Capture Companion
Always watching · Always ready

Never lose a shot.

A pro-photographer's safety net for tethered Capture One shoots. Watches your tether, your camera settings, your Wi-Fi signal and your disk — and tells you the second anything's about to go wrong, right from the menu bar.

Download for Mac €29 · one-time Notarised · no sandbox · 100% local
✦ macOS 13+✦ Apple Silicon & Intel✦ Capture One 16+
⚠ Tether down— that's the kind of alert you'll never miss again.
Capture Companion dashboard — camera HUD, signal sparkline, tether doctor.
1s Polling, every second
0 Telemetry, ever
R5 II · GFX Multi-camera
Local 100% on your Mac
Always watching · Always ready

Peace of mind. Right from the menu bar.

One glance says the whole rig is healthy. The second it isn't — a card you can't miss, with a sound you choose.

100% · Tue 10:42
TetherConnected
CameraSettings OK
Wi-FiStrong signal · 6 GHz
Disk2.1 TB free
All systems go.
Instant heads up
Wi-Fi Signal WeakConnection may drop.
Tether DisconnectedReconnecting…
Disk Almost FullOnly 12 GB left.
What it does

Ten pro-shoot habits, automated.

You can't watch the tether bar, the shutter readout, the Wi-Fi signal and the disk space at the same time as you're shooting. Capture Companion does — and the second anything drifts, you know.

Tether disconnect alarm

A floating alert card that sits over fullscreen Capture One the moment the camera drops. With sound, until you silence it.

Shutter & aperture guards

Lock a value. If the camera drifts off it, the Companion warns you — or auto-corrects it back, before you take the next frame.

Wi-Fi signal guard

Reads RSSI off your router and warns you on a fast drop — early enough to move, before the tether actually breaks.

Tether Doctor

One button. Checks the whole chain — signal, channel, router, internet, Capture One — and tells you in plain English what's wrong.

Network Setup helper

Plain-English guidance to get the tether Wi-Fi right — off 2.4 GHz, away from radar-prone DFS channels — and it never scans, so it can't drop your link.

Rig Check

Audits your GL.iNet / OpenWRT router and says, in plain English, what to fix for a bullet-proof tether — pins a hopping channel, flags DFS, confirms the camera's alone on its band. Read-only: it shows you the command, never touches your router.

Live menu-bar HUD

Mode, shutter, ISO, aperture, EV — your whole exposure at a glance, right in the menu bar. Green when it's locked, red the second it drifts.

Disk space watchdog

Three tiers — notice, warning, alarm. So a long shoot never quietly runs out of room.

Silent Mode

One click — or ⌃⌥⌘S — kills every alert sound app-wide. For when video's rolling and a beep would ruin the take.

Multi-camera profiles

Switch instantly between systems — Canon R5 / R5 II over Wi-Fi, Fuji GFX over USB. The guard configures itself for the body that's actually plugged in.

Spotlight

One button. Whole tether chain. Plain English.

When the tether feels off, you don't have time to debug. Tether Doctor inspects every link, names what's wrong, and tells you exactly how to fix it — without ever touching the camera connection itself.

Diagnose every link of the chain.

It runs a passive, read-only sweep — never an active scan that could drop your tether. Then it ranks what it finds: green for clear, amber to watch, red for fix-now. And the rig auto-detects itself, so the same button works on a Slate 7 Pro, an MT3000, or whatever GL.iNet you're on today.

  • Camera signal — RSSI + trend, so you catch the slide before it breaks.
  • Wi-Fi channel & band — read passively, so the radio never leaves the channel.
  • Router load — normalised by core count across your fleet.
  • Internet path — separate from the camera link.
  • Capture One ↔ camera — running, tethered, socket healthy.
Tether Doctor — diagnosing camera signal, Wi-Fi channel, router load, internet, and Capture One in one view.

Which routers can it read?

The Wi-Fi signal guard and the router diagnostics read your router over SSH, so they need an open router. Everything else — the disconnect alarm, HUD, guards and disk watch — works on any setup, wired or wireless.

Full support

Signal guard + every Tether Doctor check.

GL.iNet — Slate 7 Pro, Beryl / MT3000, and the range · plus other OpenWRT routers with SSH

Works

Signal & router read via the generic Linux iw tool.

Most OpenWRT / Linux routers with SSH access (incl. DD-WRT)

Core app only

No SSH to read — signal & router checks off; the alarm, HUD, guards & disk still work.

Stock mesh & consumer routers — Eero, Nest Wifi, Orbi, stock Asus / Netgear / TP-Link

Shooting wired? There's no Wi-Fi link to watch, so the signal guard simply stays off — by design.

Cameras

Works with your camera.

