Rest
Each finger becomes its own voice — up to ten at once. A resting finger holds a soft chord that breathes with you until you lift it.
For macOS · lives in the menubar
Gliss turns the glass under your fingers into slow, glowing music. Rest a finger and a chord swells. Slide, and it glissandos. Press, and it blooms.
Best with headphones · this page responds to touch
The whole technique
Each finger becomes its own voice — up to ten at once. A resting finger holds a soft chord that breathes with you until you lift it.
Notes are laid across the pad and snapped to gentle scales, so a slide is always a glissando and never a wrong note. Five scales, any root you like.
The Force Touch pressure under your fingertip is the dynamics: lean in and a note grows louder and brighter, ease off and it settles back to a whisper.
Five timbres
Previews are rendered live in your browser. The app's engine is richer.
Tune mode
In tune mode, Gliss ignores where you touch: every tap simply plays the next note of a tune. Position and pressure still shape the tone, so it feels played, not played back. Eight pieces are included — Beethoven, Satie, Pachelbel, and friends.
The app
Sold directly
Gliss listens to the trackpad's raw touch stream — something Mac App Store rules don't permit. So it's sold the old way: signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, downloaded from here. You get a 7-day trial before paying and a no-questions refund for 14 days after.
One price
One purchase. No subscription. Free updates through 1.x.
Questions
On most Macs, none. Some macOS versions gate raw trackpad data behind Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring; if yours does, Gliss shows a one-time helper that takes you straight to the right switch. It reads touches only to make sound — nothing is logged or sent anywhere.
Yes — that's the point. Enable Gliss, open your email, and rest a finger whenever you need thirty seconds of calm. The pointer still works normally; Gliss listens without interfering.
Any Mac laptop with a Force Touch trackpad running macOS 13 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel. On older pads without pressure, contact size stands in for dynamics. Magic Trackpad support is being tested.
The download is the full app, free for 7 days. Buying gets you a license key by email; paste it into the popover and you're done. No account, no card for the trial.
Apple's store rules don't allow apps that read the trackpad's raw multitouch stream. Gliss is Developer-ID signed and notarized by Apple, and sold directly here instead.
Gliss checks for updates when you open the popover and offers the download when there's a new version. Updates through 1.x are free.