tracker

Etymology

track + -er

noun

1. agent noun of track; one who, or that which, tracks or pursues, as a man or dog that follows game.
   1. (US politics) A person employed to follow and monitor a political rival.
      While she and Mr. Fetterman were often in different places, she would turn up at events early so she could shoot and post photos of the crowds, the lines, the people. At most events there was a tracker: a guy from the Oz team who monitored the goings-on. 2022-12-17, Judith Newman, “John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
2. In an organ, a light strip of wood connecting (in path) a key and a pallet, to communicate motion by pulling.
3. (computing) A type of computer software for composing music by aligning notes or samples on parallel timelines.
   Trackers have broken out of the demoscene, are are now in use by thousands of professional musicians. It's not uncommon to hear about people using trackers on DJ forums, and electronic music production communities[…] 2004, dilvie, “new.scene.org”, in alt.music.mods (Usenet)
   Although there were a few game companies outside the Amiga scene that used a tracker format (Epic Mega-Games, for instance), the majority used the better-supported MIDI. 2008, Karen Collins, Game sound
   At the time, tracking chiptunes (i.e. using trackers) was the fundamental method of chipmusic-making. 2018, Dafni Tragaki, Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music
4. (computing) A musician who writes music in a tracker.
   You can always find musicians. There are more trackers than coders, pixelers, organizers, couriers, and designers combined. 1999, Adrian Dunn, “Re: Using a scanned picture in your demo”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (Usenet)
5. (computing) A computer program that monitors something.
   1. (file sharing) Server software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol.
6. (finance) A tracker mortgage.