Choose what to listen to: all system audio or one app
By default a Listening session hears everything your Mac plays. That is the simplest setup, and it works in any app. When other sounds get in the way — a second tab, a game, music, message pings — point the session at the one app you are studying from.
Listen to a single app
- Start playing your video or podcast, so its app appears in the list.
- In the overlay, press the options button next to Start Listening (“Session options — languages and audio source”).
- Under Listen to, choose the app instead of All system audio. Apps that aren’t making sound at the moment are marked “not playing”; if the list is empty you’ll see “Nothing is playing audio right now — start playing something, then pick its app here.”
- Press Start Listening. The overlay confirms the choice: “Listening to: Safari”, for example.
Browsers and players often play sound through helper processes; RainbowSay files those under the app you know, so you pick “Safari”, not an obscure helper name.
Why it’s worth doing
- Only that app is translated. A notification sound, a video autoplaying in another tab of a different browser, or a call in the background never becomes a “sentence”.
- Auto-pause is safer. On macOS the Play/Pause key is delivered to whichever player the system considers active. With one app selected, RainbowSay sends the pause only while that app is actually producing sound, and sends the resume only for a pause it made itself — so a quiet or closed tab never causes some other player to start or stop.
- Your music can keep playing in another app without being picked up.
With All system audio, keep it simple instead: close or pause other players while you study.
If the app goes quiet or quits
- When the selected app stops producing sound, the session waits: “No audio from Safari — paused. Play audio or press space to resume.” It picks up again by itself when sound returns.
- If the app quits, the session ends with a message that asks you to pick a source again in the options.
The same picker for Subtitles
Subtitles use the same source choice: in the Subtitles options, System shows the app list, and Microphone captions what you say instead. See Subtitles.
Next
Tune sentence detection — longer sentences, shorter ones, or a hard limit for fast talkers.