Split a song into vocals, drums, bass and other on your Mac, then mix, loop, slow down and export the stems.
Isolate is a native macOS stem player for Apple silicon. It runs HTDemucs, the open-source separation model from Meta's Demucs project, through Core ML, so songs are separated on your own Mac with no account and no upload. Once a song is split, four channel strips let you solo the bass line, mute the vocals to sing along, slow a solo to 0.75× without changing its pitch, loop the hard part, and export the stems or your own mix. The interface is a hardware-style mixer inspired by Nothing's dot-matrix design.
Download Isolate.dmg · Release notes and other files · Apple silicon · macOS 14 or later · Free and open source (MIT)
The current v1.3.2 release includes the separation model. Earlier 1.2.x releases do not.
- Download the latest Isolate.dmg (v1.3.0 or newer).
- Open the disk image and drag Isolate.app onto the Applications shortcut in its Finder window. Quit an older copy of Isolate before replacing it.
- Eject the disk image, then open Isolate from Applications and follow First launch if macOS blocks it.
- Drag a supported audio file or folder onto the Isolate window, or press ⌘O. Separation happens on your Mac.
| Mac | Apple silicon (M1 or later); Intel Macs are not supported |
| macOS | 14 Sonoma or later; 26 or later recommended for separation (see below) |
| Extra software | None for the v1.3.0+ DMG: the model is included. No Xcode, Python, Homebrew, account or model download is needed |
| Download | About 160 MB |
| Installed | About 313 MB, including the separation model |
| Separated songs | About 106 MB of disk per minute of audio, kept until you delete the song |
Check your chip and macOS version in Apple menu › About This Mac before downloading. Keep enough free disk space for the app and the songs you plan to separate. DRM-protected downloads, including Apple Music subscription files, cannot be imported.
Separation on macOS 14 and 15. Testing on hosted Macs found that Core ML in macOS 14 and 15 computes Isolate's separation model incorrectly on some of its compute paths (the CPU path on both, and every path available on the macOS 15 test machine), while macOS 26 and 27 are correct on every path. Before it separates anything, Isolate checks the model on a built-in test signal and uses a compute path that passes. If none passes on your Mac, it says so and asks you to update to macOS 26 or later; it never writes stems from a model that failed the check. Separation has been verified end to end on macOS 26 and 27.
Each release lists SHA-256 checksums in SHA256SUMS.txt. To check your download, run shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Isolate.dmg and compare the result. Homebrew, a terminal installer and source builds are covered in INSTALL.md.
Isolate's releases are built by GitHub Actions from this repository and are ad-hoc signed. They are not signed with an Apple Developer ID or notarized by Apple, so macOS can't confirm who made the app and blocks the first launch until you approve it. You do this once for each new version.
- Open Isolate from Applications. macOS says "Isolate" Not Opened because Apple could not verify it. Click Done, not Move to Trash.
- Open System Settings › Privacy & Security and scroll down to Security.
- Next to the message that Isolate was blocked, click Open Anyway. The button only appears for a while after a blocked launch; if it isn't there, repeat step 1.
- Enter your login password or use Touch ID.
- When macOS asks one last time, click Open.
From then on, Isolate opens like any other app. See Apple's first-launch instructions for the system approval flow.
In Applications, Control-click (or right-click) Isolate, choose Open, then click Open in the dialog.
Don't disable Gatekeeper (for example with spctl --master-disable) or strip quarantine attributes with xattr to skip these steps. Disabling Gatekeeper changes checks for all apps; stripping an app's quarantine skips its normal first-launch checks. The steps above approve only Isolate. You can check the download against SHA256SUMS.txt or build Isolate from source.
If you open Isolate straight from the disk image, it offers to move itself into Applications.
Separate
- Four stems, always in the same order: vocals, drums, bass and other. HTDemucs runs through Core ML on your Mac. Isolate has no account, analytics or network features of its own.
- Import files or whole folders with ⌘O or by dragging them onto the window. MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A (AAC or ALAC), AIFF and CAF are supported. Surround files are downmixed to stereo, and iCloud Drive files that aren't on your Mac yet are downloaded first.
- While a song separates, Isolate shows the file name, chunk count and measured speed. Its approximate time remaining uses the last completed import on this Mac during model loading and decoding, then adjusts to the current song's recent processing speed. On the first import it calibrates before showing a time. You can cancel one song or a whole batch, and if you allow notifications, Isolate tells you when an import finishes while it is in the background.
- Separated songs are cached by the file's exact contents. Importing the identical file again, even from a different folder, reuses its stems instead of separating it again; a copy with edited tags or artwork, or in another format, is separated again.
Mix
- Four channel strips, each with a fader from −60 to +6 dB (the bottom is silence), mute, solo, stereo pan and a live meter.
- Three-band EQ on every stem and on the master bus: a 100 Hz low shelf, a 1 kHz bell and a 10 kHz high shelf, each ±12 dB. It includes factory presets, per-channel bypass and one key (⌘E) to bypass all EQ.
- One-click macros: Acapella, Instrumental, Drumless, Karaoke (vocals at −12 dB), Drums & Bass, and Reset.
- Compare Original (the BYPASS button) switches to the source recording under the same speed, pitch and master EQ, so you can check the separation against the real thing.
