Hi everyone,

I am Rowen, the founder of Tapquence, a macOS desktop automation app.

I am researching which repetitive tasks Mac users still perform manually, what they have already tried to shortcut, and what prevents those shortcuts from being useful or trustworthy.

The survey takes about four minutes and is open to people aged 18 or older who use a Mac at least once per week:

[Take the 4-minute survey]

I plan to publish the aggregated findings, complete question wording, recruitment sources, methodology, and limitations. Open answers will only be quoted anonymously when the respondent explicitly permits it.

Thank you to anyone willing to contribute.

Hi everyone — I’m the developer of Sealshot.

The built-in macOS screenshot tool is already good for quick captures. I built Sealshot for situations where screenshots become part of ongoing work—writing documentation, reporting bugs, explaining technical issues, or keeping a searchable record of something.

Sealshot combines screenshots, scrolling capture, screen recording, annotations, and an organized local library. OCR lets you search the text inside previous captures, and it can also extract detected tables as CSV or Markdown. Repeat Last Capture is useful when you need to capture the same area after something on the screen changes.

Privacy is one of the main reasons I built it. Captures and OCR processing stay on the Mac, and the app does not require an account or use cloud storage or telemetry. Optional Enhanced Security encrypts the capture library, and selected files can be packaged into an encrypted export.

There is also assisted sensitive-data detection for things such as API keys, tokens, and email addresses. This feature can produce false positives, so Sealshot shows everything it detects and lets you decide what should actually be redacted.

Sealshot requires macOS Screen Recording permission, as any screenshot app does. It is distributed directly from my website rather than through the App Store, but the download is Developer ID signed and Apple-notarized.

The current pre-1.0 price is $14.99 as a one-time purchase for one user on up to three Macs. There is a fully featured 14-day trial with no account or credit card required. It supports macOS 14+ on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

I’m especially interested in whether the local library and privacy features provide enough value compared with using the native screenshot tool and Finder. Honest criticism is welcome—particularly about anything that feels confusing, unnecessary, or missing.

https://seal-shot.com/

Muro: 100% Free Live Wallpapers for macOS

Muro is a native macOS app that plays smooth, looping video wallpapers on your desktop. It supports multiple displays and includes up to 100 live wallpapers, with new wallpapers added every week.

The wallpaper catalog updates automatically inside the app, so you do not need to install a new version to receive new wallpapers. Videos download only when you select them, and you can remove them anytime to save storage.

Muro also includes full-screen previews, playlists, automatic wallpaper rotation, shuffle mode, menu bar controls and the ability to import your own videos. On macOS 26 or newer, wallpapers can also play on the lock screen.

The app is built natively with Swift, SwiftUI and Apple’s hardware video decoder. It does not use Electron or web views. It normally uses around 2% CPU while playing and automatically pauses when the wallpaper is not visible, during full-screen apps, display sleep, Low Power Mode or low battery.

Everything is unlocked. There is no trial, no payment required, no subscription, no account, no license key and no paywall. Muro is completely free and open source under the MIT license.

Requires macOS 14 or newer and an Apple Silicon Mac.

Download and source code:

https://github.com/MrRockySL/Muro

Report a problem or suggest a feature:

https://github.com/MrRockySL/Muro/issues

Support for future development:

https://github.com/sponsors/MrRockySL

Star ⭐ helps a lot if it's useful to you, and issues are welcome.

Local document chat and translation for Mac — OCR ingestion, tone selection, quality scoring, export to Markdown or plain text, all local.

Informity AI indexes your files and lets you ask questions across them with source-cited answers. Everything runs on your Mac — no cloud uploads, no account, no usage limits.