Capture Companion reads Capture One — not your camera. So if Capture One Pro can tether it, you're covered: the disconnect alarm, live HUD, disk watch and Tether Doctor work on every body Capture One tethers. The shutter / aperture / ISO guards work wherever Capture One exposes those values.

Full protection

Alarm · HUD · Tether Doctor · shutter / aperture / ISO guards.

Canon · Nikon · Sony · Phase One / Mamiya / Leaf · Fujifilm · Sigma · Panasonic Lumix · Pentax

Safety net

Alarm · HUD · Tether Doctor. Settings guards partial or unavailable.

Leica (SL · M · S series) · plus any body where Capture One leaves a value blank

Not supported

Capture One can't tether it, so there's nothing to read.

Hasselblad (X1D · X2D · 907x · H-system) — these tether in Phocus, not Capture One.

Not sure where your body lands? If it's on Capture One's tethering list, the alarm, HUD and Tether Doctor have you covered. (The Wi-Fi signal guard is for wireless rigs — it switches off automatically for wired tethers.)

Pricing

One price. Yours forever.

Buy once, own it. No subscription. All updates included. Refund within 14 days if it doesn't earn its keep on your first shoot.

Launch price
29+ VAT
One-time · Mac universal · all features included
  • Every feature on this page
  • Lifetime updates
  • Works on up to 2 of your own Macs
  • Email support from a working digitech
  • 14-day no-questions refund
Buy & Download — €29
Not on the Mac App Store — on purpose. The sandbox would cripple the very features that protect your shoot, so it's a clean, notarised, 100%-local direct download.
Coming soon

Capture Companion Pro

The whole safety net, plus live shoot insurance — every frame backed up and checksum-verified to your drives the instant you capture it, fused with the same alarm.

  • Live, as-you-shoot backup to 1–3 drives (including a NAS)
  • Every frame checksum-verified — proven backed up, not just copied
  • A dropped drive or a failed copy fires the same can't-miss alarm
  • Runs right alongside your shoot — zero babysitting
Get notified when it lands →

In active development. Buy Basic now and you're covered today — Basic owners will get a fair upgrade path when Pro lands.

FAQ

The quick answers.

What does it actually do during a shoot?

It sits in your menu bar. Every second, it checks: is Capture One tethered, is the camera still on its chosen shutter and aperture, is the Wi-Fi signal holding up, is there room on the disk? The moment any of those goes wrong — even slightly — it surfaces a card you can't miss, with a sound you can pick. You can silence it instantly, or one-tap auto-correct the camera back. It does not touch your captures, your catalog, or your files.

Which cameras are supported?

If Capture One Pro can tether it, you're covered — Canon, Nikon, Sony, Phase One, Fujifilm and more all get the disconnect alarm, live HUD and Tether Doctor, because the app reads Capture One rather than the camera. The shutter/aperture/ISO guards work wherever Capture One exposes those values (full on most bodies, partial on Leica). One exception: Hasselblad tethers in Phocus, not Capture One, so it isn't supported. See the full compatibility breakdown.

Does it work with Lightroom?

No — Capture One only. Lightroom doesn't expose your camera's live settings, tether state or disconnects to other apps (its plugin SDK is catalog-only), so the disconnect alarm, live HUD and shutter/aperture guards simply can't be built against it. Capture Companion reads Capture One's scripting API — that's what makes all of it possible.

Does it need internet?

Only once — to activate your licence. After that it runs on your Mac with no telemetry and no analytics. The only servers it ever contacts are (1) your own router on your local network, and (2) Lemon Squeezy, to activate and occasionally re-check your licence (it sends just your licence key, never your photos or shoots). On set it works fully offline.

Will it slow Capture One down or interfere with captures?

No. It polls Capture One's published AppleScript API once a second — the same way Capture One Live and Capture Pilot do. It doesn't intercept files, doesn't sit between camera and computer, and doesn't run during fullscreen capture playback.

Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?

By design. The things that make Capture Companion useful — reading your router's signal, talking to Capture One via AppleScript, and running quietly in the background — are exactly what the App Store sandbox blocks. So it's a direct download: signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens cleanly with no warnings. And the bonus of no sandbox is no telemetry either — it stays 100% local.

What happens after I buy?

You get an email with the download link and an unlock code. The DMG is signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens with no scary warnings. Drop it in /Applications, sign in once with your unlock code, and you're done. License works on up to 2 Macs you own.

Refunds?

14 days, no questions. If it doesn't earn its keep on your next shoot, email us and we'll refund you.

Still stuck, or want to ask before you buy? Get support →

Built by a working photographer who lost too many frames to bad tethers, drifting shutters and silent disconnects — and decided to fix it once, properly, in software.

— Made by DigiOp, Dublin.