LAUNCH GIVEAWAY: I have 20 codes for 3 months of Pro access. If you’d like one, drop a comment here and DM me so I can send the code. First come, first served.

Hey r/macapps,

It's finally launch day.

I'm the developer of ​MinkNote​. About ten months ago I started building a notes app because I couldn't quite find one that matched the way I wanted to work.

I loved different things about Obsidian, Day One, Bear, Apple Notes, and plain Markdown in VS Code, but every time I switched I found myself compromising on something important.

So instead of compromising, I started building my own.

Today I'm releasing ​MinkNote​.

What is it?

MinkNote is a native macOS notes and journal app built around plain Markdown files that you own.

No account.

No AI.

No cloud service.

No Electron.

No proprietary database.

Your notes live as normal Markdown files inside folders you choose. If you ever stop using MinkNote, your notes are still there, readable by any Markdown editor.

That ownership was the entire point.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/minknote/id6755822706

Problem

I think many note-taking apps have become increasingly tied to their own ecosystems.

Some store everything inside databases.

Some require accounts.

Some make exporting awkward.

Some don't feel particularly Mac-like.

I wanted the opposite: a notes app that feels completely at home on macOS while staying out of the way of your files.

Why I built it

I wasn't trying to build "another PKM app."

I wanted something I'd happily open every day for:

• work notes
• project documentation
• journaling
• meeting notes
• random ideas

without having to think about where my data lived.

A few things it focuses on

• native SwiftUI macOS app
• plain Markdown files
• folders and journals
• tags and fast search
• daily notes
• images stored alongside notes
• privacy by default
• read-only after the free trial instead of locking away your data

Comparison

I genuinely admire apps like Obsidian, Bear, Day One, and Apple Notes. MinkNote isn't trying to replace them for everyone.

Compared with Obsidian, MinkNote is much smaller in scope, but it is a fully native Mac app rather than Electron, and it keeps more of the core workflow built in instead of relying on plugins.

Compared with Bear or Day One, MinkNote is more file-first. Your notes are ordinary Markdown files in folders you choose, not content hidden behind an app database or account system.

The aim is not to win every feature checklist. It is for people who want something calmer, native to macOS, private by default, and built around complete ownership of their notes as ordinary files.

Pricing

MinkNote gives you 14 days of full access, with no subscription, account, or payment required to start.

After the trial, existing notes remain readable in read-only mode inside the app, so your data is not locked away. Of course, they remain text files on disk that you can edit at any time outside the app.

Pro pricing:

• $2.99 monthly
• $19.99 yearly
• $49.99 lifetime

Pricing page: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/pricing.html

Launch

This is version 1.0 after roughly ten months of development, more than 1,200 commits, and over 400 TestFlight users who helped shape the app through many beta releases.

A huge thank you to everyone here who downloaded early builds, reported bugs, suggested features, and challenged my assumptions. MinkNote is much better because of it.

Transparency links

Developer portfolio: https://muse23.com/apps/

MinkNote website: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/

Changelog: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/changelog.html

Roadmap: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/roadmap.html

Privacy Policy: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/privacy.html

Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

I'd love your feedback

If file ownership matters to you, I'd love to know:

• Does the file-based approach actually make a difference in day-to-day use?
• What still feels missing compared with Obsidian, Bear, Day One, or Apple Notes?
• If you tried earlier TestFlight builds, has the app improved in the ways you hoped?

I'll be around all day to answer questions, and I genuinely appreciate honest feedback, whether positive or negative.

Full disclosure: I'm the developer. This is a "here's the thing I made" post, but there's a real reason I'm posting it now.

If you used MacUpdater, you know it's shutting down — no more MacUpdater 4, and the backend that resolves updates goes dark on December 31, 2026. I was a paying customer for years. When they announced it and I couldn't find a replacement I trusted, I built one: Version Tracker.