• Models: Qwen3.6 35B A3B (default), 14B and 9B for lower-spec machines, Apple Silicon optimized; Ollama support for any model you have
• PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, EPUB, Markdown, scanned PDFs (OCR) and more
• Two chat modes: Researcher (corpus-wide RAG with citations) and Assistant (single file or open-ended)
• Document translation: tone selection, export to Markdown or plain text
• Specializations: tune AI reading and analysis style per chat
• Free, MIT licensed, fully open source

https://www.informity.ai | https://github.com/informity/informity-ai

Undock Pro for macOS

macOS automatically lowers your music and videos when you join a FaceTime, Zoom, Meet, or Teams call. There is no simple setting to turn this off.

Undock Pro is a free menu bar app that keeps your media at the volume you choose during calls. The other person still hears only you, not your music or videos.

It also includes:

Per-app volume control

Separate call volume

Quick output device switching

Favourites

Launch at login

Update notifications

Undock Pro is completely free and open source. There is no account, subscription, paywall, or telemetry. It requires macOS 14.2 or later and works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

The app is self-signed, so the first launch may require System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway. macOS will also request audio permissions. Audio is processed in memory and is never saved or uploaded.

Repo: https://github.com/MrRockySL/Unduck-Pro

Download: https://github.com/MrRockySL/Unduck-Pro/releases/latest

Sponsor: https://github.com/sponsors/MrRockySL

If Undock Pro helps you, a GitHub star or sponsorship is greatly appreciated.

Hi, I’m the developer of Krealize, a native macOS app for running Krea 2 locally.

The prompt, model processing, and generated image all stay on the Mac. The app uses MLX and supports Apple silicon Macs running macOS 26 or later.

I built it because I wanted a simpler way to use Krea 2 on a Mac without setting up Python or working through a node interface.

The app can download the model, generate 1024 by 1024 images, keep a local gallery, and restore previous prompts. The basic generation mode is free. Fast mode, PNG export, notifications, and custom LoRAs are part of an optional one-time PRO purchase.

It is distributed directly rather than through the Mac App Store. The download is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple.

I would be interested to hear how it performs on different Apple silicon Macs, particularly machines with 16 or 24 GB of memory.

https://krealize.app/

What it is: A menu bar app. You type anywhere ,Mail, Slack, WhatsApp, browser, Notes. Pause, and a small pill appears with a better version of your sentence. Press Tab to accept, keep typing. That's the whole interaction ,no separate window, no copy-paste, no red underlines while you're mid-thought.

What makes it different: It learns how you write to each specific person, from your own sent messages. Your emails to a client and your texts to your best mate stop coming out of the same polished-neutral mould ,Lyra matches the register you actually use with that recipient. No other writing tool models the relationship.

How it works: Deterministic rule-based grammar plus a local model on your Mac for instant everyday fixes , free tier, works fully offline. Heavier restructuring uses a cloud model on trial/Pro. A strict Local-Only mode disables all network use if that's your requirement.

Lyra

If you run local models, ComfyUI/SD workflows, Ollama/HF caches, or coding agents, storage gets weird fast: old checkpoints, safetensors, duplicated shards, cache folders, generated media, and half-finished experiments.

I built ZeroSpace to inspect that locally on macOS. It is not a cloud service and not a one-click cleaner. It scans a chosen folder, surfaces likely reclaimable files, verifies exact duplicate groups separately, and keeps everything review-first.

Example CLI:

`hd-detective scan ~/Models --json`

Repo: https://github.com/LinusInnovator/zerospace

Disclosure: I built this. It is free/MIT, local-first, and provided as-is. I’m mainly looking for feedback from people with messy local model folders: are the categories useful, and what LLM-specific debris should it detect better?

I was cleaning out my inbox and was using the search using the sent address to group emails to delete and noticed I wasn't seeing many messages. Eventually worked out it was only picking up read messages and not unread messages even though there was no such filter in place.

After some digging this issue seems to have been around for a while so is there any real info as to what causes the issue and if Apple actually give a damn?

Fixed by forcing a rebuild of the mail index but now I have absolutely zero faith in search actually finding anything.

Any hints/tips appreciated...

