What's new

User-facing release notes, newest first.

2026.9

• A recording interrupted by a crash, a power cut or Windows shutting down is no longer lost. Next time you open StreamTap it is moved into your output folder as a WAV ending _recovered, and StreamTap tells you so.
• MP3s recorded from 5.1 and 7.1 playback devices now keep the centre channel, which is where film and game dialogue lives.
• If StreamTap can't write to your output folder — Windows Security's Controlled folder access blocks Music by default — you now find out when you press RECORD, not after the recording.
• A failed save can no longer delete a file that was already in the output folder.
• Keep the microphone on between launches, if you want to. Tick Remember whether the microphone is on in Settings and the microphone toggle stays as you left it. It is still off by default.
• Check boxes in Settings and the welcome window now show a visible tick. Before, a ticked box looked the same as an empty one.
• Support tickets now show the address in large type and ask you to confirm it before they leave, so a typo does not send our reply into the void.
• Dark combo boxes, a matching microphone level slider, and level meters you can see when nothing is playing.
• Microsoft Store package.

2026.8

Two releases this month: new recording controls, and before them the reliability work they are built on.

New controls

• Choose which device to record. StreamTap used to follow whatever Windows called the default output. If you have a headset and speakers, that was a coin toss you found out about from the recording. Record from now lists every playback device; Default still means follow Windows, and a device picked by name stays picked. Same for your microphone, under Mic input.
• Pause a recording. PAUSE leaves a stretch out of the file without ending the recording, and the timer counts what you have actually recorded rather than the time on the wall.
• Keep the microphone as a separate file. A mix cannot be undone, so if you plan to edit the two sides apart, tick this and StreamTap writes your microphone to its own file beside the system audio.
• Set the microphone level. A slider moves your mic up or down against the system audio by up to 12 dB, for when your voice comes out buried under the other side of a call. It is applied when the recording is saved, so it changes nothing about what was captured and nothing in your Windows settings.
• A recording never writes over a file that is already there. If the name it would use is taken, it saves alongside as _2 rather than replacing what was in the folder.
• Starting StreamTap twice brings back the window you already have, instead of opening a second copy that competes with the first over your settings, your logs, and the names of your recordings.
• No length limit any more. A recording used to stop at about three hours — the point where a WAV runs out of room — and tell you to start another one. It now opens a new file and carries straight on, with nothing lost at the join. The parts are numbered _part1, _part2 and so on. You can also choose to split every 15 or 30 minutes, every hour or every 2 hours, under Settings → Recording.
• Recordings are no longer lost when the two tracks cannot be mixed together — both are kept, separately.
• The space warning before a recording now checks the drive you are saving to as well as the one StreamTap buffers on. A full save drive used to go unnoticed until the recording ended.
• Update notices now reach machines that are only ever open for a few minutes at a time, which previously never got as far as checking.

Reliability

• Your recording is never thrown away. If StreamTap can't finish writing the file — an encoder problem, a full disk, a folder it can't write to — it keeps the audio as a WAV next to where the file was going and tells you where that is. Previously the recording was deleted.
• MP3 now works on every sound device. On high-resolution audio interfaces, and on Windows N/KN editions without the Media Feature Pack, MP3 conversion used to fail — and MP3 is the default format.
• Recording your microphone works with any sound setup. Surround speakers and multi-microphone arrays used to fail. The two sources are also balanced before they're combined, so a loud moment on both no longer distorts.
• Quiet passages are recorded properly. Silence used to be skipped entirely, which shortened the recording and pulled everything after the gap earlier.
• StreamTap asks before you close it mid-recording, instead of discarding it.
• Long recordings stop cleanly at about three hours — the limit of the WAV format — and save, rather than producing a file that won't open.
• A Settings window, with the anonymous-usage-data choice you make on first run. You could never change it after that; now you can, any time.
• StreamTap remembers your settings — output folder, format and bitrate — instead of resetting each time you open it. The microphone toggle still starts off every time, so your mic is never recorded by accident.
• An "Open folder" button after a recording is saved.
• A warning before you start if the drive is short of space.
• Nothing to install first. The download now includes everything it needs.
• Clearer messages when there's no speaker or no microphone connected, and a fix for text being cut off in the welcome and support windows.

2026.7

• Help and support built in. New Docs and Support buttons in the top-right of the window. Support files a ticket straight to us — with diagnostic logs attached if you leave the box ticked — and falls back to email if we're unreachable. See Getting help.
• Update notices. StreamTap checks once a day whether a newer version is available and shows a link in the status bar when there is one. Nothing installs itself; the link opens the download page.
• A welcome screen on first run, covering what StreamTap is, that it's brand new, and exactly what data it sends — with the opt-out for optional usage data right there. See Privacy and data.

2026.6

• Record your microphone too. An opt-in toggle captures your mic alongside the system audio and mixes both into one file, so a call or interview has both sides. A separate purple level meter shows your mic level. See Recording your microphone.
• Version shown in the app, under the StreamTap title.
• First release. Record whatever is playing on your PC to WAV or MP3, using the loopback capture built into Windows. No virtual audio cable required.
• MP3 at 128, 192, 256 or 320 kbps.
• Live level meter and elapsed-time display.
• Choose where recordings are saved; defaults to Music\StreamTap.