Why does the Mac installer require admin right and a restart? Giving admin rights to an installer requires trust in the vendor. Supertone Shift is just a newborn. I cancelled the installation because of that.
I would love to test the technology without the risk of damaging my computer!
I use the great, free, "Suspicious Package" app [0] to inspect installers like these.
In fact, it was Supertone Shift's installer that prodded me to seek it out (I happened to find and install Shift a couple of weeks ago).
In this case, it needs admin permissions to install to `/Library/Application Support` as well as `/Library/Audio`.
It needs to restart in order for the HAL driver to be loaded (this provides the virtual audio interface for using the app with Teams, Zoom, etc.)
The preinstall/postinstall scripts simply handle the app's directory in Application Support.
I decided it was safe enough, and had some fun playing with it. It contacts what it claims are licensing servers (when it starts), and won't start without it. It wanted to keep contacting those servers constantly, but blocking its network access via Little Snitch didn't prevent it from functioning. The network traffic was in the single-digit kilobyte range, so I felt reasonably confident no audio data was being looted.
I would love to test the technology without the risk of damaging my computer!