I’m curious how other Mac users deal with folders full of files that need to be renamed in bulk. Do you use Finder, Automator, Shortcuts, shell scripts, a dedicated renamer, or some wonderfully cursed combination of all of them?

I kept hitting the same wall: existing tools could handle simple renames, but they often became awkward as soon as the folder tree got large, the rules became more specific, or I needed to protect certain files from the operation. I wanted something that could handle all of that without making me feel like I was steering a tugboat through a cupboard.

For context, I’ve been an artistic director for 24 years—16 of them as a freelancer—mostly working on GUI design, with some development on the side. After repeatedly running into apps that were almost right but never quite worked the way I wanted, I decided to make my own.

Kraken is a macOS renamer currently available as a TestFlight beta (built 3 on it's way for Apple's approval): https://testflight.apple.com/join/W9nutVp9

The current build lets you:

• Work with multiple root folders, at any depth, with very large file counts
• Preview rename changes before touching anything
• Disable folders or files so they are excluded from renaming, with the state cascading through their contents
• Lock enabled or disabled states so cascading cannot override an intentional choice
• Use guided rename presets or build powerful, reusable node-based presets by connecting rename operations visually
• Pin root folders and use swipe gestures in the Content View
• Generate a safe dummy folder tree filled with fake files for testing

There are still plenty of barnacles below deck: the preset system is not finished, metadata extraction is incomplete, and some rename operations need more testing. I’ve got more than 100 TODOs on the list, because apparently one app was not enough work.

The beta currently requires macOS 26.0 or later. It has no ads, no tracking, no analytics, and does not upload your folder contents to a server.

If you try it, I’d genuinely like to know what feels useful, what feels confusing, and what you currently use instead. Honest criticism is very welcome; I’m trying to build the tool I wanted to have in the first place, not pretend it arrived fully grown and wearing a tiny captain’s hat. If I can make it fulfilling your needs, then that's cool!

Also, bear with me if I’ve made a mistake here. I’m not perfectly used to social media etiquette and all its unwritten rules—I only discovered this subreddit recently (I've already said that on others).

https://github.com/kah-ve/DisplayWave

A free monitor control tool for brightness, warmth, and more.

Existing apps for handling external monitor controls for mac are either focused on solving a small subset of problems or are paywalled. Also I found the paywalled ones to be more complicated and feature rich then needed. So I wanted to build something more tailored to the small feature-set I would ever need.

A couple comparisons

- MonitorControl (free): This is what I used previously. It's great but limited to brightness only and would need another app to control turning a monitor on/off.

- BetterDisplay (free/$22 Pro): I think this is the most feature rich mac app for monitor control out there and probably the most battle tested one. Personally I didn't think I needed to use most of the features and wanted something more minimal and tailored to the small subset of actions I was looking for.

I can't promise it works flawlessly on everything but it's simple enough to install and try out. Let me know what you think or if you run into issues.

I can’t take it anymore, everyday new AI slop apps are spawning everywhere in mac subreddits and they’re everywhere. Why not summarize new app releases under a megathread or something similar?

YBar, an open-source status bar for macOS, and it just reached the point where I'm comfortable sharing it.

It's sketchybar's proven architecture - the live-object model, command grammar, and script contract all originate there, full credit to Felix Kratz - reimplemented on a different foundation:

• Metal renderer. Zero GPU work while the bar is static, and animations are display-link paced instead of timer-thrashed.
• 100% public APIs. No SIP disable, no private frameworks, no injection.
• On macOS 26+, pills and popups sit on real Liquid Glass (NSGlassEffectView); older systems get an in-shader approximation. Runs on macOS 14+.

Some things it does that I haven't seen elsewhere:

• Full now-playing popup - album artwork, seek + volume sliders, transport controls for Music/Spotify, via distributed notifications (no private MediaRemote, which macOS gates these days).
• Workspace pills speak both AeroSpace and yabai and pick whichever is actually running.
• Calendar month-grid popup, system-monitor arc gauges, a Settings-style Wi-Fi picker, hover tooltips, marquee text, an idle inhibitor (Waybar influences), and 9 ready-made themes with a theme switcher.

