Finder is frustrating. Digging through four folders for a receipt you downloaded twenty minutes ago, searching a word you know is inside a PDF and getting nothing back, losing a file to whatever folder the browser felt like using that day.

Kepter watches the folders you pick (Desktop, Downloads, Documents by default), reads what lands there, and shows all of it as one scrollable wall of pictures instead of a list of filenames.

Point it at any folder or drive on your Mac, including your Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and iCloud folders, and it reads whatever is downloaded there.

The idea is recognition instead of recall. You do not file photos on your phone and you still find them, because you know what the thing looked like. Kepter does that for receipts, scans, PDFs, screenshots, voice memos, everything else.

The reading is the actual product. Every file gets read on your Mac and the words go into a local index, so you can type what you remember instead of the filename. "my flight" finds the boarding pass. A word on page 12 of a Word doc is as findable as one on page 1. Scans and screenshots get OCR'd. Audio and video get transcribed, so a phrase somebody said in a voice memo finds the memo.

That all runs through Apple's own frameworks: PDFKit for document text, Vision for OCR, Speech for audio, and Apple's on-device models on macOS 26. There are no AI API calls in the read path. Your files are not uploaded and Kepter never keeps a copy of one.

Requirements, and this rules a lot of people out: macOS 26 or newer, Apple Silicon only. The on-device models Kepter reads with do not exist below 26 and do not run on Intel at all. There is no version that works on older Macs, and I would rather say that here than have you find out after downloading.

Some other things it does:

• Zips, disk images and installers show as tiles without ever being opened. A zip is findable by the names of what is inside it.
• Sort by what the document says. Bills by amount, letters by who sent them, papers by the date printed on them. Finder sorts a receipt by its kilobytes.
• Files that iCloud has offloaded, or that live on an unplugged drive, are still findable by their words, because Kepter read them while they were here. Spotlight goes blind on those. Kepter never triggers a download to do it.
• Dates inside a document (a bill's due date) can be turned into a reminder in one click.
• Save the same thing twice and it shows once, with a count. Only ever grouped when byte-identical or when the pages render identically. Near-identical images are shown as "related, you decide" rather than merged.
• A drawer that sits at the edge of the screen so you can drag things out into an email without leaving what you were doing.

What it does not do, since this is the part that usually gets left out:

• It is not a backup. Kepter keeps no copy of anything. It reads your files where they sit and remembers them. Delete the original and Kepter loses it too. If you want the bytes in two places, this is not that app.
• Photos and screenshots are never redrawn or reconstructed. Share and export always send the original file.
• No iPhone app. One Mac app, today.
• If macOS cannot transcribe a language on-device, Kepter skips transcription rather than sending the audio somewhere. That file is still kept and still findable by name, just not by what was said.
• iCloud offload detection works. OneDrive and Dropbox placeholders do not, because there is no public API for them.

Trust stuff, because this sub asks and it is fair:

I am Chad Maltby. Kepter is made by Maltby Ventures LLC, three of us. Before this we shipped Peddra, another Mac app under the same company. Kepter is signed and notarized with Developer ID, sandboxed, and updates itself through Sparkle with your permission.

Every privacy claim on the site is checked against the shipping code and written up with how it was checked: https://kepter.app/receipts . That page lists every place the app can touch the network and what has to happen for each one to fire. It was updated today when billing went live, because turning billing on made one line of it untrue.

Test counts, since a real number beats an adjective: 274 passing tests across the crypto, shared and app targets.

I use Claude heavily while building this, the same way I use it at work. I make the decisions, I review the code, and I own it when it breaks. Saying so because I would rather be plain about it than weird about it.

Privacy: https://kepter.app/privacy Terms: https://kepter.app/terms What it stores, exactly: https://kepter.app/what-kepter-stores

Version 1.0.0 went out today. If you don't like it or it is not working on your machine, please let me know. [hello@kepter.app](mailto:hello@kepter.app) goes to me.

Problem

Finder shows you a list of names. People do not remember filenames, they remember what a thing looked like and roughly what it said. Spotlight helps when you can already name the thing. It does not read inside most of what you save, so a word on page 12 of a Word doc or a phrase in a voice memo is invisible to it.

