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What you’re working with

• 64 pads, each holding a sample of any length, as far as your device’s memory allows. See How Koala is organised.
• Instruments on pads. A pad can also hold the Quokka synth, the Chopper, MIDI out or a third-party plugin.
• 32 sequences to arrange your song from. See Record and play a sequence.
• 16 live effects you play with several fingers at once. See How the live effects respond.
• A mixer, sold as a paid add-on on iOS and Android, with four buses and a master channel. Each has five slots for more than 30 effects, and those include a sidechain. See What the mixer gives you.
• Resampling, with live effects on or with a sequence playing through its channel effects. See Resample Koala itself.

The main differences

Settings and screens only some platforms have

Getting it, and what it needs

• iPhone and iPad: the App Store listing asks for iOS or iPadOS 15.0 or later, and showed version 2.0.15 in November 2026.
• Mac: the same listing asks for macOS 12 or later with an Apple M1 chip or later. Koala’s site also offers a macOS download at koalasampler.com/download.
• Windows: download it from the same page. You need Windows 10 version 1903 or later.
• Linux: download it from the same page. Builds cover x86_64 and arm64, including Raspberry Pi, with native Wayland support.
• Android: get it from the Play Store, and check its listing for what your phone needs.
• Price: at the time of writing, in the US store, the app costs $4.99, and the add-ons are extra. Prices can change and vary by region.

What Samurai adds

• Time stretching. STRETCH locks a sample to a number of beats and bars at your song’s tempo, and lets you change its pitch without changing its length. There are five modes: MODERN, RETRO, BEATS, REPITCH and CYCLIC. See Lock a sample to your tempo.
• Pitch bend and the piano roll. Edit pitch and velocity on a grid, with copy and paste, reverse, stretch and legato to hand, and get a pitch bend control beside the keyboard. See Edit pitch in the piano roll and Bend notes with the BEND strip.
• Auto-chop and the Chopper. Slice a sample automatically by threshold, by hand, or lazy-chop it in the MPC style. Or keep everything on one pad and play its slices by note, by velocity, at random or in order. See Chop a sample across your pads and Play slices from one pad with Chopper.
• A three-band EQ for shaping each pad. See Give a pad its own EQ.
• The Quokka synth, a polyphonic synth you load onto a pad, with presets you can store and pass around. See Put the Quokka synth on a pad.
• MIDI-OUT pads, so Koala’s sequencer can play your external hardware. See Play external gear from a pad.
• Automation: move a knob or effect while you record, and the sequence keeps that move, ready for you to edit. See Record and edit automation.
• Pocket Operator sync out. See Sync a Pocket Operator.

What Mixer adds

• The mixer itself, as an extra section of the PERFORM screen. Send pads to its four channels, with up to five effects on each. See What the mixer gives you and Send pads to the buses.
• More than 30 built-in effects, from compressors and filters to delays, reverbs and modulation, plus a vocoder and metering. See Add and arrange effects on a channel.
• Level, mute and solo per channel, so you can set your gain staging and drop channels in and out as you perform. See Set levels, names, mute and solo.
• Up to five effects on the master channel, which give your song its overall character. See Build a mastering chain.
• Third-party plugins, in mixer slots and on pads. On iOS it comes with Mixer, and on macOS and Windows it’s built in. Android has no native plugin format. See Use third-party plugins as effects and Load plugin instruments onto pads.
• Bus options elsewhere in the app: you can resample a single bus and export sequences as BUSES from the export menu. If you also have Samurai, Record and edit automation can reach the mixer’s channels and effects.

Where to buy the add-ons

• Tap MENU, then SETTINGS, open EXTRAS and use GET SAMURAI.
• Or tap MIXER at the bottom right of the PERFORM screen, and Koala offers you the Mixer add-on.

Restore your purchases on a new device

1. 1Tap MENU, then SETTINGS.
2. 2Open the EXTRAS group.
3. 3Tap Restore purchases.

The three things you’ll deal with

Song

What you save and load. Your device’s storage is the only limit on how big a song gets and how many you keep. Koala brings back the state of your last song when it starts, and you can share one as a .koala file. See Start, find and manage songs and Save your work.

Pads and banks

There are 64 pads, split into four banks of 16: A, B, C and D. A pad can hold a sample of any length that fits in your device’s memory, or an instrument: Quokka, the Chopper, MIDI out or a plugin.

Sequences

There are 32 slots, split over four pages. A sequence records which pads play and when. Tap a slot to switch to it, even mid-song, and you can merge sequences, play them live or resample them to a pad. See Record and play a sequence and Copy, combine and colour sequences.

What lives where

Minutes 1–3: get some sounds onto pads

1. 1Go to the SAMPLE screen. The input source starts on your device’s mic, so there’s nothing to set up.
2. 2Tap and hold an empty PAD, and make a noise into the mic.
3. 3Let go to stop recording.
4. 4Tap the pad to hear what you caught.
5. 5Repeat on a few more empty pads. A low thump, a clap and a short “ts” will do for a kick, a snare and a hat.

Minutes 3–5: set up a sequence

1. 1Go to the SEQUENCE screen.
2. 2Double-tap TEMPO to open the tempo menu.
3. 3Set a tempo. Use - and +, tap TAP repeatedly in time, or tap the number and type one in.
4. 4Switch QUANTIZE on, so your notes land on the nearest 1/16 note.
5. 5Tap METRONOME to switch the click on.
6. 6Tap a free SLOT.
7. 7Tap BARS, and use + and - to set the sequence’s length.

Minutes 5–7: record it

1. 1Tap REC to start recording.
2. 2Once the sequencer is running, play your pads along with the click.
3. 3Keep going for another pass if you like. Recording adds to what’s already there, so you can build the beat one sound at a time.
4. 4Tap REC again to switch to playback and listen.
5. 5Made a mess? Tap UNDO.

Minutes 7–8: tidy the notes

1. 1Double-tap the SLOT to open the note grid. Each row is a pad, from bank A pad 1 down to bank D pad 16.
2. 2Tap an empty spot to place a note, or tap a note to remove it.
3. 3Drag the start or end of a note to change its length.
4. 4Tap the cross at the top right to close the grid. It fills the screen, so you can’t reach the other screens until you do.

Minutes 8–10: perform it and keep it

1. 1Go to the PERFORM screen. If the sequence has stopped, tap PLAY to start it again.
2. 2Tap and hold an effect bar to hear it, and let go to stop it. Try a few at once.
3. 3Tap HOLD if you want effects to stay on without your fingers on them.
4. 4Tap PLAY to stop, ready to record a take.
5. 5Tap MENU, then RECORD SONG.
6. 6Tap PLAY to start the recording, and perform.
7. 7Tap PLAY again when you’re done. Stopping the sequencer stops the recording.
8. 8Give the recording a name when Koala asks. It’s a WAV file, and you can then choose where to save it or share it.
9. 9Tap MENU, then SAVE AS, and name your song so you can come back to it.

Where to go next

• Trim and shape your sounds in Open the sample editor and choose what plays.
• Bring in an audio file with Import audio files, then chop it with Chop a sample across your pads.
• Play a melody from one sample with Play a pad like an instrument.
• Try a full walkthrough with Flip a sample into a beat.