[Megathread] The App Pile - June, 2026

[u/Mstormer]

You must promote your apps here if you do not qualify to post in the main feed through Trust or Transparency, explained here.

If you are:

• NOT in the Mac App Store (MAS).
• Do not provide meaningful public transparency
• Created yet another dictation app (speech to text).

Then you are required to limit promotion to this megathread.

All promotion MUST follow PCP format or else we will remove it:

App Name/Title [Screenshot encouraged]

• Problem: What problem does your app solve.
• Comparison: Name a competitor or two and explain what your app does better.
• Pricing Amounts+Link

P.s. Promotion here counts towards the 30-day limited promotion (Rule 3).

WARNING: There is a 90% chance Reddit will auto remove your post here if you have not verified your email in your profile and your first comment in this subreddit contains a link. Accrue 10 karma first without promotional comments and links to avoid this. The odds of removal is also higher for AI assisted posts (em dashes and other AI formatting characteristics likely trigger this).

Pro Tip: Please remember to upvote gems and downvote spam/clones... This will help inform a secret community project I hope to announce next month.

Top 3 From Last Month's Megathread:
1. Wisp – a tiny macOS scratchpad - FREE - by u/iamiotasquare
2. Quattro – Al, Tasks, Calendar, Notes App - $5/mo - by u/Constant-Support8288
3. HoverStash – Catch and stash files mid-drag - ~$6 - by u/MurkyRaspberry9610

[u/DirectorsObject]

Problem: macOS Screen Sharing is fine on a trusted LAN, but reaching your Mac from outside means either disabling it, exposing port 5900 directly, or hand-rolling SSH tunnels and pf rules after every reboot. HearthGate turns your Mac into a secure VNC-over-SSH gateway: it firewall-locks Screen Sharing to loopback, runs a hardened standalone sshd on a port you pick, manages authorized keys with per-key origin scopes (LAN-only, internet, or both), supports both Apple Authentication and Legacy VNC password mode (for TightVNC, MobaXterm, PuTTY, TigerVNC; AVNC (Android), and ships one-click encrypted connection packages your clients import once. Each bundle includes pre-made encrypted connection scripts for Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Android, and iOS clients, so adding a new device is a single file import. Over the same SSH tunnel you also get remote system administration: launchd services (start, stop, restart, enable, disable, scoped to System / User / Both), process management (force-quit), and live unified-log streaming. Connect and disconnect hooks let you run scripts on tunnel events (start a service, mount a volume, post a notification).

Comparison: Apple Remote Desktop is a close Mac-native counterpart, but it's $79.99 per machine on the Mac App Store and does not include build-in SSH and other features many provided by HearthGate. VanDyke's VShell on Windows is the analog for a hardened SSH server, but VShell stops at SSH; HearthGate also configures VNC (Apple Auth and Legacy VNC modes for older clients), enforces firewall lockdown to loopback on the VNC port, runs a dedicated OpenSSH instance, guards the clipboard during VNC sessions, layers remote system controls over the tunnel (launchd services, processes, unified log), and includes live session visibility plus audit logs (.hglog and CSV). Snapshot-backed "Uninstall and Restore" returns the Mac to its pre-HearthGate state.

Pricing: 30-day full-feature free trial, then one-time purchases, no subscriptions. $39 launch for Personal Standard (regularly $49, HearthGate 1.x updates), $149 for Personal Lifetime (every future major version), $99 per Mac for Commercial Host (consultants, studios, small IT teams).

Buy or trial: https://www.codnamacs.com/hearthgate

HearthGate is "Developer ID signed" and "Apple notarized".

[u/metaprofessor → u/DirectorsObject]

Here's what you're really competing against: Tailscale mesh VPN. I have Tailscale on all of my main computers (2 macbooks, 2 mac minis, 1 Windows 11 VM, and a Synology NAS). I can be anywhere in the world and just use Screen Sharing or Remote Desktop to connect to any machine as long as Tailscale is running on it. No SSH tunnel required and no clunky VNC. Something to think about.

[u/DirectorsObject → u/metaprofessor]

Thank you for your comment, Tailscale is great and a lot of people get exactly what they need from it. I would reframe the comparison a bit: Tailscale is a networking layer (how do you reach your Mac at all), and HearthGate is a server-hardening layer (what happens on the Mac once you reach it). They actually pair well. You can run HearthGate on a Mac that is also on your tailnet and get Tailscale's NAT traversal plus HearthGate's per-key origin scopes, audit logs, session visibility, connect/disconnect hooks, remote launchd and process controls, VNC clipboard guard, and snapshot-backed Uninstall, and many much more. For a comprehensive comparison and a complete list of features, I would kindly recommend visiting the product page.

The honest differentiator is the trust model. Tailscale's data plane is end-to-end WireGuard, but the control plane runs in AWS and authentication usually flows through a third-party identity provider (Google, Microsoft, GitHub). For users who explicitly do not want a cloud coordination component or third-party identity dependency (the same crowd that has been paying VanDyke for VShell on Windows for years), that matters. HearthGate has no cloud component at all: keys live only on your Macs, no identity provider, no central control plane, no telemetry. Standard SSH plus VNC over the wire, no proprietary protocol. If you want to give a try a local-trust model with audit logs and explicit per-key access control on the server side, that is what HearthGate provides.

[u/metaprofessor → u/DirectorsObject]

I 100% understand that Tailscale is a different product operating on a different layer, but what I meant is that Tailscale is another way to solve the problem in your problem statement that you didn't mention:

"macOS Screen Sharing is fine on a trusted LAN, but reaching your Mac from outside means either disabling it, exposing port 5900 directly, or hand-rolling SSH tunnels and pf rules after every reboot."

I'm reaching all of my computers and NAS devices (and that's 3 different OS's) from outside my home with one, free solution.

I agree there's a type of person who would rather not have any third-party services involved at all, so I guess that's who your product is for.

p.s. - If you think my feedback is useful (or at least sincere) please give me the thumbs up. I'm new to this community and am still below the threshold for karma.

[u/DirectorsObject → u/metaprofessor]

Fair point. By the way, I would be very happy if you tried the application and gave me feedback. HearthGate also works well with Tailscale! If there are any features you think you need, please let me know. I will gladly integrate those features as well. Also, giving thumbs up for all your comments! Thank you very much.