WaveLink Bridge for Macro Deck

Drive Elgato Wave Link 3 from your Macro Deck: channel volumes, mutes, mix masters, input gain, outputs and channel FX — with dropdowns that follow what Wave Link actually has, and honest errors when it cannot do something.

Unofficial community plugin. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or maintained by Macro Deck or Elgato. Those names are used only to describe what this plugin integrates with.

What it is

A single-half plugin: C# on .NET 10 talks to Wave Link 3 over a localhost-only WebSocket (JSON-RPC 2.0, the same protocol Elgato's own Stream Deck plugin uses). Nothing leaves your machine.

Half Runs as Language Distributed via Macro Deck plugin Macro Deck 3 integration C# / .NET 10 Macro Deck Store / this repo Wave Link 3 Elgato's audio app (must be running) — Elgato

There is no second half to install and no account, token or pairing step: Wave Link accepts local clients, and the plugin finds its port on its own.

Features

9 actions: set/adjust/mute channel volume, set/toggle mix master, toggle channel FX, set input gain, set output (volume, mute, switch main output), and a status action for troubleshooting. Per-action mix routing: Overall (master), All mixes, or one mix — your Monitor and Stream mixes are controlled independently. Live dropdowns: channels, mixes, effects, inputs and outputs are read from Wave Link, and raw ids stay typeable so hand-built buttons keep working. 3 live wavelink- variables: connected, version, channel count. Show-status diagnostics: connection state, call counters, last error and recent events, in one place. Honest errors: not-connected and not-found instead of silently doing nothing.

Setup

Prerequisites

Tool Needed for Check Macro Deck 3 ≥ 3.0.0-beta.15 running the plugin admin UI footer Elgato Wave Link 3 the thing being controlled running on the same PC .NET 10 SDK building from source dotnet --version → 10.x

Install

Install from the Macro Deck Store once published, or build it yourself:

dotnet build WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial.slnx macrodeck-plugin build --source src/WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial --output ./artifacts

then install the resulting .macroDeckPlugin (see Building). Add buttons in Macro Deck, e.g. Set channel volume for Discord on the Stream mix, or Mute channel for your mic overall.

No configuration is needed: the plugin discovers Wave Link's port from its ws-info.json (falling back to a local port scan) and connects on its own.

Actions reference

Action Needs Notes Set channel volume channel, mix, volume 0–100 Overall sets the master, All mixes sets every mix Adjust channel volume channel, mix, change −100…+100 relative nudge, clamped at 0/100 Mute channel channel, mix, toggle/mute/unmute toggle on All mixes mutes unless everything is already muted Set mix volume mix, volume 0–100 mix master, e.g. Stream mix Mute mix mix, toggle/mute/unmute mix master mute Toggle channel effect channel, effect, toggle/enable/disable effect list follows the selected channel Set input gain input, gain 0–100, mute mode gain and mute are independent; leave either alone Set output output, volume, mute mode, set-as-main volume/mute/main-output switch in one press Show Wave Link status nothing reports diagnostics; always answers, even offline

Every channel/mix/effect/input/output picker accepts a raw id typed by hand, so buttons survive renames and stay copy-pasteable between profiles.

Variables

Variable Type Meaning {{ vars.wavelinkconnected }} boolean whether the plugin currently reaches Wave Link {{ vars.wavelinkversion }} text Wave Link version, e.g. 3.3.0.4529 {{ vars.wavelinkchannelcount }} number how many channels Wave Link currently reports

The three above are read-only and polled by the host. Unknown ids read as unavailable, never as a faked empty value.

Slider binding (two-way volume)

Each channel appears in the variable browser twice: once overall (wavelinkvolgame) and once per mix (wavelinkvolgameheadphones, wavelinkvolgamestream, ...). Bind the Slider widget to the per-mix one (BINDING → Variable) and dragging mirrors the exact cell you see in the Wave Link UI — slide to 5, Wave Link shows 5; slide to 100, it shows 100. The binding writes live while you drag and follows outside changes (Wave Link UI, other buttons) within seconds. No action needed on the slider — use its tap events for extras (e.g. Double Tap → Mute channel).