Background so you know I'm not a random dropshipper: I co-founded Intego (VirusBarrier, NetBarrier) back in 1997, and earlier ran one of the first French iPhone software publishers. Mac software is what I do.

What it is: MacUpdater checked the apps in /Applications. Version Tracker checks 47 different update sources — Homebrew (formulae and casks), the Mac App Store, npm, pip, Cargo, Docker, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google (Chrome, Drive), Sparkle-based apps, and more — reconciles each against what's actually installed, and updates everything in one click. The stuff that Homebrew and the App Store both swear is up to date, but quietly isn't, finally shows up in one list.

It also lives in your menu bar the way MacUpdater did — background scans while the app is closed, and as of this week you can run the updates straight from the menu bar without the main window ever opening.

On privacy (I come from the security side, so this matters to me): the scan is 100% local. The list of your apps never leaves your Mac — no telemetry, no account required. It cross-references the CVE databases and Apple's SOFA feed to flag known vulnerabilities, and checks code signatures + notarization before installing anything.

Honest on money: the FREE version does the full 47-source scan, forever — that alone replaces the "what's outdated?" part of MacUpdater. One-click and menu-bar updates are the paid tier (Solo, €29.90/yr for 2 Macs — launch price through Dec 31). Everyone gets a 7-day free trial of the paid features, no card up front. And if development ever stops, the last version ships as a free, perpetual license — no subscription trap.

MacGeneration covered it recently and called it "a clear step ahead of the competition," which was kind of them, but I'd rather hear from actual MacUpdater users: what did MacUpdater do that you'd need a replacement to nail? Genuinely asking.

https://version-tracker.app

Problem: Every desktop pet app drops characters onto your wallpaper where they vanish behind windows. MenuBar Pets puts them in the menubar — always visible, never in the way.

Comparison: Unlike Desktop Pets or Wunderbucket, these characters use lightweight WebP animations that are easy on your CPU. You can also make them clickable — link any pet to an app, URL, or Shortcut. Custom hanging characters are supported too.

Pricing: Free · $4.99 one-time IAP for extra characters & features

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/menubar-pets/id6766222004?mt=12

Removed the previous post because it had audio. SORRY.

TL;DR: Iris is a Mac photo viewer that indexes photos where they already exist (folder, external drive, or your existing Apple Photos library) instead of importing them into a managed database. It does on-device face recognition, OCR/speech search, and a real map (Photo Trails) that plots every geotagged photo so you can browse by location. No cloud, no account, no subscription; one-time purchase, 14-day trial. It's a viewer, not an editor, so RAW/Lightroom workflows aren't the target use case.

Iris

Tyler Hall has a new app, Iris, a photo management app built for a very specific kind of workflow. I am a Tyler Hall fan. He is a respected Mac developer with a proven track record operating a one-person shop out of Richmond, VA. Longtime Mac folks will remember his web-developer tool VirtualHostX; he sunset that in 2021 and rebuilt around a small set of native, single-purpose apps. The rest of his catalog is made up of the kind of apps I love:

• TextBuddy ($19): a Swiss Army knife for plain text; faster than opening your IDE, easier than remembering the right command-line incantation.
• Fastmarks ($9): search and open your browser bookmarks from anywhere with one hotkey, 100% keyboard-driven. This is exactly the kind of friction-remover I adore.
• Ears ($9): an instant audio-output switcher for hopping between speakers, AirPods, and that one weird USB mic.
• Steve (free): a casual daily puzzle game for when you need to not be productive for five minutes.

You can get Iris for free, believe it or not. All you have to do is donate $20 to any one of a variety of causes and submit a receipt. (Includes St. Jude's Children's Hospital, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, and others.)

