned to the transport.
Fixes for the tuner and metronome drifting from the clock, crashes on the library’s first open, and imports with certain file names.

1.3 May 8, 2026 Preorders load as Pro.

Purchase

Fixed preorders that did not load as Pro when the app opened.

1.1 May 7, 2026 The launch build.

Launch

Stabilized the May 2026 release: recorder states that failed in a loop, amp latency, and playback alignment between raw clips, effected clips, and MIDI instruments.
Clock sync across plugins, the tuner, and the metronome. MIDI assignments for recorder functions on channel 16.
Playlist generation fixes. CarPlay support.