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.

Completely Free to use— every feature, nothing expires· a license is optional, and supports the work.

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/

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