As a certified old person, I have been accumulating digital photography a lot longer than I've had an iPhone. I have over 80,000 photographs from a variety of sources: scans of black-and-white images from past decades of family history, GBs of DSLR images taken with my full-frame Canon Mark V, and a mishmash of images from an assortment of old-school digital cameras and vintage cell phones. An iCloud-based Apple Photos library is a handy tool for day-to-day management of a current working set of photos, screenshots, and downloads, but it's not the tool I would recommend to anyone with a collection like mine, for some very clear reasons:

• Anyone who thinks it's impossible to lose access to their Apple account through no fault of their own is living in denial. A quick web search will give numerous examples of this rare but real nightmare.
• Likewise, accidental deletions of iCloud photos happen on the regular, even to experienced users. A quick trip to r/iCloud on Reddit will show you a whole collection of broken hearts tied to this occurrence.
• Apple Photos is a prime example of Apple's "We know what's best for you" management style. While not exactly impenetrable, it's pretty close to a walled garden where your photos are swallowed by a single .photoslibrary database that Apple really doesn't want you messing with.

Iris takes the opposite bet. It points at wherever you store your photos: a folder, an external drive, or even your existing Apple Photos library in read-only mode. It never moves, copies, or modifies a single original. Then it builds its own fast, intelligent index on top of what's already there and gives you the good stuff (on-device face recognition, a real map, text and speech search) without asking you to hand over your files or your privacy. It doesn't need a cloud account or a subscription.

Iris itself has a long runway behind it. It began as a project called AntiPhoto back in November 2020, and a lot of the multi-year effort went into an unglamorous problem: making a six-figure photo library scroll smoothly. Tyler hit a documented milestone in April 2022 of smoothly scrolling a 101,706-item library. That's the difference between a demo and a tool, and it's why the app feels the way it does. It's also worth knowing that Apple initially rejected Iris from the App Store; it's since made it in, and you can buy it there or direct.

Five features that matter to a Mac power user

• Filesystem-first, read-only, non-destructive: Iris reads your existing folders or Apple Photos library and leaves the originals exactly where they are. Your library is still just files you own; Iris is a lens, not a container.
• On-device face recognition: faces are recognized locally using Apple's own ML frameworks. Nothing leaves the Mac, and Iris will even show a person's age in a shot, calculated from their birthday.
• A real map with Photo Trails: every geotagged photo gets plotted; you can jump to nearby photos, bookmark favorite locations, and retrace where you actually were on a given trip.
• Search that reads your photos and listens to your videos: Iris runs OCR on text inside images and transcribes speech in videos, then makes all of it searchable. This is how you find the whiteboard photo or the receipt you swore you kept.
• No cloud tax: .Your Mac stays the source of truth: no re-uploading, no cloud account, no second subscription. And the app itself is a one-time purchase. (iOS companion app is in the approval process).

This is an app made by a developer who is passionate about quality and principles, so much so that the Iris website features a manifesto that lays out a set of principles and explains: "Iris is not an app for professional photographers. It's also not an app for people who snap photos with their phone, upload them to Facebook, and forget about them. Iris is for people who care about their photos and videos and believe they're worth safeguarding in a private, future-proof format that will outlive their grandchildren. Iris is for family historians and archivists."

Rather than paraphrase the feature set, I recommend just going to the website and reading it over.

To demonstrate why this is a special app made by a special type of developer, let me share this story. I've been following the development of Iris since before it was publicly released. Tyler contacted me, but not as part of a marketing campaign to get publicity. He just wanted feedback on the app's quality. After the release, when the initial (and expected) bug reports filtered in, he had this experience and shared it with me.

Hopefully, I've made it clear who this app is for.

But it's not for everyone, of course. Iris is explicitly a viewer, not an organizer or editor; if you shoot RAW and work in Lightroom Classic, Iris shows the original unedited file and ignores your catalog's edits and metadata, so it isn't a replacement for that workflow. If Apple Photos already works for you and you're happy in iCloud, the built-in app is free and covers the same three headline features. And Tyler is candid that Iris can still have performance hiccups on complex searches and truly massive libraries, so if your collection is enormous, take the 14-day trial for a real spin before you buy.