Comparison

Spotlight is free and built in. It launches apps and does quick math; Kepter reads inside your files. Spotlight indexes far less of what you save and goes blind on anything iCloud has offloaded. DEVONthink (paid) is built around you organizing a database; Kepter is built around not organizing anything. EagleFiler and Yep (paid) file documents into libraries and move or copy your files to do it. HoudahSpot (paid) is a much better search front end for Spotlight, but inherits what Spotlight indexed. Kepter is the one that reads everything itself, on-device, leaves every file exactly where it is, and shows the result as pictures rather than rows.

Price

30 days free, no card, no account. After that $2.99/month, which is a founding price kept for life even after it rises to $4.99. Or $39 once, for life, which later becomes $59. One plan, everything included, the two options differ only in how you pay. Signed and notarized. No ads, no tracking, no analytics in the app.

Hey r/MacApps,

I'm the developer of OpenClip, a native macOS utility that brings contextual actions directly to your cursor whenever you highlight text. It is 100% free and open source under the MIT license.

PopClip is an absolute classic that defined this space for years. But as someone who loves native macOS software, I wanted a modern alternative that was completely open source, supported private local AI out of the box, and made installing extensions seamless.

Problem

Whenever you need to format text, convert casing, clean up markdown, or summarize a passage with an AI model, the standard routine is full of friction:

1. Copy the selection
2. Switch windows or open a launcher
3. Paste and run the tool
4. Copy the result and switch back to where you started

Doing that throughout the day constantly breaks your concentration. OpenClip removes those extra steps by showing actions right next to your selection the moment you highlight text.

Comparison

The established benchmark in this category is PopClip ($20+ paid license, closed source). PopClip is great software, but here is how OpenClip approaches text actions differently:

• Free and Open Source (MIT): Written natively in modern Swift 6. Zero telemetry, no background tracking, no account required, and no paid tiers.
• In-App Store with 100+ Extensions: With tools like PopClip, adding actions usually means searching web forums, downloading snippet files, and manually importing them. OpenClip includes a in-app store with 100+ ready-to-use community extensions (developer tools, markdown formatters, notes app integrations, URL utilities) installable with a single click.
• Local AI: Run offline on-device models using Ollama or Apple Intelligence without sending your text to third-party servers. If you prefer cloud providers, OpenAI and Claude streaming are also supported.
• Action Search: A search field built into the bar that lets you filter and trigger any action across your catalog without digging through nested menus. This can be helpful if you don't like openclip appear whenever you select a text.

Pricing & Official Links

• Price: 100% Free & Open Source (MIT License). No subscriptions, no ads, no locked features.
• Website & Direct DMG: https://getopenclip.app
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/ganeshmshetty/openclip
• Optional Support: If you find OpenClip helpful and want to support continued development, you can buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/ganeshmshetty

Requires macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or newer.

If you give it a spin, I would love your feedback on how it handles text selection in your everyday apps, and what extensions you want to see in the store next.

Edit: I want to thank people who helped in beta testing this app and especially u/MaxGaav

Additionally if you want updates for the new releases, you can join: https://discord.gg/sy4MeFxf8

Problem: Hope to have a retro-style mini local music player that can directly read and play audio files in folders, manage music via traditional folder hierarchy, and support a wider range of audio formats.

Comparison: Compared with the system native Music App, this player focuses purely on local playback without redundant cloud, subscription and online library features, featuring smaller size and flexible window modes. Different from mainstream third‑party players, it adds waveform progress visualization, one‑click switch between three window sizes and menu bar quick controls, with a minimalist customizable UI and full lossless format support including FLAC. Uniquely, it supports MCP stdio, enabling AI Agents to directly search, play and control playback — something most music players do not offer. When matched against ultra‑simple players, it provides broader audio format compatibility and richer visual interaction details, balancing practicality and appearance customization, plus the new AI‑controllable capability.

Pricing: Lifetime Access: $3.99

Changelog(v3.6): This update adds support for MCP stdio mode and updates the app icon.