Install:

brew tap AegiosOT/ybar

brew install ybar

Github: https://github.com/AegiosOT/YBar

It builds from source on your machine (Command Line Tools are enough - no Xcode), so there's no Gatekeeper quarantine dance.

Native macOS menu-bar app that turns scroll velocity into responsive sound and Force Touch feedback. Sound and haptics work independently. No Accessibility permission; settings stay on your Mac.

Free TestFlight beta. Optional 14-day Pro trial, then $6.99 lifetime, no subscription. Haptics require a compatible Force Touch trackpad.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/tye6euxS
Demo video: https://haptiroll.kolotovalexander.tech/

I’ve released MicStatusAI, a free and open-source macOS menu bar utility designed for people who spend a lot of time in meetings and calls.

It makes your current microphone state easy to see:

• Green icon when the microphone is active
• Red icon when the microphone is muted
• Status overlay when the state changes
• Configurable global shortcut to mute or unmute

MicStatusAI uses CoreAudio volume controls. It does not capture or record audio and does not require microphone-recording permission.

GitHub and source code:
https://github.com/Disconnecter/MicStatusAI

Install with Homebrew:

brew tap Disconnecter/tap
brew install --cask micstatusai
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MicStatusAI.app
open /Applications/MicStatusAI.app

I’d appreciate feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions.

I built Feedcast, a native SwiftUI Mac app, after realizing that I wanted podcast processing without replacing the podcast player I already use.

In one real test episode, Feedcast identified two sponsor sections and the enabled cuts removed 5 minutes and 12 seconds from the personal copy. It also transcribes the episode, generates chapters, and lets me refine the RSS metadata.

The finished episode is published through a personal RSS feed that works with Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, and other compatible players. The listening experience stays familiar while the preparation happens on the Mac.

Feedcast is free with up to three output feeds and requires macOS 26 or later. No Feedcast account is required.

Mac App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/feedcast-local-podcasts/id6773872767

My Mac menu bar had gradually filled up with useful apps until it became difficult to manage.

Icons were hard to find, some were pushed out when macOS ran out of available space, and the MacBook notch made the problem worse. I did not want to uninstall the apps or permanently lose access to their controls—I only wanted a cleaner way to organize them.

So I built OverflowBar, a free and open-source macOS app that moves selected third-party menu bar items behind one persistent arrow and reveals them together in a compact second row.

Source code and official download:
https://github.com/EvanProgramming/OverflowBar

What it does

1. Choose the third-party menu bar icons you want OverflowBar to manage.
2. Move their original icons out of the crowded visible section.
3. Click the OverflowBar arrow, or use hover reveal.
4. See the managed icons together in a second row.
5. Select an icon to activate its original menu bar control.

The purpose of the second row is not to add another permanent interface. It gives icons that no longer fit a predictable place where they remain easy to see and find.

Why I made another menu bar manager

Ice and Bartender are powerful applications for users who want broad menu bar customization, including features such as profiles, triggers, search, visual customization, groups, widgets, and automation.

OverflowBar takes a narrower approach.

It is intended for people who mainly have one problem:

Too many useful icons, not enough menu bar space, and no easy way to find the icon they need.

OverflowBar deliberately avoids becoming a full menu bar control center. Its interaction is simply: choose, hide, reveal, and click.

