Getting Started

First launch

Zammoth opens with a small splash (the mammoth mark over a five-stage progress ladder: Starting up → Starting audio engine → Opening audio device → Loading session → Preparing workspace) and lands you directly in a project — no welcome screen. On a fresh install that's a new Untitled project in ~/Music/Zammoth; afterwards it's the most recent project you had open (if that folder is unreachable — an unplugged drive — it falls back gracefully).

From there the fastest route to sound is any of:

• Drop audio files onto the arrangement (each file becomes a track), or
• ⇧⌘T for an instrument track and play the built-in WOOLLY synth, or
• Open the Engineer (the ENGINEER cell, top right) and tell it what you want.

The first time you arm a track to record, macOS asks for microphone permission.

Staying current

Zammoth checks for updates a few seconds after launch (Preferences ▸ Files & Updates ▸ Check on launch, on by default) and via File ▸ Check for Updates…. An available update shows its version and release notes with Install & Relaunch — the download is integrity-checked and signature-verified, the old version is kept until the new one is safely in place, and the app relaunches itself. Update history logs to ~/Library/Logs/Zammoth/update.log.

If something went wrong last time

• If Zammoth didn't shut down cleanly, the next launch offers Recover unsaved work (restore the auto-saved snapshot) or Discard, and says when that snapshot was autosaved. The snapshot is set aside as the project opens, so nothing you do before answering — and no quit — can overwrite it; if you don't answer, it is offered again next time. If two crashes left two snapshots, the newest is offered first and the older one after it. A force-quit or forced logout preserves your unsaved changes the same way — you'll simply see the recovery prompt.
• After a crash, Zammoth offers to reveal the crash report, and if a third-party plug-in looks responsible, the plug-in crash guard names it and quarantines it (see Hosting Plug-ins).