I gathered lots of feature requests from my last Reddit promotion. Now Musicer v3.6 is here! Six versions have shipped since that post, bringing plenty of new features. Feel free to share more interesting use‑case ideas and feature requests!

v3.5.0

1. feat: add bitrate and sample rate display.
2. fix: fix new window not being brought to the front correctly.
3. fix: fix FLAC playback failure caused by sample rate mismatch.
4. fix: fix mini window layout and styling issues.
5. chore: improve localization and internationalization.
6. chore: fix several build warnings.

v3.4.0

1. feat: optimize handling logic for file and folder renaming issues.
2. feat: add de language.

v3.3.0

1. feat: add audio output device selection.
2. feat: add indicator for unreadable music files in list.
3. perf: fix occasional stuttering in list rendering

v3.2.1

1. pref: optimize occasional stuttering caused by long‑term loop playback.
2. fix: keep menu item icons visible on macOS 27.

v3.2.0

1. feat: Hidden the close button on Standard and Large Cover views until hovered.
2. feat: Added Equalizer support for sound customization.
3. feat: Added a search function within playlists.
4. feat: Improved lyric translation and word-level Karaoke display.
5. fix: Auto-selects the first track when a playlist loads.
6. fix: Fixed a bug where hidden folders visibility state was not saved.
7. fix: Fixed window dragging failure in the area above the main playlist.

v3.1.0

1. feat: add a Get Info window for editing track tags.
2. feat: add classic, bars, pill, and segmented progress styles.
3. feat: add gapless playback between consecutive tracks.
4. feat: add six new app localizations.
5. feat: add movable desktop lyrics.
6. feat: add karaoke lyric sync and a lockable desktop overlay.
7. fix: restore album art in the status bar.
8. fix: disable the blue focus ring around the player window.

📥 Download Link

it's difficult to uninstall Audacity (v3) with PearCleaner because it has some files in common with v4. what a mess.

• Problem: There's a general consensus I believe that most folk are truly getting fed up of paying out for subscriptions left, right and centre for all manner of things. When I had my last email from Adobe, it was, unsurprisingly about increasing my subs, for no apparent increase in functionality etc. So when I cancelled my sub, I had to have a way of managing my extensive catalogue, Lumidex Studio was born.
• Comparison: The obvious competitor is Adobe Lightroom Classic. What does my app do better?
  • Handles NAS drives out the box gracefully, no more "?" when LrC decides it has no idea where your network drives have gone. Lumidex Studio simply handles this with ease
  • Vectorscopes and RGB parades - super helpful for colour grading
  • Assisted duplicate finder - uses SHA-256 hash checking of content to find dupes
  • Dedicated colour grading with plot graph - makes tweaking hues child's play
  • Tethered USB Capture - supports a wide range of camera makes, single-shot from the camera or app, or, programmable time-lapse
  • Negative scanning mode - eases the pain of processing negs
  • Focus stacking - into macro or landscape photography and want pin-sharp images across the entire depth?
  • Ai tools include auto key-wording, semantic tagging (search for images with natural language), denoise, super-resolution
  • Effects include grain, halo, glow and more planned
• Pricing £49 one-time cost, lifetime ownership - https://www.lumidexstudio.app - no account needed, no tracking, no ads, no bs.

Why no MAS? Simply put, Lumidex Studio can't ship on the Mac App Store because the App Store mandates the App Sandbox, and this app's two defining capabilities are fundamentally incompatible with it: tethered capture talks to cameras over raw USB via libgphoto2 (PTP/USB device access the sandbox forbids), and the entire library model reaches photos on a NAS through an AFP network share, reaching arbitrary mounted volumes and network shares the way this app does isn't permitted under the sandbox either.

website has PP and ToS, my linkedIn has no relevant skills to show here (I work as an Azure cloud infrastructure engineer) I do have validated apps in the Mac App Store, one being DiskScanPro, here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/diskscanpro/id6802771798?mt=12

I'm still completely opposed to an app that has a free tier and a subscription tier. And you have to keep paying to keep the subscription tier features.

