tracker

plural trackers

1. agentAgent noun of track; one who, or that which, tracks or pursues, as a man or dog that follows game.

   1 more example

   On Friday night, eight US Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers took off from Altus, Oklahoma, according to data from FlightRadar24. Over Kansas the tankers refueled two groups of planes, identified on air traffic control audio by their callsigns MYTEE11 FLT and MYTEE21 FLT. The callsign MYTEE has previously been associated with special activity flights by B-2 bombers, and multiple flight trackers on social media said the planes being refueled were B-2 bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

   2025 June 21, Thomas Bordeaux, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen, “US moves B-2 bombers as Trump weighs Iran options”, in CNN

   1. USgovernmentA 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 December 17, Judith Newman, “John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Dec 2022

   2. AustraliaAn Indigenous Australian employed by the law to track down fugitives and missing persons.

      The police picked him up, reared him, and he had been a tracker ever since, except for periodical walk-abouts.

      1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 6

2. In an organ, a light strip of wood connecting (in path) a key and a pallet, to communicate motion by pulling.
3. computingA type of computer software for composing music by aligning notes or samples on parallel timelines.

   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

   2 more examples

   Trackers have broken out of the demoscene, are are^([sic]) 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

4. computingA 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. computingA computer program that monitors something.
   1. file sharingcomputingServer software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol.
6. businessA tracker mortgage.
7. in compoundsAn album with the specified number of tracks.

   "Typical" is the best song on this nine-tracker, and ironically, the record itself is good, but typical.

   1985, Maximum Rocknroll, number 24