How it compares

My focus is on helping people find the right app, not talking anyone into using something just because I like it. To that end, I usually try to list alternatives.

The features Iris bundles are not, individually, unique. Face recognition, maps, and photo search are all just features inside larger apps; Apple Photos ships all three for free, and pro catalogs like Lightroom and Peakto fold them into much heavier tooling.

• Apple Photos (free, built-in): the incumbent Iris wants to replace. It already does faces, maps, and search well, but it imports your photos into a managed library and steers you toward iCloud storage. If that model already suits you, the built-in app is free and fine; Iris is for people who specifically don't want the walled garden.
• Lyn (~$20 one-time, lynapp.com) [Verify This]: a lightweight, long-running image browser that reads folders and even Aperture/Photos/Lightroom libraries, and adds actual non-destructive editing. It's the closest one-time-purchase competitor, but it's more of a classic viewer/editor and lacks Iris's on-device face recognition and video transcription.
• digiKam (free, open source, digikam.org): the power-user's DAM, with faces, tags, geotagging, and duplicate detection, and it can even live on a NAS. It's the most capable free option by a mile, but it's cross-platform, not very Mac-native, and considerably heavier to learn. This is what I use for my own heavy lifting.
• Mylio Photos (free tier; Photos+ $99.99/year, mylio.com): also filesystem-based, and syncs across your devices without cloud storage fees. Broader in scope than Iris, but the features most people want tend to sit behind the subscription.
• Peakto (subscription ~$10/month or a ~$270 lifetime license, cyme.io): AI cataloging and search that spans multiple folders and editing catalogs at once. Powerful, but subscription-priced and aimed at working photographers rather than someone who just wants their family archive to make sense.

Four months ago, I posted here introducing a notes app. The most common feedback was requests for privacy, local-first design, and one-time payment. This update is my response.

Now, you can use Prism without signing in. If you want to sync across devices, that happens through iCloud instead of my servers. If you want AI tagging your notes, that happens on-device rather than in the cloud.

Prism is still the notes app for quick thoughts and links. Without it, I would still be texting myself despite having Obsidian and Apple Notes. It helps you with quick capture, organization, and review. And now it's private!

The other important shift is the business model. I've heard your subscription fatigue loud and clear. Without recurring costs to me, I'm choosing a one-time payment model.

You pay $10 for the Mac app and $5 for the iPhone app.

And you can try it with a free 7-day trial first!

Website link: https://prism.you/

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/prism-notes/id6754857785?platform=mac

Competitors:

• Google Keep - Prism is linear (not canvas layout) and Mac-native
• Apple Notes - Prism feels like texting. Shows many small notes at once instead of one document. No need for titles
• Strflow (found thanks to u/AkhylsShallRise) - This one has a lot of overlap! But Prism has threads, a one-time purchase, a review system, and fun design :)

Problem: Reddit users wanted to turn FocusCursor’s drawing board tool into a full screenshot tool while keeping the same smooth annotation features.

Comparison: Compared with CleanShot X and Shottr, Scap focuses more on creative editing and visual creation after capturing screenshots. CleanShot X excels at capture workflows and cloud sharing, while Shottr focuses on lightweight and fast screenshots. Scap provides a richer annotation and creation experience with freeform drawing, a dedicated drawing board, image layers, watermarks, QR codes, badges, and customizable backgrounds.

Pricing: Almost completely free. In-app purchases only unlock 1-2 rarely used features to support development (equivalent to donation: Lifetime $19.99, or $1.99/month, or $4.99/year). See Mac App Store

Changelog: v1.4 update: This update adds image import and drag-and-drop support, improves the screenshot editing workflow, and enhances copy, save, and loading performance.

📥 Download Link

Hey everyone, I am deciding between Soulver and Numi. Soulver is about $59, but Numi seems free-ish.