And I'm totally opposed to any app that adds unnecessary cloud storage or "AI" features to a subscription to justify the subscription tier that has some feature you need.

But I now better understand modern software development. Developers need to sign their apps, which is a subscription fee to Apple. And time spent fixing bugs and security vulnerabilities is time spent that you're not going to get from sales revenues of existing customers.

So, there is one software model I agree with. Sell me the app and give me some predetermined time —say a year— of free updates. After 1 year, I stop getting all updates, but my apps continues to work without losing any features. And any update mechanism in the app needs to be very clear that the update you're pushing will require someone to re-up their subscription.

This does three things:

1. It gives the developer a recurring revenue stream.
2. It incentivizes the developer to keep working on the app to make people want to renew for another year.
3. The user is not held ransom by their data being in an app.

Now if your app has a monthly recurring cost such as cloud storage or AI tokens, then I can see you needing to charge a monthly fee. But I also believe app developers should allow end-users a chance to use a cloud storage provider of their choice, enter an API key for the LLM of choice, or just provide an MCP server.

Yesterday I was looking for an even simpler way to transfer files in our house and home offices through the local network than with LocalSend. And so I found PairDrop. 

It's free, open-source and web-based and lets you securely (encrypted) share files and text between different devices without requiring an account or an app. It works and looks like Apple's AirDrop.

It appears it can also be used when devices are on different networks, by pairing the devices first, or by public rooms. I did not try that yet, though.

There's a GitHub page too.

^{No affiliation, just sharing.} 

Hi everyone,

I've released my first open-source macOS app, VolEq:

Download: https://github.com/DPatrikI/voleq-community/releases/latest
Source code: https://github.com/DPatrikI/voleq-community

VolEq can process either one application, such as Teams, or all audio playing on your Mac. It automatically raises quiet voices and reduces loud ones. It uses offline speech-aware processing so music, barking, and background noise do not get boosted.

Everything runs locally. VolEq does not record, save, or upload audio. The downloadable app is signed and notarized by Apple.

Problem

During meetings, I regularly have one person who is much quieter or louder than everyone else. I either cannot hear that person properly, or someone else suddenly destroys my ears. VolEq tries to keep those voices at a more consistent level without me constantly changing the volume.

I originally made an Android version around five years ago. This is a new native macOS implementation of the same core idea.

Comparison

SoundSource offers much broader control over Mac audio, including manual per-app volume, routing, and effects. Teams and Zoom can automatically adjust your microphone input, which affects what other people hear from you.

VolEq has a narrower purpose. It automatically levels the playback that you hear, either from one application or device-wide, while trying not to amplify music and unrelated background sounds. It does not require manual volume adjustment and is free and open source.

Pricing

Free ($0) and open source under MPL-2.0.

Requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14.2 or newer.

Dev LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrik-istván-dóczy/
Privacy Policy and Terms of Service: https://dpatriki.github.io/privacy/voleq/
Bug reports and suggestions: https://github.com/DPatrikI/voleq-community/issues

The current version is 0.1.1. Any feedback, whether technical or quality-of-life related, is welcome!

My daughter loves reading english books. She is in french emersion and I’m tying to get her to read french books and I would like to use an existing english book she knows as a way to learn better.

Basically the perfect app would have the original book on the left, and the translated version on the right (in french). If she selects text on the right, it would read it out french out. However, she cam still see the english version on left.

It can be with macos but if it has a ipad app, bonus.

I am curious what everyone's productivity hacks are. The can be a feature from an app... any app really... Something that you use a lot but maybe isn't well known.

I make Verso (a word processor) and Skein (a notes app). Building those meant writing a Markdown editor anyway, and people who write in Markdown are not interested in buying a word processor from me - so I pulled the editor out, gave it its own window, and made it free. That's the origin story.

I tired to do a search on how many there are on app store already - but lost count. I know that you probably have a markdown editor that you like more. But hey. Free things ;)

Problem

Live preview Markdown editors reveal the raw syntax on whichever line your cursor is on. So the text shifts every time you move the caret, and you spend the day watching the page twitch. Lede decides what to hide from what the line says, not from where the cursor is, so nothing reflows while you type.

