A macOS menu bar app that gives audio devices a priority order the system follows.
macOS has no concept of audio device priority. It switches to whatever connected most recently, so taking your AirPods out of their case steals the output, a closed lid leaves the built-in microphone selected while it hears nothing, and every virtual meeting opens with the same silent panic: which mic is live, and where is the audio about to come out?
Writ fixes this with separate ranked lists for inputs and outputs. It keeps your Mac on the highest-ranked device that is currently available and returns to it whenever something else takes over. The lists are separate because the right answers differ: you almost always want your good microphone, but when you put on headphones you do want the output to follow. Each device carries its own rule, including Never, and a device you pick by hand is left alone.
On Apple silicon, the built-in microphone is disconnected in hardware when the lid closes, below anything software can observe, so it still appears in every menu while capturing silence. Writ polls the lid and skips it. AirPlay speakers all report their name as "AirPlay" and change identifier each time they reconnect, so a HomePod kept appearing as a new device until entries were keyed on the stable part of the identifier. Label a speaker once and it becomes permanent.
Global shortcuts reach it without looking: mute, push to talk, pausing enforcement, and stepping through devices. They're registered through the system hot key service, so Writ never asks for Accessibility permission and cannot read the keyboard, and the input meter measures level and discards the audio.
Writ is in beta testing, with public release pending.