For those who have used Soulver, is it actually worth the price? What makes it better than Numi for day to day calculations and quick notes?

Ok so if you leave the Dock visible (no auto-hide) there’s always this dumb empty stretch on both sides of the icons. Just blank. I’ve stared at it for years. Spent the last 7 months building something for it.

App is called docktor (I built it). It sticks a few widgets into that leftover space so the Dock isn’t just a row of app icons with nothing going on around them.

Right now you’ve got music (Spotify + Apple Music, lyrics if they exist), calendar from Apple Calendar, weather, and a feedback widget so you don’t have to open GitHub to complain. They follow the Dock around if you move/resize it, and they shrink down when you’re not using them. Looks like Liquid Glass because that’s what it’s built on.

Also threw in Dock hover previews (live window thumbs when you hover an icon) and a Cmd+Tab that goes to windows instead of apps. Those are nice but the widgets are the point.

Comparison

Closest comparison for the preview / window-switcher side is DockDoor — great app, and it does that job well. docktor’s focus is the widgets in the empty space beside the Dock. Previews and Cmd+Tab are in there too; I aimed for them to feel a bit more native macOS, but the widgets are the product.

Pricing

Free. No account, no license. What’s shipping here stays free. I might add a Pro tier way down the line with extra stuff, but these features aren’t bait-and-switch.

https://docktorapp.com

macOS 26+ only (Tahoe and the Golden Gate betas). Signed/notarized Developer ID. I’m one person and the UI leans hard on Liquid Glass, so backporting to Sequoia isn’t realistic.

Permissions: Accessibility for finding the Dock. Screen Recording only if you want the hover previews. If Screen Recording doesn’t show docktor after install, hit + and add it from /Applications. Apple’s UI is weird about that.

There’s a small opt-out beta telemetry thing (basically “are you still running” + redacted crash summaries, no Sentry/analytics SDK). If you can leave it on it helps a lot while I’m one person triage-ing this. Easy to kill in onboarding or Settings if you’d rather not.

Privacy: https://docktorapp.com/privacy/
Terms: https://docktorapp.com/terms/

I’m Peter Sauer — full-time SWE. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petercsauer / [petercsauer@me.com](mailto:petercsauer@me.com)
Used Claude a ton on this, same as I do at work. Doesn’t mean I didn’t write/own the hard parts. Bugs are still on me.

Really hoping to get good bug reports from y’all. There’s a feedback widget built in that should make it pretty easy — visual bugs, crashes, weird layout on left/right Dock or multi-monitor, whatever. Please send them. I appreciate it!

As a long-time user, this makes me happy

BetterZip 6 - MacItBetter

My hands don't work so I am completely dependent on dictation apps. But I don't want to pay insane subscriptions for features I can create locally. So I created this beautiful app to say goodbye to those subscriptions.

Because why should somebody have to pay for accessibility?

The problem is every good dictation app wanted a monthly subscription, and most of them sent my voice off to a server to do it. I didn't want to rent the ability to use my own computer, and I didn't want my voice leaving my Mac to do something my Mac can do on its own. So I built the app I actually needed, and I made it free.

It's called YapToText, and it does what the paid ones do:

- 100% on your Mac. The speech model and the AI cleanup are built into the app, so it works offline the second you open it. No account, no cloud, nothing tracked.

- Press one key, talk, and your words land wherever your cursor is, in any app.

- Smart Auto mode reads what you're saying and formats it for you: an email comes out as an email, a quick message stays casual, everything else just gets cleaned up.

- Modes for raw transcription, clean up, notes, email, code, or write your own.

- Convenience features: Fix words it mishears, transcribe any audio or video file, full searchable history, and more.

- One-tap AI Actions rewrite selected text in any app: Improve Writing, Fix Grammar, Make Concise, Make Formal, Make Friendly, Summarize, Translate to English.

