LeanBack For Mac

LeanBack is a simple and clean menulet that enables you to quickly and effortlessly cast various Mac applications via your local network.

LeanBack lives in your Mac’s status bar from where you can access its menu and configure it according to your needs and network bandwidth. Consequently, you can configure LeanBack to automatically start at login and view the name of the streamed application along with the stream URL and player code.

On the bad side, you cannot copy the player code nor the long stream URL using the context menu. Thus, you are forced to manually insert the code into HLS-enabled application or device. This can prove to bee a big inconvenience, especially if you have to share the stream address.

By accessing the Streaming Source submenu, you can easily refresh the list with the detected applications and select the app you wish to cast. Oddly enough, the Display Resolution submenu enables you to switch from the 4:3 aspect ratio to the 16:9 format.

More experienced users can explore the Video Encoding submenu and change the video codec, key frame interval, profile level and frame rate value. At the same time, the Audio Encoding menu allows you to change the bitrate value along with the audio codec.

The great thing about LeanBack, is that you can cast apps and stream the video to Roku Streaming player, Apple TV, Chromecast and other HLS compatible devices or Mac applications.

Although, LeanBack crashed a couple of times during our testing period, it proved to be pretty responsive and intuitive. Unfortunately, the quality of the video stream was not impressive and we witnessed long time lag.

Hopefully, the developer will address these issues in future updates and provide the option to stream our casts over the Internet, not just over the local network.