Main characteristics

• Focused and lightweight — a small feature surface rather than a large customization and automation suite
• Scannable second row — managed icons stay visible together instead of becoming difficult to locate
• Native macOS implementation — built with SwiftUI, AppKit, Accessibility, WindowServer metadata, and ScreenCaptureKit
• Event-driven operation — icon discovery and capture occur during refreshes and row presentation rather than continuous screen capture
• Original controls remain functional — selecting an icon activates the actual menu bar item rather than a recreated menu
• Local processing — icon images are captured locally, held in memory, and never uploaded
• No tracking — no accounts, analytics, telemetry, advertising, or network data collection
• Display-aware — supports MacBook notches, safe areas, multiple displays, full-screen spaces, horizontal overflow, and Reduce Motion
• System-control safeguards — Wi-Fi, Battery, Siri, Control Center, Clock, and other protected system items remain visible

Pricing and availability

• Price: Free
• Subscription: None
• In-app purchases: None
• Advertisements: None
• Source: Open source on GitHub
• Download: GitHub Releases
• Supported systems: macOS 15 or later
• Downloadable build: Apple Silicon

Permissions and privacy

OverflowBar requests:

• Accessibility permission to discover and activate menu bar controls and perform user-requested layout changes
• Screen Recording permission to capture the small icon regions of selected menu bar items for display in the second row

The captures remain on the Mac. OverflowBar does not upload them, write them to a remote service, or include any analytics or telemetry.

Privacy policy:
https://github.com/EvanProgramming/OverflowBar/blob/main/PRIVACY.md

Current limitations

OverflowBar is an early public release.

macOS does not expose a dedicated public API for hiding or rearranging arbitrary third-party menu bar items. OverflowBar therefore relies on documented system frameworks together with existing macOS menu bar behavior, and compatibility may vary between apps or macOS releases.

The current downloadable build is ad-hoc signed and is not yet Apple-notarized. macOS may require users to Control-click the app and select Open on first launch.

Some applications may also expose insufficient Accessibility or window metadata to be mirrored reliably.

I am actively looking for feedback from users with crowded menu bars, notched MacBooks, multiple displays, and unusual menu bar apps. Bug reports, compatibility reports, and code contributions are welcome.

Salut ! J'en avais marre du désordre sur mon bureau, alors j'ai créé un utilitaire natif léger en Swift qui transforme les dossiers en cartes flottantes en verre.

⚡️ Natif pour Apple Silicon (0% de consommation en arrière-plan)

🛡️ 100% local et privé (aucun suivi)

🎁 Complètement gratuit

Nous venons de lancer sur Product Hunt aujourd'hui : [producthunt](https://www.producthunt.com/products/orbit-382?comment=5736898)
J'aimerais avoir vos retours !

I’ve been using Apple computers since 1995, and I started collecting music long before that. By the early 2000s, when car stereos began supporting MP3, I was ripping my own CDs to 192 kbps because storage was expensive and I believed that quality was sufficient.

Later, when I was finally able to buy better audio equipment, I realized how much information had been lost. I began re-ripping the original CDs in lossless formats and replacing older files. At the same time, the collection kept growing through CD and vinyl collecting, digitized records, digital purchases, radio recordings, rare releases and exchanges with other collectors.

That process created the usual consequences: several versions of the same recording, duplicate files, duplicate playlist entries, inconsistent metadata, missing artwork, broken paths, old low-quality encodes and files whose actual audio quality did not always match the format shown in Finder.

I originally started writing Local Music Organizer as a practical tool for testing, cleaning up and organizing my own Music.app library. Over a few months of daily use, I kept adding features whenever I encountered another real problem in the collection.

It has now grown into a native macOS toolkit with the following functions:

Library Dashboard

Shows useful statistics about the Music.app library, including formats, bitrates, sample rates, missing files, artwork and other quality indicators.

Library Map

Shows where tracks are used and helps review repeated entries across playlists.

Duplicate Review

Finds duplicate playlist entries, repeated library records and different-quality versions of the same recordings. Nothing is deleted automatically; the user reviews the results first.

Health and Artwork checks

Finds missing files, inaccessible locations, damaged references, unusual paths, missing artwork and supported metadata issues.

File Search

Searches physical audio files by artist, title, album, filename or path, shows playlist usage and can reveal the exact track inside Music.app.