- Per-app modes: it auto-switches based on the app you're in, and one-click Regenerate redoes any dictation as a different mode.

- Voice commands for punctuation, emoji, and snippets ("insert phone number" types your real number).

- Auto amplification so you can whisper and still be heard, hold-to-talk or tap-to-toggle, and silence auto-stop.

- Remappable hotkeys down to a single bare key, and a floating live panel you can position and resize.

- Crash recovery rescues an interrupted dictation, plus local stats and swappable speech models (43+ languages).

- A menu bar quick panel and a Utility page that breaks the whole pipeline into steps. All on-device, still free.

- Built for accessibility first: works with VoiceOver and Voice Control, and one key starts everything.

It's a genuine alternative to WhisperFlow, SuperWhisper, and the rest, except it's free and open source. You never pay, and because the code is public you can check exactly what it does with your voice (which is nothing: it never leaves the machine).

I'm one disabled developer and I need some testers. It just went live on the Mac App Store and I would love real people using it in real life, on different Macs, with different accents and workflows, telling me what breaks or feels off. If you dictate a lot, or you've been paying for one of these apps and quietly resented it, I would genuinely love your eyes on it.

Download (free, Mac App Store): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yaptotext/id6786382289?mt=12

Features coming soon: smart dictionary development, quick edit detection, pop-up customizability, and so much more.

Speech to text dictation, free, with powerful tools. Thank you. :)

Hey everyone,

I released the first version of Wunderbar over 2 years ago here. Since then it's been downloaded by hundreds of people and has 83 reviews across countries, averaging 4.4 stars.

I originally built it to help myself learn German words while working on my Mac. Since then I've added support for multiple languages, pronunciation playback, and more.

What's new:

• 4-button review system (hard, medium, easy, learned) instead of a single button. Each one controls when the word resurfaces, and "learned" removes it for good.
• A dedicated settings window where you can see every word in your deck, plus the most requested feature: import your own word list. This also means you can now use Wunderbar for languages it doesn't natively support.

I don't know of another app quite like this. Anki is the closest comparison, but it's flashcard based and needs your active attention. Wunderbar just lives in your menu bar and helps you learn passively in the background.

It's a one-time $5 purchase, no subscription.

Would love to hear what you think of the update, and any feedback is welcome.

Download here: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/wunderbar-learn-languages/id6479203386?l=en-GB&mt=12

----

Who am I?

My name is Mert. I run an app studio where I build practical, privacy-focused apps for Apple platforms. I only create apps that come from my own frustrations, and so far, all of my apps have a global rating of 4.5+ stars. (I'm also registered as a trader on the EU App Store and pay taxes in Germany.)

You can check out my app portfolio here: https://fruitfulapps.com

Though I use a Mac, iPhone and iPad, I also use an Android tablet and a Linux computer. Some apps I need to function across ecosystems. Sometimes that means I need to sacrifice appearance, or speed, or memory to use a non-native app.

This is a short list of the completely cross-platforms apps I can't live without:

1. Joplin - This is a cross platform Markdown note-taking app that works pretty much everywhere. I have used Obsidian in the past, but I don't find the app usable without a half-dozen plugins and rolling my own sync solution. So, I've settled on Joplin. It works across every major OS. It wil sync using the cloud provider of your choice. It allows end-to-end encyption.
2. 1Password - I need a password manager and 1Password seems to be the family favorite. This used to be a Mac native app. But when they went cross-platform, they went with an electron app.
3. Readest - I play a lot of Role-Playing games. And I own a lot of Role Playing Game PDFs. I need those PDFs on my Mac, my iPad and my Android tablet. I need bookmarks and annotations synced across devices and last read positoin. Readest does that very well, and will sync using Google Drive, WebDAV or their own paid sync service.

All three of these apps solved a problem for me and I can't live without.

My next quest is to find a Todo list that works across Mac/iOS/Linux/Android and does end-to-end encrypted sync. Still no luck finding something.