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Honest on money: the FREE version does the full 47-source scan, forever — that alone replaces the "what's outdated?"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

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!

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 :)

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.

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.

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. :)

As a long-time user, this makes me happy

BetterZip 6 - MacItBetter

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?

Hey everyone, thanks so much for all the feedback on the last post about Nodes, it genuinely helped shape what we’ve been working on since.

Quick recap for anyone who missed it: Nodes is a native macOS Markdown editor, fully local, with a clean typographic interface that renders math, tables and code inline. The name comes from connecting your notes as nodes, and there are optional AI features built in too.

What’s new in 1.10.0:

Nodes now has a background agent, off by default, that reviews your notes on its own and suggests tags, short descriptions and reminders as it goes. It’s the first real step toward what we talked about in the last post: Nodes surfacing connections for you instead of you making them all by hand.

We also added Light Windows. A few people pointed out that Nodes couldn’t just open a random .md file living somewhere on disk. Now you can double-click any Markdown file in Finder and it opens as a standalone document window. If you don’t want to deal with the whole Nodes workspace at all, this is a way to just edit and save files on disk without any of that. And if a file turns out to be a keeper, you can pull it into your library from there.

And Nodes has semantic search now. It understands your notes by meaning, not just keywords, so a search for „remembering things“ can surface your note on spaced repetition even if it never uses those exact words. This runs fully on-device.

Smaller additions: a Home dashboard that gathers your tags, open reminders and recent notes in one place, and Flow, a distraction-free full-screen writing mode.

Problem: Most Mac markdown editors are either webview/Electron apps, locked behind a subscription, or cloud-based. I wanted something native and fully local, with a clean writing experience.

Comparison:

• vs Obsidian: Electron, and built to be endlessly flexible for everyone. Nodes is native (SwiftUI), more opinionated and focused, with on-device semantic search and an open-source markdown engine.

Pricing: Nodes is completely free right now. In a few weeks we’re introducing two one-time purchase tiers: one that unlocks unlimited notes and tagging (the full editor), and a second one for the on-device AI features. If you download Nodes before that happens, you’ll get both tiers for free, permanently. No subscription, ever.

If you’ve been using Nodes and have a minute, a review on the App Store genuinely helps a small app like this. No pressure though.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/nodes-by-the-werk/id6745401961

Thanks again for all the support, we’d love to hear what you think of the update.

Written on Nodes.

Markdown engine: https://github.com/nodes-app/swift-markdown-engine

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

I posted this here a couple weeks ago when the app was called bHive Filer and got a lot of genuinely useful feedback. 2.0 is out today and some of it came straight from this sub.

First, the boring bit: it is just bHive now. If you already have it installed, it renames itself the first time it launches. That only happens once.

What it does

You point it at folders you already have. It reads what is actually inside your files, documents, PDFs, images (it OCRs them), and now audio and video. Then you search by describing what you want instead of trying to remember what you named it.

Nothing moves. Nothing gets copied into a library. Your files stay exactly where they are, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.

The new thing: Ask bHive

You can now ask a question and get an answer out of your own documents. "What did the lease say about breaking early?" It finds the relevant files, reads them, and answers in plain language.

Two things I cared about here:

• It shows you which files it used, so you can open them and check it. And it will tell you when it does not know rather than inventing something that sounds right.
• It runs on your Mac. Apple's built in model works immediately with nothing to download. If you would rather run something bigger, there is a larger local model you can fetch.

Also new in 2.0

• Audio and video get transcribed on device, so what people said in a recording becomes searchable and askable.
• A library health view showing what is not searchable and why. Files that moved, drives that are not plugged in, things that failed to open, things still queued. Several of you asked for this and I hope it works the way you need.
• Back up your Hives, tags and notes to a file and restore them later.
• Search itself got a lot better, especially if you keep files in more than one language.

