_{Landing page · Changelog · Shortcuts · MCP Server}

Most sample organizers are bloated, or want a cloud account and a subscription just to search files on your own hard drive.

Slip Sound is fast, local, and free. No accounts, no subscriptions, no file caps. Point it at a folder of sounds, find what you need, and drag it into your editor.

Contents

• Getting Started
• How It Works
• Features
• Slicer
• Seamless Loop
• Effects
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• MCP Server
• Development
• Releases
• License

Getting Started

1. Download the latest build for your platform from Releases:
   • Windows: NSIS installer or portable .exe
   • macOS: .dmg or .zip
   • Linux: AppImage, .deb, or .tar.gz
2. Open a sample folder with Ctrl+O. Slip Sound scans it and builds an index.
3. Search, audition with Space, and drag sounds into your DAW, game engine, or video editor.

Next time you launch, your last library reopens on its own.

Supported formats: WAV, FLAC, MP3, OGG, AIFF/AIF, M4A.

How It Works

Every folder you open gets its own SQLite database (slip-sound.db) saved at that folder's root. Index once, and reopening is instant. Reindex only when you've added or changed files. There's no central catalog and no hidden app-data blob: the index travels with the folder.

The index holds each file's duration, channels and sample rate, an auto-assigned category, and a full-text search index. Your favorites and manual category changes live in the same database and survive reindexes.

Indexing	~170,000 files in about 2 minutes
Search	Under 0.2 s across hundreds of thousands of rows
Playback	Starts immediately, no buffering
Network	None. No tracking, no web services

Features

Find

• Search: Every word matches on its own, in any order, across file names, categories and folder names. "door squeak" finds Squeaky_Door_02.wav. Accents are ignored, and words inside names joined by _, - or . are found too.
• Filters: Narrow by channels, duration, favorites, or the sidebar.
• Categories: Files are auto-tagged when indexed (you can turn this off in Settings). Click a category to reassign or clear it; manual choices stick through reindexes.
• Folders view: Switch the sidebar to Folders to browse your real folder tree, expand and collapse subfolders, and search inside the folder you pick.
• Favorites: Star sounds and filter to favorites only.
• Sortable table: Click any column header to sort.

Audition

• Waveform preview: Click to seek, toggle auto-play, drag to select and loop a region.
• Right-click menu: Every action for a sound, or the whole selection, in one place: play, effects, slice, loop, export, reveal, show in folders, copy path, favorite, categorize.
• Undo / redo: Ctrl+Z takes back category changes and favorites, bulk edits included.
• Keyboard-driven: Everything works without a mouse. Press ? for the interactive guide.

Get it out

• Drag and drop: Drag one file or a whole multi-selection into Reaper, Ableton, FL Studio, Godot, Unity, and so on.
• Region export and drag-out: Export just the selected region, or drag it straight into another app.
• Batch exporter: WAV (16/24/32-bit) or OGG Vorbis, any sample rate, auto-numbered or lettered output names. An optional Effects preset can be applied to the whole batch.
• Reveal in folder: Jump to any file in your system file manager.

Drag Exports

Anything you drag out that isn't the original file (a region, an Effects result) is saved to ~/Slip Sound/Drag Exports, not a temp folder, so DaVinci Resolve, Premiere and friends never show it as offline. The Drag Exports button in the status bar lists recent drags and lets you open or change the folder, pick 16/24/32-bit WAV (24-bit by default), or clear it (to the trash). The same options are in Settings, and the first drag of each session tells you where the copy went.

Slicer

Got one file with a dozen hits, footsteps, or one-shots in it? Select it and press Ctrl+K (or Slice… under the waveform) to cut it into separate files.

• Drag across empty waveform to add a slice. Drag a slice's edges to trim it, or its middle to move it.
• Tap M while it plays to mark a slice start, then M again to mark the end.
• Auto-Detect finds every sound between silences. Tune the threshold (dB) and minimum gap (ms) if it splits too much or too little.
• Name each slice (or keep the default <file>_01, <file>_02, …), type exact start/end times if needed, then Export them all through the normal export dialog.

Slices are kept per file until you close the app. Effects… sends every slice to the Effects window so you can process them all at once and keep their slice names.

Key	Action
Space	Play / stop (loops the selected slice)
M	Mark slice start / end
← / →	Step through slices
Del	Remove selected slice
L	Toggle looping
Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Shift + Z	Undo / redo
Ctrl + Wheel, + / - / 0	Zoom in / out / fit
Ctrl + E	Export slices

Seamless Loop

Turn any stretch of audio into a loop that repeats without a click. Select a sound (optionally drag a region first) and press Ctrl+L (or Loop… under the waveform).

Pick the loop region, then set the crossfade. The end of the region (the tail) is blended over its start (the head), so the end flows straight back into the beginning. The loop comes out shorter by the crossfade length. Equal Power works best for ambiences and noise, Linear for tonal or rhythmic material.

The result view plays the loop twice with the loop point marked, so you can see the seam. Press B while it plays to flip between the seamless version and the raw region. Export uses the normal export dialog, so any format, sample rate, or bit depth works. Effects… opens the finished loop in the Effects window (fades are skipped so it stays seamless).