It's also one file in one window. No vault, no sidebar, nothing to import into. It edits the file where you keep it and gives it back byte for byte.

Comparison

Typora ($14.99, one-time) is the closest thing, and it has exactly the problem above: put the cursor on a heading and the ## appears, moving the line. Typora is Electron; Lede is AppKit and about 5 MB. But Typora does maths and Mermaid diagrams and Lede does neither, so if you write LaTeX, stop reading, it's the better app.

MarkText (free) is the free version of that idea and still Electron. Its last release was v0.19.1 in June 2024 and the Mac builds are unsigned, so you get Gatekeeper's "damaged, move to Bin" and have to clear the quarantine flag by hand. Lede is signed and notarised, so it just opens.

MacDown (free) is the native free one and the honourable ancestor here, but its last release was 0.7.3 in January 2020 and it's a split pane: source on the left, preview on the right, rather than one page.Where I'd send you elsewhere: if you want a folder of linked notes, use Obsidian or Skein. If you want page layout and a .docx at the end, that's Verso, and that one costs money.

Pricing

Free. £0 / $0. No in-app purchases, no account, no server, no analytics.

https://www.skeinnotes.app/lede

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lede-markdown-editor/id6807381598?mt=12

Rest of it: three views on one measure (Write, Read, Source with line numbers), four page colours, type size and line length set in characters rather than pixels, a / menu that shows the Markdown it's about to write. 647/650 CommonMark and 666/672 GFM against the specs' own suites. Smart quotes and dashes are off and can't be turned on. Check the settings for more options.

macOS 14+, Apple silicon and Intel, signed and notarised. It's 1.0.2 and went out today, so tell me what's broken.

You will probably find some issues ;) That's good I would love for you to lemme know - it keeps the other parts (Verso and Skein moving) I will fix them here means there are issues there

When I first posted ActionClip in here in macApps (link to last post), I thought I was launching a useful selected-text utility.

Then this community left more than 300 comments filled with workflows, missing integrations, bug reports and ideas I had never considered. Let me introduce ActionClip again:

The problem:

Whenever I selected text on my Mac, even a tiny task became: 

Copy → switch apps → paste → do the task → copy the result → switch back

The iPhone already solved it by putting useful actions beside the selected text. I wanted that same flow on Mac, so I built ActionClip.

What ActionClip does:

ActionClip appears beside selected text and surfaces the most relevant actions. It includes 32 built-in actions for copying, paste variations, formatting, spelling and grammar, rewriting, translating, unit conversions, word counts, links, Maps, notes, events, and AI prompts.

With this community 💜, I got my roadmap. Let me bring to you the major upgrades I did to ActionClip in last month.

1. A rich, community-led Action Marketplace

The Marketplace now contains 225 official extensions across:

• Writing and text processing
• Productivity workflows
• Developer tools
• Translation
• Markdown and data extraction
• Apple macOS apps (like Reminder, Notes etc)
• Deeper macOS integrations (like Text-to-speech, SpellCheck, Apple Shortcuts etc)
• Third-party app integrations (like Refine, Fluent, DevonThink, UpNote etc)
• Clipboard utilities
• Apple Shortcuts

Many additions started as community requests, including UpNote, Fluent, Refine, Perplexity, Apple Shortcuts, local Ollama support and deeper Apple app integrations.

I am now taking this further with community-led extension launches, where the power to create and share the extension will be in the hands of you people. I’ll just make sure that the extension is safe and working properly.

2. Smart actions suggested upfront

The goal is to show the right action before you need to search for it.

Select foreign text and translation moves forward. Select a currency, link, phone number or rough sentence and ActionClip surfaces actions that make sense for that content.

It can even do the conversions smartly and display the results directly beside your selection. No more copy, paste, switch windows and back. 

3. ⭐️ Showstopper - If an extension is missing, create it with AI

The Marketplace cannot possibly cover every personal workflow.

That is why ActionClip includes a chat-assisted action builder. Describe what you want in normal language and get it directly as clickable action to your selected-text menu. And there’s no limit on how many you want to create.

