Set up Spiral

Five steps, about five minutes. You need a Mac, your beta key and a free Discogs account. Spiral asks for the key once, after installing.

1. Download Spiral

   Open the download page and click Download for Mac. The disk image lands in your Downloads folder.

2. Install it

   Open the Spiral disk image in your Downloads folder and drag Spiral into Applications.

3. Open Spiral

   Open Spiral from Applications. The first time, macOS asks whether to open an app downloaded from the internet. Choose Open.

4. Enter your beta key

   Spiral asks for the beta key from your invitation. Paste the whole key, starting with SPRL1; it is case-sensitive. Spiral checks it on your Mac and keeps it in your keychain, so you enter it once. Keys are valid until the date in your invitation; ask for a new one when yours runs out.

5. Connect Discogs

   Spiral looks up releases with your own Discogs account, so it asks for a personal access token once.

   In Spiral, choose Open Discogs developer settings and sign in, or go to discogs.com/settings/developers. Under Personal access token, click Generate new token. Copy the whole token and paste it into Spiral, which checks it straight away.

Requirements

macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.

Your collection

Optional. On the last setup step Spiral offers to import your Discogs collection and wantlist. Later, Settings → Collection adds your Bandcamp purchases and folders of music on your Mac, and lets you remove a source again.

Updates

Spiral checks for a new version when it opens. When one is ready, choose Restart to update. You never need to download again.

Privacy

The download page asks nothing about you. The app checks the key on your Mac against a public key built into it. If you send feedback, your key is sent securely to Spiral’s server to verify the submission; only its tester label is included in the report. The app sends usage data only if you turn usage sharing on, and then only which features you use, with a random ID and the app version: never titles, searches, your collection or file paths. When it checks for updates it sends its version and whether your Mac is Apple silicon or Intel, and the site counts those checks per day with no address or ID. A folder scan reads the tags of your music files and sends only the artist, album and label names to Discogs to match them; file paths never leave your Mac.

Help

Something not working? Reply to the message your invitation came in.