Practice
- Speed from 0.5× to 1.5× (0.5, 0.75, 0.85, 1, 1.15, 1.25 and 1.5) without changing pitch, and pitch from −12 to +12 semitones without changing speed.
- A–B loop: set the start and end at the playhead with [ and ], turn looping on or off with L, and clear the markers with ⌥L.
- A studio display above the mixer with five views: a 32-band spectrum, the stem macros, stem balance, telemetry (tempo, key, format and timecode) and an equalizer for any stem or the master bus (⌘1 to ⌘5).
Library
- Songs are grouped by the folder they came from and can be searched by title, file name, or the artist and album folders they sit in. Next and Previous follow the sidebar order.
- Artist, album and artwork come from the file's own tags. Isolate uses tagged BPM and key when present; otherwise it analyzes the imported audio on device and shows a measured estimate when the beat or tonal center is clear. Silence and ambiguous material remain unknown. The displayed BPM follows playback speed, and the key follows pitch shift.
- Rename songs in the library. Deleting a song removes only the stems Isolate made; your original file is never changed or deleted.
Export
- Stems: a ZIP of four 24-bit WAV or FLAC files at 44.1 kHz. Channel EQ is included unless it is bypassed; levels, pan, speed and pitch are not. If any stem would clip, all four are lowered by the same amount so they still add up to the same mix.
- Mix: a 24-bit WAV of the whole track with your current levels, mutes, solos, pan, EQ, speed and pitch. With Compare Original on, it exports the original recording instead and names the file
_Original.wav. - Exports show their progress and can be cancelled (EXPORT button or File › Cancel Export). An existing file is replaced only after the new one is complete.
On your Mac
- Dark, light and match-system themes, with support for Increase Contrast and VoiceOver labels on the controls.
- A menu bar mini controller, media keys and Now Playing, and trackpad haptics.
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Play or pause |
| 1, 2, 3, 4 | Solo vocals, drums, bass or other |
| V, D, B, O | Mute vocals, drums, bass or other |
| A / I | Acapella (vocals only) / Instrumental (no vocals) |
| R | Reset levels, mutes, solos and pan |
| [ / ] | Set the loop start / end at the playhead |
| L | Turn the A–B loop on or off |
| ⌥L | Clear the loop markers |
| ⌘1 to ⌘5 | Studio display: 32-band FFT, stem macros, stem balance, telemetry, equalizer |
| ⌘E | Bypass all EQ (stems and master) |
| ⌥⌘B | Compare Original (BYPASS) |
| ⌘O | Import files or folders |
| ⇧⌘E | Export stems |
| ⇧⌘M | Export mix |
| ⌘B | Show or hide the library |
| ⌘, | Settings |
| ⌘0 | Show the Isolate window |
| ? or / | Show or hide the shortcut card |
| Esc | Close the open panel, or cancel the import in progress |
| Arrow keys | Adjust the focused fader, knob, pan control or seek bar |
| Double-click | Reset a fader, pan control, EQ knob, pitch or speed |
The full list is also in Settings › Shortcuts.
- Speed depends on your Mac. The September 25–26 v1.3.0 checks on an M-series MacBook Pro running macOS 27 measured 3.0–3.3× realtime: a 4:37 ALAC track in 1:33 and an 8:24 MP3 in 2:34. See the measured results. Your speed will vary with the Mac, the macOS version and what else is running; the progress screen shows the measured speed for each song.
- The first separation after installing or updating is slower while macOS prepares the model for your Mac. On the test Mac that took about 17 seconds once; later model loads took 3 to 4 seconds.
- Memory: on the test Mac, Isolate's memory footprint was about 1.6 to 2.7 GB after a separation, while the model was loaded. Isolate releases the model after 60 seconds without a separation.
- Disk: separated songs use about 106 MB per minute of audio. Isolate checks for enough free space before it starts.
- Quality depends on the recording. Expect some bleed between stems and some artifacts, especially on dense mixes. Isolate makes no guarantee about separation quality.
- Looping is for practice. Playback that starts from a stop waits a fraction of a second so all four stems start together, and the A–B loop is not a sample-accurate DAW loop.
- Not supported: Intel Macs, DRM-protected files (such as Apple Music downloads), OGG and Opus, files with more than 8 channels, MP3 export, and exporting only the loop region.
Having trouble? See TROUBLESHOOTING.md. Changes in each version are listed in CHANGELOG.md.
You need Xcode 26.2 or later and XcodeGen. The model weights are not in this repository; MODEL.md explains how to install the validated model.
brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild build -project Isolate.xcodeproj -scheme Isolate \
-destination 'platform=macOS,arch=arm64' -derivedDataPath build/DerivedData
open build/DerivedData/Build/Products/Debug/Isolate.appINSTALL.md has the full steps, RELEASE.md covers tests and packaging, and ARCHITECTURE.md, AUDIO_ENGINE.md and DESIGN.md describe how the app works.
- App code: MIT License, © 2026 Neo Kumar.
- Separation model: HTDemucs from Meta's Demucs project, MIT License, converted to Core ML.
- Typeface: DotGothic16 by Fontworks, SIL Open Font License 1.1.
License texts ship inside the app; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Isolate is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nothing Technology Limited or Apple; "Nothing-inspired" describes the visual style only.