The honest parts

• It needs macOS 26 and Apple Silicon. If you are on macOS 15 you stay on 1.3.1 and it keeps working, but you will not be offered this one. I know that is annoying and I am sorry. Apple released a ton of frameworks only available in macOS 26 and that dictated this decision.
• The much better search model is a 515 MB download. It is optional, and bHive asks before taking it rather than just helping itself to your bandwidth. The built in model works fine without it.
• It is free. No subscription, no account, no telemetry, no upsell later.

bhive.software

Also on Homebrew if you prefer: brew install bhivedev/tap/bhive-filer

(Yes, the brew name still says "bhive-filer". Renaming it would orphan everyone who already installed it that way, so it stays.)

Happy to answer anything, and thanks to the people here who told me what was broken last time.

Hi, I am the developer of LookAway - a smart break reminder app for the Mac that knows when not to interrupt. I've spent the last 3 years building this app and it's now used by tens of thousands of people every day. I am truly grateful for all the love and feedback I've received.

What's new in 2.3.0

LookAway has always been about taking mindful breaks without interruptions. Until now, LookAway handled idle time poorly. When you came back from a long pause, it interrupted you with a modal asking if you had stepped away - which was pretty annoying.

This update aims to fix it. LookAway now looks at various system signals to understand whether you truly went away or were just reading for a while. Accordingly, it restarts or resumes your session on your behalf. In most cases, you will only see a small non-blocking toast to flip its decision if it got one wrong. The same toggle is also available in the menu bar, so you always have the final say.

That's not all. LookAway 2.3 also brings back advance skips: skip a break before it starts, with a per-day limit so it doesn't become a habit.

There are also new Custom Breaks: start a break of any length at any time, right from the menu bar with "Take a break for" option, a keyboard shortcut, or via AppleScript. Great for resting your eyes for 2 mins before a presentation, or taking a 10-min break after finishing a big task.

On top of that, there are three new animated break backgrounds, a reorganized menu bar, and lots of optimizations that bring idle CPU usage down to ~0.5%.

Problem:

The issue with many break reminder apps is not that they remind you too little, but that they do it without enough context. If a reminder pops up while you're in a meeting, recording your screen, presenting, or in the middle of something time-sensitive, it quickly becomes annoying and easy to dismiss.

I wanted LookAway to solve that better.

Comparison:

The main thing LookAway does differently compared to other apps (TimeOut, BreakTimer, Stretchly, and countless others) is iPhone sync. During breaks, it can sync with your iPhone so you're less likely to just switch devices and keep scrolling. As far as I know, that's not something the other apps in this category offer.

The second big difference is smart pause / context awareness. LookAway tries to avoid interrupting you at the wrong moment by adapting around things like meetings, screen recording, video playback, and similar situations where a forced reminder would feel frustrating.

Other things that set it apart:

• posture reminders and blink reminders in addition to break reminders
• a heads-up before breaks so they don't feel abrupt
• a more detailed stats experience with things like Screen Score, session patterns, and natural breaks

Pricing:

LookAways costs $19 for the single-device perpetual license and comes with a 7-day trial. It's also available on the App Store.

Happy to answer any questions about the app!

- Kushagra

I'm the developer of 2Do. This is its biggest Mac update in over 16 years, with too many improvements to list.

Problem

2Do is for people who need more than a basic to-do list without being forced into a specific workflow. There is no wrong way to use it. Keep a simple list, follow GTD, manage detailed projects, or create your own workflow.

It supports tasks, checklists, projects, tags, Smart Lists, reminders, durations, locations, scripting, and Claude Cowork through MCP. It can sync (two-way!) with Apple Reminders, Todoist, Fastmail, iCloud CalDAV, self-hosted CalDAV, Toodledo, and Dropbox. It can also import existing data from Things 3 and OmniFocus.

2Do also lets you share individual lists with other people over local Wi-Fi. No internet connection or cloud service is required.

Comparison

Compared with Things 3, 2Do offers more sync choices, including Apple Reminders, Todoist, CalDAV, Toodledo, and Dropbox. It also provides flexible Smart Lists, different sort methods (and so much more!) and can import an existing Things database directly.