For example:

• Humanize the selected text without changing its meaning.
• Extract every email address and copy them as a comma-separated list.
• Search the selected text on my company’s documentation website.
• Send this text to another Mac app using AppleScript.

ActionClip can run AI prompts, URL actions, JavaScript transformations, AppleScripts and terminal actions.

The result appears beside your selection, ready to copy or paste back into the original app.

4. You’re in full control of AI you want to use

ActionClip now supports multiple AI options:

• Local (on-device): Apple Intelligence and Ollama
• Online providers: OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, OpenRouter and Perplexity. Just add your keys and you’re good to go.
• You can even integrate your ChatGPT/Codex subscription if you have it.

5. Support is part of the product

When you contact ActionClip support, you are speaking directly with me, the person building it. There is no handoff between a support team and a development team.

The public feedback board currently reports 50 completed requests.

There are also one or two UserJot reports that I have not fixed yet. They remain publicly visible, and I am actively working through them.

6. A quick PopClip comparison

Many users are already PopClip users. PopClip remains an excellent and mature app with a long-established extension ecosystem. ActionClip is taking a different approach:

• Smart upfront suggestions
• AI-assisted unlimited extension creation
• Curated community led actions marketplace

In those areas, I believe ActionClip has grown beyond being merely another PopClip alternative.

7. Pricing (Earlybird-3)

• Free: 30 action runs per day
• Individual: $9 once, 1 Mac and lifetime updates
• Family: $15 once, upto 2 Macs, iCloud Sync and lifetime updates
• Team: $29 once, up to 5 Macs, iCloud Sync and lifetime updates

The above pricing is available for the first 100 licenses.

Refund policy: All paid plans include a 30-day, no questions asked refund

Everyone who purchased ActionClip with the above early-bird pricing will receive all the updates for lifetime.

8. Links & Transparency

• Download: https://actionclip.app
• Explore the Marketplace - https://actionclip.app/marketplace
• Last month changelog: https://actionclip.app/changelog
• My LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/advait-vaidya-7380ab97
• My X: https://x.com/AdvaitVaidya2
• New Discord community: https://discord.gg/GuzdYUSdhv

About me: I’m a solopreneur behind several active apps for small businesses, averaging 4.9 stars across app and plugin marketplaces.

A note about downloading outside the Mac App Store

ActionClip isn’t currently on the Mac App Store because its system-wide text-selection features and user-created shell/AppleScript actions require capabilities that don’t fit within Apple’s App Sandbox restrictions.

The app is signed with a Developer ID certificate linked to my official Apple Developer account and notarized by Apple, so macOS Gatekeeper can verify that it comes from an identified developer and hasn’t been tampered with.

macOS removed Launchpad. Launchie brings it back - and makes it more customizable.

Hi r/MacApps, I’m the developer of Launchie, a Mac App Store app built after Apple removed Launchpad from macOS.

Problem

Launchpad used to be a simple, visual way to open and organize apps on macOS. Since Apple removed it, there is no real built-in replacement for people who liked having an app grid, folders, and quick access to their installed apps.

Launchie brings that workflow back, but with more control:

• Launchpad-style app grid
• Folders and Spaces for organizing apps
• Drag and drop rearranging
• Keyboard shortcut, hot corner, app icon, or menu bar activation
• Customizable layout, window size, columns, Quick Access, hidden apps, and more

I built Launchie because I personally missed that workflow, and a lot of users seemed to feel the same.

Comparison

There are already other good apps in this space, including LaunchNext and LaunchOS.

Launchie’s focus is slightly different: I’m trying to keep the original Launchpad feeling, while adding deeper customization and a more native macOS-style experience. For example, Launchie supports folders, Spaces, drag-and-drop organization, Quick Access, hot corners, keyboard shortcuts, and a lot of layout options.

I’m also actively developing it based on user feedback. Many of the recent changes came directly from emails, DMs, and comments from users. I reply to feedback, and when an idea makes sense for the app, I try to implement it.

Pricing

Launchie is currently on sale, with up to 50% off depending on your region.