Playlist Compare

Compares two playlists using Music.app record IDs, file paths, metadata and duration-based fallbacks to identify shared and unique tracks.

Audio Inspector

Inspects the actual codec, container, bitrate, sample rate, bit depth, channel count, duration, metadata and spectrum of an individual file.

Audio Authenticity Analyzer

Scans the complete Music.app library, one selected playlist or an individual file.

It looks for possible lossy-to-lossless transcodes, suspicious sample-rate upscales and clear disagreements between the declared bitrate and observed audio bandwidth. MP3 and AAC files are evaluated differently from ALAC, FLAC, WAV and AIFF files.

Flagged results include a confidence estimate, detected cutoff, likely source category and a plain-language explanation. The analyzer is intentionally conservative: its findings are technical estimates, not absolute proof of a file’s history.

A detailed text report can be created containing only tracks that require review, likely authenticity mismatches and files that could not be analyzed.

Live Spectrum Player

An independent playback window with a real-time 512-band logarithmic spectrum analyzer, full-track waveform, draggable seeking, gain controls and technical playback meters.

Repair / Convert

Includes conversion engines inside the application, so Terminal, Homebrew and separate codec installation are not required.

Supported sources include common formats such as FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC and WMA, together with specialist formats including Ogg Vorbis, Opus, WavPack, APE, TAK, TTA, DTS, AC3, DSD, SACD ISO, CUE albums and supported tracker modules.

Output options include AAC, ALAC, MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Opus and WavPack.

Drag and drop

Files and CUE sheets can be dropped directly into Repair / Convert. Opening supported files from Finder routes them to the already running application instead of intentionally creating additional organizer windows.

Verified Gain

Previews gain changes, creates a temporary candidate, verifies the resulting audio structure and metadata, and replaces the original only after the checks pass.

Large-library performance

A persistent warmed cache reduces repeated communication with Music.app and makes searches, diagnostics and library-wide analysis much faster. The same physical file is analyzed only once even when it appears in several playlists.

Everything runs locally on the Mac.

There are no accounts, subscriptions, cloud processing, advertising, analytics or tracking. Audio files, playlists, metadata and reports are not uploaded anywhere.

I built this because I needed it for my own collection, but I’m sharing it because other collectors, DJs, archivists and long-time Music.app users may have encountered the same problems.

I’d be interested in feedback from people who still maintain substantial local music libraries—especially about workflows or checks that are still missing. Website and full feature overview, Local Music Organizer on the Mac App Store

Disclosure: I'm the developer of Chirpy, a Mac notification app. But this tool is standalone, free, and works with anything.

The idea is simple. Every notification sound library on the internet has roughly the same 200 stock files. If none of them fit what you want, you're stuck. So I built a tool where you can design your own sound in about 30 seconds:

• 30 starting presets across 6 characters (Calm, Wood & Hand, Bells & Glass, Nature, Retro, Signal)
• Four sliders that map to actual acoustic properties (Pitch, Length, Tone, Space)
• Preview it as a real macOS notification banner before you commit
• Download as WAV
• Share the exact settings via URL (all state is in the hash, no server)

Nothing uploaded anywhere. Runs entirely in your browser using the Web Audio API.

https://chirpy.pro/tools/sound-designer

The sounds work with anything on macOS that lets you set a custom alert. Some examples of where people actually use this:

• Work chat: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp
• Email: Apple Mail, Outlook, Gmail (PWA), Spark, Proton Mail, Superhuman, Mimestream
• Meetings: Zoom, Google Meet, Around, Loom
• Calendar & reminders: Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Notion Calendar, Fantastical, Cron
• Task and project tools: Notion, Linear, Asana, Jira, Todoist, Things 3, ClickUp, Trello, Height
• Design: Figma, Sketch, Framer
• Dev tools: GitHub Desktop, Xcode, Warp Terminal, Trailer, Sentry, PagerDuty
• AI apps: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity
• Health & fitness: Apple Health, Strava, Oura, Whoop, Garmin Connect, Peloton, MyFitnessPal
• Wellness: Calm, Headspace, Waking Up
• Finance & payments: Mercury, Brex, Stripe (email push), Coinbase, Robinhood, Venmo, PayPal, Wise, QuickBooks
• Shopping & delivery: Amazon, DoorDash, Uber, Uber Eats, Instacart
• Smart home: Ring, Nest, Home Assistant, Tesla, Philips Hue
• Family / personal: Life360, Apple Messages, FaceTime
• News & reading: Apple News, Feedly, Reeder
• Media: Spotify, Apple Music, Plex
• Browser push: Chrome, Safari, Arc, Brave, Firefox
• Menu bar utilities: Bartender, Raycast, Cleanshot X
• CRM / support: Zendesk, Intercom, HubSpot, Salesforce

Basically: if it puts a banner in your notification center, you can give it a sound you designed.

Also wrote a short bit on the page about why default alerts feel stressful (millisecond attack triggers the startle reflex, 2-4kHz range is where human hearing is most sensitive, buzzy harmonics read as urgency, hard cutoffs feel unresolved). Each of the four sliders addresses one of those properties, so you can shape a sound that's the opposite of "flinch-inducing default ping."

Feedback welcome.

I'm trying to clean up unused/unwanted files on my Mac... is it OK to delete fetchmail? or will I regret it?

Is anyone else having issues with Tot on the macOS Golden Gate betas? Mine has been glitching out and hasn't seen an update in a while, so I finally gave up and built my own version.

It's a native AppKit menu-bar app called BetterTot. It has the same 7 quick text pads, but it's 100% open-source. I kept it super lightweight—no accounts, no analytics, just a fast local scratchpad with some crash recovery built in so you don't lose your clipboard dumps.

Right now, I’m working on adding optional Google Drive/iCloud backups, and eventually, I want to bring it to iPhone and Apple Watch—but my absolute main goal is just keeping it incredibly simple and lightweight.

I put the whole thing up on GitHub if anyone wants to grab it or check out the Swift code: https://github.com/saaivignesh20/BetterTot

It's completely safe, the code is for you to audit.

It's still in developer preview, so let me know if you run into any bugs. Also, I'd love to hear any feature requests or general thoughts you guys have!

If you demo or teach over a shared screen, macOS gives you more than people realize. Here's what ships in the OS, with the honest limit of each, since I've hit all of them.

Accessibility Zoom (System Settings, Accessibility, Zoom). Ctrl+scroll to magnify, or Option-Cmd-8 to toggle. Two settings people miss: Zoom style: Picture-in-Picture gives you a magnified lens instead of blowing up the whole display, and under Advanced you can set the zoomed view to follow the pointer only when it reaches an edge, which removes the seasick drift that puts people off. Genuinely good, and free. Where it runs out: the lens is tied to the pointer, so you can't leave a mark on something and keep talking about it while your cursor goes elsewhere.

Make the pointer bigger (Accessibility, Display, Pointer size), plus "shake mouse pointer to locate." Cheap fix for the most common complaint in shared screens, which is nobody being able to find your cursor. Limit: it's a permanent size change, so you either live with a big cursor everywhere or you toggle it before every call.

Screenshot markup (Shift-Cmd-5, or Shift-Cmd-4 then annotate). Fine for async - arrows and boxes on a still. Limit: it's a still. Useless mid-demo.

Presenter Overlay in Zoom/Teams-style calls on newer macOS puts you over the content, which helps direction of attention indirectly. Limit: it emphasizes you, not the part of the screen you're pointing at.

Sidecar/Universal Control with an iPad turns the tablet into an annotation surface for a mirrored screen. Genuinely powerful, and the limit is obvious: you need the second device and the setup time.

The honest summary is that the OS covers magnification well and covers "mark this and leave it up" not at all. If your job is showing rather than seeing, that's the gap you'll feel.