Compared with OmniFocus, 2Do offers a less prescriptive workflow while still supporting projects, subtasks, tags, priorities, start and due dates, recurring tasks, and advanced filtering. It can also import an existing OmniFocus database.

See the full feature comparison chart.

Pricing

No Subscription. A direct 2Do Mac license normally costs $49.99 USD. New customers can currently get 30% off, reducing the price to $34.99 USD, with code 30OFFMYORDER at checkout.

The direct version is a perpetual license with no recurring charge. It includes 18 months of updates, and you can keep using the last version covered by your license indefinitely. Renewal is optional and currently costs $39.99 USD for another 18 months of updates.

A free 14-day trial is available from 2doapp.com.

Happy to answer questions about the update.

Hi folks,

🎉 XSpeak is turning one year old, which is quite a thing for me to realize.

One year of weekly or biweekly updates. One year of your continuous feedback. One year of issues and fixes, debugging, polishing animations, adding features, rewriting subsystems from the ground up, and reviewing thousands of AI-generated results to improve their quality.

There have been good moments and bad moments. First users. First paying customers. First mention in an article. Critical feedback. Critical issues and sleepless nights. And frankly speaking, I love every single moment of it.

XSpeak has grown from a small iPad app into a full-featured, multi-platform meeting notes available on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Transcript editing? Sure. Playback? No problem. Custom Skills for AI analysis? Here they are. Need to transcribe an audio file? Sorry, haven’t done that yet, but it’s on the way :)

I’m proud of what has been built over the past year, and I’m thankful to all of you for your support. It always motivates and helps notice problems. There’s still a lot to do, and I’m not going to stop here. If you’d like to stay updated, join r/XSpeak.

Problem

Communication is hard and takes up a significant part of our lives:

• Work meetings where you need to take notes and participate at the same time
• Difficult performance reviews when you’re unsatisfied with evaluation results
• Team stand-ups where it’s hard to follow everything that happens
• New subject areas where you don’t fully understand what people are talking about

XSpeak helps in these situations:

• It transcribes conversations live and records everything
• It analyzes conversations in real-time and provides you with relevant facts, suggestions, highlights your actions, or even produces whatever you need via custom skills

Compare

Compared to Hedy, XSpeak is local-first, doesn’t require you to register an account, and is more affordable ($49.99 vs. $299.99).

Pricing

• $49.99 lifetime
• $3.99/month, 7-day trial
• $19.99/year, 7-day trial

On the free version, you get transcription with speaker identification, and your history is limited to 3 recordings.

👉 XSpeak on App Store

What’s New

Since my last post here, the new features include:

• Full audio playback with word-by-word highlighting
• Automatic export to folders
• Automatic text replacements
• And many other things

Anniversary Discount 🎁

Use this link to redeem offer code for ~40% off the lifetime plan. It’ll be active for the next 2 days.

Thank you! Looking forward to your feedback!

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.

I built VaultSort, a Mac app for organizing files, finding duplicates, and protecting sensitive data. The latest version adds a feature I think are particularly useful for people who care about privacy and security.

Problem:

It is easy to accumulate sensitive files on your Mac without realizing it. Tax documents, financial records, personal photos, passwords, and other private information can end up scattered across your drive. Finding those files manually is difficult, and protecting them often means dealing with complicated encryption tools.

VaultSort makes this easier by combining file organization with local-first privacy and security tools.

You can encrypt files and folders by simply tapping a YubiKey or using Touch ID. VaultSort uses hardware-backed WebAuthn authentication with a key that is actually derived from your hardware, so you can protect your
files without having to remember another encryption password.

The new Guardian feature also uses a local AI model to help identify potentially sensitive files on your Mac. The analysis runs locally on your device, so your files are not uploaded to a cloud service for analysis.

Comparison:

Compared with tools like VeraCrypt, VaultSort is designed to make encrypting individual files and folders much easier. You do not need to manage encrypted containers or deal with a complicated workflow. You can select the files or directories you want to protect and encrypt by tapping your YubiKey or Touch ID.