US pricing:

• Lifetime: $14.99 instead of $29.99
• Yearly: $7.99 instead of $14.99

Family Sharing is supported.

Mac App Store: Launchie on the Mac App Store

Recent Updates

Launchie has improved a lot since the first version. Recent updates added or improved:

• Fixed aliases from external devices
• Added per monitor appearance settings
• Added chinese translations
• Option to show Dock above fullscreen launcher
• Drag to Dock works now
• Big performance improvements
• Colored badges for spaces
• Quick access has no a favorites row
• Decide which displays should trigger hot corner.
• Option to disable Spaces entirely
• Drag and drop reordering for Spaces
• Larger grid support, now up to 20 columns
• Settings directly inside the Launchie window
• Better performance when opening and closing Launchie
• Quick Access improvements
• More options to hide or simplify header controls
• Remember Last Location setting
• Better folder behavior when dragging apps
• Improved search focus and keyboard handling

Full changelog is available on the App Store.

Thanks again to everyone who gave feedback so far. I’m extremely grateful for it 🙏

I’m the developer of PostgresGUI. I shared the app here in January, and I’ve since added two features:

1. SSH connections — requested by a user.
2. Query history — something I needed in my own work.

Problem:

Generally I was frustrated with other clients. I wanted something simple. I added a brand, and launch it and started getting feedback.

Since then, my own day-to-day use and feedback from users have shaped what I’ve added.

Sometimes I need a query I ran earlier but didn’t think to save. Query history now records executed SQL so you can find a previous statement, copy it into the editor, and run it again. Saved queries remain separate, with folders and search for SQL you know you’ll reuse.

A user also needed to access a database behind an SSH server. PostgresGUI now supports connecting through an SSH tunnel directly in the app.

Comparison:

I think of PostgresGUI as a notepad for PostgreSQL: a small, focused native Mac app you open to check some data, run SQL, edit a row, or export results.

DBeaver and TablePlus offer broader toolsets; PostgresGUI focuses on everyday PostgreSQL tasks with a simple interface.

Pricing:

US $22.99 one time, no subscription. Requires macOS 26 or later; PostgreSQL only. You can build from source for free, or buy through the App Store for convenient installation and updates.

GitHub — source code

PostgresGUI on the App Store

Hazel is currently 35% off for their 20th anniversary. Go get it!

https://store.noodlesoft.com/store

Not affiliated just a fan.

Offer ends September 7th at midnight 2026

I am a Mac developer, and I believe this should be a worldwide standard. An app that performs an offline task must stay offline.

Opening a text file or using a local utility should not mean reporting my activity to its developer or an analytics company. Whether that information is useful to someone else does not change that principle.

Sales and download figures are a separate matter. So is a crash report I deliberately choose to send. I am talking about background usage reporting while an app does something entirely on my Mac.

I use Little Snitch to check connections, including after disabling analytics. I have seen an app claim "no data collected" while connecting to Google Analytics and its own analytics subdomain. Those destinations do not prove what was transmitted or retained, but I still want an explanation for those connections.

Developers who add analytics to local apps, I want to understand your reasoning.

• What specific decision has the data helped you make?
• Why should using an offline feature generate a report to a server?
• Who receives the data, and is it used for anything beyond improving the app?

Developers who keep their apps offline, how do you learn what needs improving?

Users, do you expect the same boundary? What would it take to make offline tasks staying offline the standard rather than something we have to check ourselves?

Problem
macOS has plenty of ambient sound apps but nearly all of them are sound libraries with faders on top. You get a rain, you get a fire, you slide them around until it sounds alright, and ten minutes later you have stopped hearing any of it. Dark Noise is the best built one of these and it moved to a subscription in 2023 (charging $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year, with eight sounds on the free tier). Endel goes further at $19.99 a month and generates its audio instead of using recordings, which is a different thing entirely. Both are good apps but with both of them you are renting a library and you are still the one assembling the mix.

Basically, macOS doesn't have an app that just puts you somewhere and lets you stay there.