Key	Action
Space	Play / stop the loop
B	A/B: seamless vs. original
Ctrl + Wheel, + / - / 0	Zoom in / out / fit
Ctrl + E	Export loop

Effects

Quick fixes before a sound goes into your timeline, with no round trip through a DAW. Select a sound (or drag a region, or select several) and press Ctrl+P (or Effects… under the waveform).

Group	Controls
Basics	Reverse, Mono
Speed & Pitch	Speed with pitch following (like tape) or kept; pitch in semitones that keeps the length
Fades	Fade in / out with four shapes
Level	Change volume, normalize peak, or normalize loudness (LUFS presets: streaming −14, podcast −16, broadcast −23) under a peak ceiling

• Preview: The With effects waveform updates as you go, under the Original. Press Space to play, B to flip between the two, or click either waveform to play from that point.
• Get the result: Drag it straight into your editor, or Export… for any format. With several sounds selected, both apply the effects to all of them; step through the previews with ← / →.
• Presets: Built-ins like Reverse Swell, Pitch Down Monster and Streaming −14 LUFS, plus your own. Save, update, and import/export them as JSON to share with your team.
• File names: Processed files get a suffix describing the effects, e.g. door_slam__rev_p-3_fo200.wav. Originals are never changed.
• Keep going: Slice result… and Loop result… open the processed sound in the Slicer or Seamless Loop tool.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Space	Play / pause
↑ / ↓	Previous / next sound
Home / End	Jump to top / bottom
Double-click	Play immediately
Ctrl + click	Add / remove a sound from the selection
Shift + click	Select everything between the last click and this one
Ctrl + A	Select all sounds matching the current filters
Ctrl + F	Focus search
Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Shift + Z	Undo / redo category and favorite changes
Right-click	All actions for the sound or selection
Ctrl + O	Open folder
Ctrl + B	Toggle the sidebar (Categories / Folders)
Ctrl + E	Export selection / region
Ctrl + K	Slicer
Ctrl + L	Seamless Loop
Ctrl + P	Effects
Alt + A	Toggle auto-play
?	Interactive help guide

MCP Server

Slip Sound can run a local Model Context Protocol server so AI tools (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, etc.) can search, tag, and export your library. It's off by default. Turn it on in Settings (gear icon, top right), where you can also copy the connection URL and bearer token.

Security: The server binds to 127.0.0.1 only, uses a random bearer token minted each launch, and validates Origin/Host headers to block browser-based DNS-rebinding probes. While it runs, the connection details (URL and token, ready to paste into an mcpServers config block) are written to mcp-connection.json in the app's user data folder.

Tool	What it does
search_sounds	Filter by filename, category, subcategory, folder, channels, duration, favorite status
list_uncategorized_sounds	Page through sounds still tagged "Uncategorized" so an agent can tag them
get_sound	Full metadata for one file by path
get_categories	Category / subcategory facet counts
open_library	Open or switch to a folder
get_recent_libraries	Recently opened folders
get_library_status	Currently open folder and sound count
set_category / clear_category	Tag or untag a sound
toggle_favorite	Star / unstar a sound
export_sound	Export (optionally trimmed and processed: reverse, speed, pitch, mono, fades, gain, peak/LUFS normalize) to WAV/OGG at any sample rate
reveal_in_folder	Open the file's location in the system file manager
reindex_library	Rescan the open folder for new, changed, or removed files

Development

Requires Bun and Node 22.

bun install
bun run dev        # run the app with hot reload
bun run test       # vitest (processing tests use the bundled ffmpeg)
bun run typecheck  # main + renderer
bun run lint

Build installers:

bun run build:linux  # AppImage, deb, tar.gz
bun run build:win    # NSIS installer, portable exe
bun run build:mac    # dmg, zip
bun run build:all    # Windows + Linux

Project layout

Path	What's there
src/main/	Electron main process: indexer, SQLite (db.ts), classifier, peaks, ffmpeg export/processing, MCP server
src/preload/	IPC bridge exposed to the renderer
src/renderer/	SolidJS UI: workstation, tool windows (Slicer, Seamless Loop, Effects, Export), shared UI components
docs/	GitHub Pages landing page
.hypedoc/	Sources for the README graphics (rebuild with hypedoc build --doc README.md)

Stack: Electron 39, Node 22 (node:sqlite), SolidJS, Tailwind CSS v4, electron-vite, ffmpeg-static, @modelcontextprotocol/sdk, Bun.

Releases

Releases are driven by the version field in package.json; there's no manual tagging. Every push to main builds and checks whether vX.Y.Z already has a GitHub release. If not, CI creates the tag and a draft release. Bump the version to cut a new one.

Each release ships SHA256SUMS-linux.txt, SHA256SUMS-mac.txt and SHA256SUMS-windows.txt alongside the binaries. Verify a download with:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS-linux.txt                # Linux
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS-mac.txt              # macOS
certutil -hashfile slip-sound-Setup.exe SHA256   # Windows, compare against the .txt

Alternative To

A free, fast, local alternative to sample managers like Soundly, BaseHead, Soundminer, Resonic, AudioFinder, Sononym, and ADSR Sample Manager.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE. Required by the bundled ffmpeg-static binary, which is built with --enable-gpl.