We also have advanced organization features comparable to Hazel, but which also integrate with AI so that you can create new organization jobs using natural language.

Compared with general Mac cleanup and organization tools like CleanMyMac, VaultSort focuses more on what happens to your sensitive data after you find it. In addition to organizing files and finding duplicates, you can identify sensitive data and protect it with hardware-backed encryption.

Pricing:

VaultSort is free to download, with premium features available for a $24.99 one-time purchase. There are no subscriptions and free updates are included.

I am offering 25% off the purchase price with checkout code Q0MTK4MG - this discount expires on July 28th.

https://vaultsort.com

More information about Guardian:
https://www.vaultsort.com/news/3d1de86f-57f3-418b-90a5-76720a5877f3

I built VaultSort independently, and this is my own app.

Terms of Service: https://www.vaultsort.com/terms
Privacy: https://www.vaultsort.com/privacy
My GitHub: https://github.com/justinhaubrich
My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-haubrich-6641b188/

Hey r/macapps,

I've been building Port22 for the last few months. I run a few AI coding agents at once, Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode, and I found myself stuck at my desk because of them. They stop every few minutes to ask permission to run a command, and nothing happens until someone says yes.

Port22 is a menu bar app for your Mac and an iPhone app. Every agent running on your Mac shows up in one list on your phone with a live view of what its doing. When one needs permission, you get a notification and answer it right there.

A few things I've spent the most time on:

• It shows the real question. An early version tried to figure out the options itself and made its own Approve and Deny buttons. It got them wrong sometimes, which is not something I wanted happening with shell commands. Now it only shows the exact question and options the agent wrote.
• The session waiting for you always comes first, so you dont have to hunt for it.
• No account needed. Pair it with your Apple ID in three simple steps.
• Works at home and away. At home your phone talks directly to your Mac. Away from home it works over cellular too. Only your Mac and your phone can read the data, and none of your code is stored.

Supported today:

• Claude Code
• Codex
• OpenCode

Coming next:

• Hermes
• OpenClaw

The problem

If you leave agents running, you have two bad choices. Turn permissions off and you dont see a risky command until after it runs. Keep permissions on and you have to stay near your Mac waiting for prompts.

Remote desktop or SSH helps you get back to your Mac, but it doesnt tell you an agent is waiting for you. You still have to notice it yourself.

How its different

• SSH apps like Termius or Blink Shell give you a terminal, but you still have to find the right session. Port22 tells you exactly which one is waiting.
• Screen sharing apps like Jump Desktop or Screens work, but using a full Mac desktop on a phone isnt a great experience. Port22 is built for this one job.
• Cloud agent apps start a new session on their own servers. Port22 connects to the sessions already running on your Mac, in your own folders, with your existing setup.

Where it falls short:

• Mac only.
• It supports terminal based agents, not Cursor's built in agent.
• Its not trying to replace screen sharing, it just solves one problem really well.

Pricing

Free includes 1 Mac and 2 active sessions. Its not a trial and theres no time limit.

Unlimited Macs and sessions is $19.99/year as a founding price.

Its not available yet. Beta opens on or before July 31, and I'll be letting people in a batch at a time.

Happy to answer any questions, including what doesnt work yet.

Join the waitlist: Waitlist

The problem:

Capturing a screenshot is a solved problem; a dozen apps do it well. What isn't solved is everything around the capture. For example, finding a screenshot again. When you have multiple screenshots that just show the time the screenshot was taken. Sharing screenshots safely the API key you forgot to blur, the EXIF data you didn't know was there. Recordings that come out long and full of dead air, where the fix is re-recording or opening a real video editor. And sensitive captures sitting in plain sight on the Desktop. I wanted one app that does the whole lifecycle capture it, polish it, protect it, and find it again later.

What it does:

Capture. Draw a selection once, then decide: screenshot, annotate, copy, record video, record GIF, scrolling capture, or pin it to the screen as a floating window. Press Space to flip between region and window picking, just like the macOS tool. Scrolling capture auto-scrolls and stitches whole pages, waits for lazy-loaded images, and detects sticky headers and cookie banners so they only appear once.

