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Why The SmoredBoard Is Windows Only

I know it's disappointing if you don't have a Windows PC to see that we don't support anything else, so I've made this doc to go over the reasons why the SmoredBoard is currently only available for Windows.

1. Why Not For Mac OS?

  • There are a few reasons why the SmoredBoard is currently not available for Mac OS. 1 is the SmoredBoard's Audio Structure, we use NAudio under the hood to open/play sounds, do mic loopback, basically anything audio related, NAudio handles it. And unfortunately, NAudio is a Windows-only library. Now this doesn't mean it's impossible for the SmoredBoard to come to mac, it just means to do so we would have to rebuild the entire audio architecture from scratch for Mac and still maintain and update the Windows version.
  • The second reason is we currently use WPF for the UI in the SmoredBoard, which if you don't know stands for Windows Presentation Foundation, a Windows-only framework for building desktop applications. This also does not mean it's impossible to port the UI to Mac, but it does mean we would have to swap out the entire UI framework for a cross-platform solution, which is never as easy as using a migration tool or whatever.

2. Why Not For Android/Meta Quests (and IOS)?

  • If you are a VR user and are wondering why the SmoredBoard is not available for standalone VR devices, or just wondering why you can't use it on your Android phone, the answer is very simple. Meta Quest headsets use Android as their OS, so every time in this I mention android, note that means both systems. The reason is Android does not allow virtual mic's on the OS. This is for good reason, it would be very insecure if any app could hook into and listen to your mic whenever, or monitor the speakers to listen to every video you play or call you make and because of that there's no way to play a sound in any soundboard on Android and have it play over your in game mic.
  • Also on Meta Quest headsets there currently is no standalone way to do overlays in games. So even if we could play audio over your mic, you couldn't click on the soundboard to play sounds.

3. Why not on Linux?

  • The reasons for this are mostly the same as for Mac OS, so i'm not going to repeat myself. But additionally reasons for Linux is that honestly, there's not enough demand from Linux users to justify all the time to figure out how to get it to work on Linux, as well as continue development for it. I'm not saying we'll never come to Linux, it's definitely possible but I have no plans to do so as of now.

TLDR: For Mac and Linux, it's possible, but would take a substantial amount of time to rewrite the audio architecture and UI framework, and for Android/Meta Quest, it's just not possible due to OS limitations.