Switchboard and OS Tools
Most developers don’t realize how difficult audio is until they try to add it. A feature that seems straightforward, like voice chat or transcription, quickly unravels into weeks of dealing with low level APIs. iOS and Android each have their own quirks. They require C++ glue code, they behave differently across devices, and they fail in ways that are hard to predict. What begins as a small addition to your roadmap often turns into months of lost time.
Switchboard removes that barrier. You define your audio pipeline once and it runs across iOS, Android, and desktop without the usual complexity. The platform handles the low level details so your team can stay focused on building product features rather than chasing down obscure bugs or performance issues. Stability and real time performance come built in, not bolted on after weeks of trial and error.
For teams that want to deliver audio features quickly and reliably, the choice is stark. Building on the raw APIs means a long detour into specialized engineering. Building on Switchboard means staying on schedule and shipping what you set out to build.
On Apple devices, audio looks polished from the outside but building with it tells a different story. Core Audio and Audio Units are powerful but demand expertise most app teams do not have. They require C and C++ code, custom threading, and a deep knowledge of low level buffers. Even seasoned developers spend weeks wiring together the basics before they can think about features like voice chat, live transcription, or interactive playback.
Switchboard changes that experience. Instead of fighting with Audio Units and Core Audio directly, you define your audio graph once and let the runtime handle the heavy lifting. The engine still uses the same underlying Apple frameworks, so you get the performance and stability of native APIs, but without the boilerplate or the fragile glue code. Your app behaves consistently across iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and you spend your time delivering the features your users actually care about.
On Android the challenges multiply. Google has introduced multiple audio stacks over the years, from OpenSL ES to AAudio and Oboe, but fragmentation across devices and manufacturers means behavior is never consistent. The same code that works smoothly on one phone can pop, glitch, or even crash on another. Developers often spend more time tuning buffer sizes and chasing device-specific bugs than building the feature they set out to deliver.
Switchboard shields you from that mess. The runtime abstracts the differences between Android devices and audio stacks so you can define your pipeline once and rely on it everywhere. Under the hood it still uses the best-performing native APIs, but it handles the device quirks and low-level details automatically. Your app delivers stable, real time audio across the Android ecosystem, without burning months of engineering effort on patching and workarounds.
On Windows the complexity comes from choice. Applications can tap into WASAPI, DirectSound, or ASIO, each with its own tradeoffs and pitfalls. Low latency audio often forces developers into WASAPI exclusive mode or into vendor-specific drivers, which introduces compatibility issues and fragile setups. What works in a controlled test environment can fail the moment you ship to users with different hardware or driver versions.
Switchboard streamlines that landscape. The runtime sits on top of the native Windows APIs and selects the right path automatically, giving you low latency performance without forcing you to make brittle decisions about modes and drivers. The result is stable, real time audio across the wide variety of Windows machines in the field. You can build the feature you want without worrying about whether it will break on a customer’s laptop or desktop configuration.
On the web, audio has always been hobbled by the browser. The Web Audio API is built for lightweight use cases, not for real time pipelines. Anything beyond simple effects pushes JavaScript past its limits, and developers end up with fragile code that glitches, lags, or behaves differently from one browser to the next.
Switchboard v3 changes the game. Instead of forcing you into the Web Audio API, it lets you run your exact same native audio runtime inside an Electron app. That means the code you use on iOS, Android, or Windows is the same code running in your desktop application. There is no second implementation to maintain, no fallback layer, no “good enough for the web” compromise.
For the first time, developers can deliver a full real time audio experience in an Electron app with the same performance and stability as on native platforms.