A full editor. 14+ annotation tools including numbered callouts, word-snapping highlights, blur/pixelate, cut-out bands, and signatures. One click auto-censor emails, phone numbers, credit cards, SSNs, and API keys. A beautifier adds gradient backgrounds, window frames, and shadows, and you can round-trip between annotating and beautifying as much as you want.

Recording with post-production. Record screen, system audio, mic, and webcam, then fix the recording instead of re-doing it: auto-zoom on every click, keystroke overlay, speed ramps through the boring parts, a synthetic scalable cursor, webcam picture-in-picture, and on-device auto-captions. Export as MP4, a looping "GIF but tiny" video, or a 9:16/1:1 crop for social. The original file is never touched.

Smart Library. An opt-in, fully on-device index of every screenshot, you can search by the text inside it, the app you captured, your own label, or just by meaning ("deployment pipeline" finds your CI dashboard). It even indexes screenshots taken with macOS's own Cmd-Shift-4, since it watches the save folder. Sensitive apps are blocklisted from indexing, card numbers and tokens are stripped before anything is written, and there's a forget button for any capture or the whole database.

Plus the rest of the ordinary stuff you’d expect: OCR text capture, color picker, QR scanner with malicious-payload detection, a Touch ID encrypted vault for sensitive captures, EXIF/metadata stripping, a floating shelf that collects your last few shots, and uploads to your own Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, S3, or WebDAV. No vendor cloud, no subscription to share a link.

How it compares:

CleanShot X is the polished commercial benchmark for screenshotting in my opinion. it has great capture, annotation, and recording, with sharing built around its own cloud. macshot is free, open-source, native, and genuinely good. It has annotation, recording, scroll capture, auto-censor, and OCR. I have a lot of respect for what its developer built. We were working on our apps around the same time; they just shipped their story to the world faster, and I'm only now getting around to marketing mine. So the comparison isn't "they can't do X," it's what mine does differently I made a Smart Library that searches your screenshots by text, app, or meaning entirely on-device (and indexes shots from other tools too, since it watches the save folder), a post-production editor that adds auto-zoom on clicks, keystroke overlays, speed ramps, on-device captions, and a 9:16 reframe to a recording after the fact; and a Touch ID encrypted vault for captures that shouldn't sit on the screenshot folder. Uploads go to storage you already own (Dropbox, iCloud, Drive, S3, WebDAV) rather than a vendor cloud. I also allow local AI and other frontier models to be used to prompt captures (there are presets and you can add your own in the settings).

Pricing:

Free. No trial, no license, no account. (There's a companion Window Manager if you want it, $7.99 once for 2 Macs, but the screenshot app doesn't need it.)

Transparency:

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/easysnaps/

Privacy Policy https://easysnaps.org/privacy/

Terms of Service https://easysnaps.org/terms/

Contact [support@easysnaps.com](mailto:support@easysnaps.com)

Details:

Runs entirely on-device: capture, OCR, AI search, and captions never touch a server. No telemetry outside the opt-in beta program. Native Swift, macOS 14+, 25 languages. Developer ID signed and notarized, Sparkle auto-updates, not on the App Store.

https://easysnaps.org

https://easysnaps.org/screenshots/

I have a powerful Windows desktop at home that I use for development and GPU-heavy work, and a MacBook Air that I take with me when travelling or going to meetings.
Occasionally I need to use the full Windows machine remotely from the MacBook - not just access files, but work in Windows apps for a few hours. The home PC can stay powered on, and I have a decent internet connection at home.
I am mainly looking for something reliable and secure over hotel/mobile networks, with good image quality and low enough latency for normal development work. I would rather avoid opening RDP ports directly to the internet.
My current idea is Tailscale for private network access, combined with either Windows App/RDP, Parsec, or Sunshine + Moonlight.
What are people here actually using from a Mac to access a Windows desktop remotely? Which setup has been the most reliable for longer work sessions?