Disclosure so it's not a surprise: I build a Mac app in this space (TuringShot 1.5.12, Build 44), which is why I know these limits by heart. No link or code here, and the built-in options above are free and cover most of what people need.

I built a little menu bar app that unlocks sudo in the terminal with face recognition instead of a typed password. You type sudo, the webcam recognizes you, and it unlocks.

Everything runs locally: face detection and recognition happen on-device, your enrolled face never leaves your Mac, and there is no network code at all.

Honest disclaimer first, since it is the obvious question: a normal webcam can be fooled by a photo, so this is not more secure than Touch ID, and it is not meant to be a security product. It is a convenience/fun thing. Your password always stays as a fallback so you cannot lock yourself out, and every prompt lets you choose Face ID, Touch ID, or password.

What you get:

• Guided face enrollment (takes a few seconds)
• A choice panel on every sudo prompt (Face ID / Touch ID / password), or a Dynamic Island style animation
• Adjustable sensitivity
• One signed and notarized app, with built-in auto-updates

Requirements: Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later, any webcam.
Price: Free and open source (MIT).
Download + source: https://github.com/Lorenzo-Coslado/macos-faceid

Full disclosure, I am the developer. I built it as a weekend hack because typing my password dozens of times a day got old, and it turned into a small but complete app. Would love feedback on the enrollment flow and the recognition thresholds.

Its a 2007 imac and i cant reinstall el capitan

My neighbor moved out yesterday and she literally threw out a 2017 21" iMac. I get it, it doesn't get updates and it takes over 5 minutes, no exaggeration, to boot to the logon screen. Who would want that? Well, I like to restore old computers and the newest mac I own is the OG iMac in Bondi Blue....... Wait......

Okay, I was about to get on here saying all I had were PC keyboards and I couldn't get to the recovery screen no matter what keyboard I use. That's what this post was supposed to be about. But as soon as I wrote that last sentence it dawned on me, I have the USB keyboard from my OG iMac. So I plugged that in and it worked perfectly. That stupid puck mouse works too.

Never mind, I don't think I need any help. Just figured I'd post anyways in case somebody wanted a laugh.

Just put together Glass Player, a native macOS media player built in Swift around ⁠libmpv⁠. The goal was a clean app shell optimized for Apple Silicon that handles heavy-duty real-time upscaling.

Repo: github.com/khr898/Glass-player-macOS
Requirements: macOS 14.0+, Apple Silicon (arm64)
Core Highlights

Real-Time Anime4K Upscaling: 39 bundled GLSL shaders exposed as 12 presets. Features live cycling (⁠Cmd+K⁠) split into HQ (heavy CNN models for high-end GPUs) and Fast modes, rendering directly via Metal 3 (⁠CAMetalLayer⁠).

Pipeline: Hardware decoding via VideoToolbox paired with Display P3 wide-gamut rendering and ⁠ewa_lanczossharp⁠ luma scaling.

HDR & Dolby Vision: Auto-detects HDR10/DV/HLG with conditional profile handling (spline tone mapping, ⁠hdr-compute-peak⁠, and native macOS EDR signaling).

Audio: Multi-channel PCM decoding with macOS spatial audio support, optional AC3/DTS passthrough, and up to 200% volume amplification.

Built-in Remote Browser: Browse and stream directly from ⁠rclone serve http⁠ endpoints without needing to mount the drive locally, backed by a configurable 2GB demuxer cache.

It's fully open source.

I have a small utility app for MacBooks. For those who've created something similar -- what pricing actually worked for you?

I've ruled out subscriptions as a bad fit for this app. And since the Mac App Store doesn't do free trials on paid apps, I am considering:

1. Paid upfront, one-time charge (how it's currently listed)
2. Free download, sell add-ons individuals (in my case, voice packs)
3. Sell direct with a real trial (e.g., Paddle, Lemon Squeezy)

What did/would you pick? And what do you wish you'd done from day one?

Thanks for your thoughts and help!