What is Maestro?
Maestro is an authoring suite for immersive experiences on Apple Vision Pro. You direct scenes on a timeline, and your audience steps inside them.
One suite, three parts
Maestro is built around a simple idea: authoring an immersive experience should feel like editing a film, not writing software. The suite has three parts that share one document format and stay in constant conversation with each other:
- Maestro Studio, the Mac app, is the cutting room: a source monitor and a live 3D program view over a full-width, film-editor-style multi-track timeline, with a media library and inspectors for every parameter. It is where you do the bulk of your composing, timing, and polishing. See the Studio workspace.
- Maestro Vision, the Vision Pro app, puts the same document in the room with you. Walk around your scene, grab entities and move them where they should really be, set keyframes at true scale, trim clips on a floating timeline, and import media straight from Photos or Files. Maestro Vision can pair with a Mac running Maestro Studio, or work fully on its own.
- The player is the playback runtime that performs a finished chapter for an audience on Vision Pro. The player runs your sequences, fires your actions, waits at your gates, and presents everything in the presentation mode you chose.
The open ChapterScript format
Everything you make is saved as ChapterScript, an open, human-readable document
format. A project is a .chapterscript bundle: on disk it is simply a folder
containing a chapter.json document and an assets/ folder with your
media. There is no proprietary database and no lock-in; any compliant player can load the same
bundle you edit, and you can back it up, version it, or hand it to a collaborator like any other
folder of files.
Note. The document you edit in Maestro Studio, the one you sculpt in Maestro Vision, and the one the player performs are the same file. There is no export step between editing and playback.
Live sync: edit on the Mac, watch in the headset
Maestro Studio runs a built-in live server. Put a Vision Pro on the same Wi-Fi network, connect from Maestro Vision, and every save on the Mac appears in the headset live, including edited video, which streams straight from the Mac. Sync runs both ways: edits you make in the headset flow back into the Maestro Studio document too, so a two-person team can have one person timing beats at the keyboard while another places set pieces in the room. See Connecting a Vision Pro and Live sync.
Who it's for, and what you can make
Maestro is for creative authors — directors, exhibit designers, educators, musicians, storytellers — not programmers. If you can arrange clips on a timeline, you can build a spatial experience. Typical projects include:
- Immersive theater: staged scenes that surround the audience, advancing on a tap from the viewer or on their own timed cues.
- Guided tours: museum and site walkthroughs that hold each beat until the visitor is ready, with narration, video panels, and 3D props.
- Spatial storytelling: narrative pieces that mix 360° video backdrops, animated 3D models, spatial audio, and particle effects.
- Ambient installations: looping environmental pieces for lobbies, galleries, and events that run unattended in the player.
Under the hood, a chapter is organized as sequences (scenes) made of steps and actions (timed beats and the things that happen in them), a model that will feel familiar within your first hour.
Which app do I use when?
| You want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Rough out timing, arrange clips, edit many parameters quickly | Maestro Studio |
| Place and scale objects where they belong in a real room | Maestro Vision |
| Set pose keyframes at true scale, judge sightlines and distances | Maestro Vision |
| Import media from a Mac's file system | Maestro Studio |
| Import media from Photos or Files on the headset | Maestro Vision |
| Author with no Mac available at all | Maestro Vision in solo mode |
| Preview a sequence while you edit it | Either: Maestro Studio's viewport, or Maestro Vision live-synced |
| Perform the finished chapter for an audience | The player |
Tip. The best workflow uses both editors at once: Maestro Studio for speed, Maestro Vision for truth. Keep them connected and every save crosses the room the moment you make it.
Where to start
Head to Install & set up to get both apps running, then build something real in Your first chapter, a complete beginner tutorial that takes you from an empty project to an immersive scene playing live in a headset.