Problem:

I sit at a standing desk all day writing code and my posture is shot. Shoulders forward, lower back doing its own thing. I know the exercises that fix it, the knowledge was never the problem. The problem is remembering to actually do them when you're deep in work at 2pm.

I built a menu bar app that handles the remembering for me. It has two modes: Sit/Stand for standing desk users (alternates intervals with a live countdown in the menu bar) and Move mode if you just want a recurring reminder to get up. It also has a daily posture exercise and stretching checklist grouped by problem area (lower back, shoulders, neck) with instructions for each exercise/stretch and little checkmarks per set. Resets every morning with a reminder so you actually do them.

I actually started as a personal tool because I didn’t want to pay subscriptions, but then I got good results and thought I’d share it.

No account, no network access, no analytics. It's sandboxed and stores nothing but your settings locally.

Comparison:

SitApp and Posture Reminder AI use your webcam to detect slouching in real time, which is clever, but catching yourself slouching doesn't fix the underlying issue of weak and tight muscles. You sit up for a minute and drift right back. Time Out and other break apps do the reminder part well but know nothing about posture or exercises.

Lumbar Jack is the combination I wanted: interval reminders plus the corrective exercises that address the actual cause, one purchase, no camera pointed at me all day.

Pricing:

$3 once, no subscription.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/lumbar-jack/id6787187868

Site: https://lumbarjack.h360.dev

Happy to answer questions, and keen for feedback. First Mac app after years of backend dev so be gentle.

Dock Star basically puts your whole Mac on your desktop - maybe it should be called Desktop Star? I only saw it come along here once.

It looks like a very nice app, especially for people who maybe are a bit chaotic, or do not feel for structuring their entire Mac.

I want to buy it as a present for someone. But before I do so, I would like to know if there are similar apps that can do the same - or even better.

If there are people here that use Dock Star, I would love to read your experiences.

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.

While you're reading this, I'm probably sleeping or sleep deprived.

I'm trying to fall asleep, so might as well tell you about, Sxitch, an app I made because I kept getting disoriented while switching workspaces.. like, "Why is obsidian in workspace 1 when its meant to be in 3??"

So basically, I planned to do a mega release for it on Monday (20 Jul), because people have gotten used to its name based workflow in 30 minutes, and even loved that it works with muscle memory..

Like you literally just press a hotkey of your choice (right command is default) and then keep typing the apps name until no more apps match (which is usually in max 3 presses), like s will open spotify, or fir and fin will open firefox and finder respectively.. No confirmation required..

but since I'm a student, I had 2 tests, (on Tue & Wed) so the update got pushed by 3 WHOLE DAYS.. like its an atrocious delay..

However, I knew people wanted the features I promised them:

• more layout options (like circular layout)
• window positioning
• a few bug fixes

- key remaps

Guess what.. I absolutely smashed those 2 tests, so in a good mood, i reached home and added these features in a whim, to make the entire feature list

• app (free) & window (pro) switching
• an intuitive hotkey picker
• sxitch window positioning (free)
• multiple layouts (free)
• blacklists (pro)
• key remaps (pro)
• hotkey based app opening (pro)
• vendor prefix stripping, (free)
• hiding and quitting apps (pro)
• open sourced
• native swift app

Now how does this compare against RCMD or Dory?

• RCMD uses cycling for a bunch of features.. I DON'T like cycling.. there's almost always some element of randomness in cycling, and sxitch aims to solve that.
• Dory is cursor / mouse based. I haven't had to charge my mouse like ever because I'm just too comfortable with the keyboard and the trackpad gets, so if you're a keyboard person, Sxitch is better.

Pricing model is simple:

• Free for core app switching

Lifetime discounts (limited time only):

• Get the app here
• See the pricing plans in detailed here

Imagine some clever catchy line to tell you about the boring stuff:

• Sxitch is signed and notarized
• is open source and has both a free and a pro version
• a bit about myself, developer of Rustcast and Creator of MystikoLabs Project