The overall entry drives the channel master. Per-mix control beyond sliders stays on the actions. Do not feed a slider's absolute value into Adjust channel volume — that action takes a relative nudge; use Set channel volume for absolute values.

Privacy and data handling

Localhost only. Everything is 127.0.0.1; there is no cloud, no telemetry, no analytics, no update pings, and no outbound traffic of any kind. No credentials. Wave Link's local protocol needs no token; the plugin stores nothing (no settings file, no secrets). The only file it reads is Wave Link's own ws-info.json to learn the current port. Logs never contain audio content or personal data — counters, ports and channel names at most.

Known limitations

Windows only, end to end. The plugin ships for Windows (x64) because Wave Link itself is Windows-only software — there is nothing to talk to anywhere else. Button and label visuals can lag a few seconds. Multi-state button states and wavelink- variable labels refresh on Macro Deck's own widget cadence (up to 5 s observed on 3.0.0-beta.15), even though the bridge pushes state in milliseconds and direct reads are instant. Static buttons react instantly. This is host-side refresh behavior, not something the plugin can set — reported upstream. First press after an install/restart can hit the reconnect window. The send path waits 8 s for Wave Link to come back and retries once; only then does it fail. Passive state stays instant. Wave Link picks a new port every launch; a stale port is never trusted — the plugin re-discovers it each time it reconnects, and pings every 15 s so idle connections are not closed. Channel bindings survive restarts: a channel that is merely gone reads as unavailable and resumes on its own; only an id that never named a channel is dropped.

Multi-state mute buttons

Mute channel and Mute mix drive button state: set the button to multi-state and it follows muted vs unmuted live, including changes made in the Wave Link UI or by other buttons. Style each state yourself (label, colours, icon). State refreshes on the host's widget cadence (a few seconds), same as variables.

Repository layout

src/WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial/ the plugin (C#/.NET) - the store package WaveLink/ localhost JSON-RPC client: connection, cache, diagnostics Actions/ 9 actions + shared dropdown/error plumbing Localization/Strings.resx every user-facing string (single language so far) manifest.json identity, icon, per-platform entrypoints macrodeck-build.json one publish target per declared entrypoint tests/WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial.Tests/ harness tests: build, wiring, offline behaviour

Building

dotnet build WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial.slnx dotnet test WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial.slnx macrodeck-plugin build --source src/WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial --output ./artifacts macrodeck-plugin validate --artifact ./artifacts/--win-x64.macroDeckPlugin --level Publication macrodeck-plugin test --project src/WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial --report markdown --output conformance.md

Dependencies are NuGet packages only (MacroDeck., pinned to the host's 3.0.0-beta.15). No third-party DLLs are bundled, and the Wave Link client has zero external dependencies.

Releasing

The Store builds from GitHub, not from uploads: push a tag matching the version, publish a GitHub release, and .github/workflows/release.yml builds, conformance-tests and uploads to the portal. The workflow pins cli-version to the platform minimum (3.0.0-beta.15).

Licensing

MIT (see LICENSE).

All graphics in this repository (src/WaveLinkBridgeUnofficial/Assets/icon.png and AuthorIco.png) were created by the author with AI image generation.

AI disclosure

This project was developed with AI assistance (code written with AI agents), and the plugin icon is AI-generated. The plugin contains no AI functionality at runtime, sends nothing to any AI service, and makes no network connections other than loopback. Declared in the manifest and in the Creator Portal submission, per store guidelines section 9.

Issues and contributions

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. When reporting a problem, please include:

your Macro Deck version and Wave Link version, the Show Wave Link status output (it carries the build identity, counters and recent events, so there is no need to guess which build is installed), whether the button reports not-connected (Wave Link unreachable) or not-found (a channel/mix/effect that Wave Link does not currently have).