Podcast Track Cleaner is for one job: a few speaker tracks come in, a clean episode goes out. It has no tool palette, no clip system and no mixer. Once you know the three ideas below, everything else in the app is a command that acts on what you selected.
How the editor thinks
Click is always select
There are no tool modes. A click on a track puts the cursor down, a drag makes a region on that track, and a drag across rows makes a region that spans every track you crossed. Every button, menu item and key acts on that selection.
Edits are destructive, and undoable
A cut really removes the audio; there is no stack of clips underneath. Every edit is one undo step (⌘Z, twenty-four steps deep), and saving at good checkpoints is the rest of the safety net — if a session goes wrong, close without saving and reopen.
Projects are optional
Drop files in, edit, export — no project needed. When you want to come back to it, ⌘S saves a .tcproj: one Finder document holding a lossless WAV per track plus a small project.yaml with placement, level lines and chapters. Several projects can be open at once, one per window (⌘N).
Bring the tracks in
Drag the recordings from the Finder into the window, or press ⌘O. Each file becomes a track with its own color. Everything is resampled to the first track's sample rate, so files from different recorders can sit side by side. A typical show is two tracks — one per speaker — sometimes one, three or four.
Each track has a colored grab bar along its top: M on the left mutes it, ⤓ on the right saves that one track as a WAV, ✕ removes it. Drag the bar sideways to slide the whole track in time.
| Key | Selects |
|---|---|
| E | The selected time range on all tracks — do this before a cut so the speakers stay in sync |
| T | The whole of the selected track(s) |
| I / O | Mark in / out at the cursor, also while playing |
| ↑ / ↓ | Move the selection to the track above or below; with ⇧, add that track |
| ⌘A / ⌘D | Select everything / clear the selection |
Space plays the selection, or plays on from the cursor. ⌘L loops the selection, which is the easiest way to hear an edit a few times. Hold ⌥⇧ while playing to hear only the current track.
A cleanup, start to finish
Cleaning an episode goes in a fixed order, and each step leaves the next one less to do. The aim is a tight show, not a rewritten one: measured on episodes cleaned by hand, the finished show is 84–88% of the raw recording, made from a few hundred cuts that are mostly under a second.
Trim to the episode
Delete the "OK, are we recording?" before the opening line and the chat after the goodbye. Select from the very start to just before the first word, press E to take in all tracks, then ⌫. Same at the end. Keep a few tenths of a second of air.
Align the tracks
Separate recorders never start together. Experimental ▸ Auto-Align Tracks (⇧⌘A) lines every track up with the top one. Listen to the first exchange: a reply should follow the question, not step on it. To nudge by hand, drag a grab bar, or select the track and press ⌘[ / ⌘] for 10 ms steps.
Silence what should be quiet
While one person talks, the other tracks should be silent — not full of room noise, leaking voice and "uh-huh"s. Silence Background Between Lines (⇧⌘X) does the long stretches. Then play through, select each leftover sound on the listener's track, and press S. A short "yes" that answers a question is a reply; keep it.
Un-overlap
Where two people talk at once, select the overlap across both tracks and press L to keep the top speaker first or R for the bottom one. The other line slides to play right after, and everything downstream moves with it.
Fix the levels
First the few sharp peaks: Tame Loud Peaks (⇧⌘P), or put the yellow level line at the usual talking peak and press 1. Then normalize each track — T, N. Then Bring Up Quiet Stretches (⇧⌘U) lifts whatever is still low. Done when both speakers sound equally loud and nothing goes above about −1 dB.
Parasite words and sounds
Cut stutters, false starts and repeated words across all tracks (I, O, E, ⌫); listen across each cut. Find Parasite Sounds (⇧⌘F) marks clicks, breaths and noise for review — step with ] and [, turn a false one off with X, apply the rest. Tighten Pauses (⇧⌘T) brings every pause over 0.7 s down to 0.45 s.
Sweep, add assets, export
The cuts change what sits next to what, so skim the levels once more. Then add the intro and outro from the Assets menu — last, because cutting after them would move the show underneath. Add chapters with C if you use them. Save (⌘S) and export (⌘E).
The Experimental menu holds the automatic passes. They do real work, but results vary with the recording — listen to what each one did, and undo without hesitation when it doesn't suit the material.
Every step works from the keyboard. Help ▸ Cleaning Up an Episode in the app has the same walk-through with the keystrokes for each, and the next guide shows how to hand the whole sequence to an AI agent.
Make it yours
Every key can move
Settings ▸ Shortcuts lists every command. Click a shortcut, press the new combination, and it applies at once; a warning triangle marks a combination two commands share.
Detectors tuned to your voice
If Find Parasite Sounds marks too much or too little on your recordings, Settings ▸ Detection has the thresholds in plain numbers — and what each kind of mark is replaced with. Settings ▸ Processing does the same for auto-level and noise reduction.