This is where No Rush comes in. What you pick is not a sound, it is an actual place. A bamboo grove in Kyoto. The black sand coast at Vík. The lava forest at Gotjawal on Jeju. I research a real location and then build it one recording at a time so that the parts belong to each other, and then the place runs on that location's own clock and its current weather. Midnight in Kyoto does not sound like the afternoon there, and if it is raining in Kyoto right now then it is raining in your room. So it doesn't flatten out on you over a work day the way a loop does.

The need to make this came from my own desk. I work at a computer all day and I kept going back to nature sounds to get through the afternoon, and I kept quitting them by 3pm because they had gone dead on me. I built the first version for myself and had no plan to ship it.

Most of my time actually goes into the timing rather than the audio. When a sound comes in, how often, how far away it sits, what it does when something else is already sounding. That is the part that decides whether a place feels like a place or like a playlist.

It sits in your menu bar, so you click the icon, pick somewhere, close the window and it keeps going while you work. Every sound is stored on your machine so it runs with the network off. There is no mixer and nothing to stack, just one volume and a sleep timer that fades the place out on its own. Head tracking is optional and uses the AirPods motion sensor only, never the camera or the mic, and it is off by default. No account, no ads, and the usage stats are anonymous with a switch in Settings to turn them off.

The recordings in this app are public license files that I personally selected. I started taking the recorder out to make up for mine, beginning with the nearby mountain. The iPhone and iPad versions were released on the App Store this month, and the Mac version is available for immediate download.

Comparison

Dark Noise: The most polished app in this space and genuinely well made. It is a library though, so what you choose is a sound and what you do next is mix it. No Rush hands you a finished place instead, and that place keeps changing on its own for as long as you leave it on. Dark Noise is a subscription now at $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year with eight free sounds.

Endel: Endel generates its audio rather than playing recordings, and it is $19.99 a month. That is a real difference in kind and not just in price. There is nothing generated in No Rush and nothing tuned to a number either, no binaural beats and no frequencies aimed at you. It is recordings of places that exist, which is the whole point of it for me.

Pricing

No Rush is free. $0, no account, no ads, nothing to unlock. Some places are locked because I haven't finished building them, and later ones may become a one time purchase, but what is free today stays free and this is not going behind a subscription.

Try it in a browser, no download: https://no-rush.app

Mac, Windows and Linux: https://no-rush.app/download

iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6796154195

About me: https://no-rush.app/about

Privacy Policy: https://no-rush.app/privacy

Terms: https://no-rush.app/terms

If you leave a place on for a few hours I would really like to know whether it stays good or you end up switching it off, and which place I should build next. Any other questions, drop them below and I will answer them.

I'm looking for a lightweight macOS app that works like Raycast's Quick AI: I hit a global hotkey, a small floating window pops up, I type a quick question, get an answer, and close it - no full chat app, no browser tab, minimal friction.

The one hard requirement is OpenRouter support (or at least a custom OpenAI-compatible base URL + API key), so I can pick whichever model I want and pay per use instead of a subscription.

Ideally free or one-time payment app.

First: Thank you for over 2000 users in 2 months ❤️ Really, thank you!

WHAT PROBLEM IT SOLVES

macOS has desktop widgets, but let's be honest: they're really boring. Always the same few layouts, no movement, no good design, and absolutely no control over how they look. Third-party options usually don't go beyond “Choose a Color” and “No Details.”
And other Apps Like Widgetter, Widgetwall looking Old and have no many Details.

Available at: https://bettermacwidgets.de/
Free to download

Human reviewed code.

13 of the 25 widgets are Free. Pro is a one time purchase, 12,99 € for one Mac. The Lock Screen is also a lifetime purchase, 9,99 €.

With the code "MAC15" you get 15% off any purchase you make. Activate it at the Stripe checkout under "Promotion Code".

FEATURES

• 25 widgets to mix and match: Clock and World Clock, Calendar, Reminders, Weather, Now Playing with full media controls, Battery, a system monitor (CPU, GPU, RAM and disk with live graphs), battery levels for your Bluetooth devices (AirPods, mouse, keyboard and more), clipboard history, a file shelf you can drag files onto, timer, stopwatch, countdown, unit and currency converters, crypto, a photo frame, sticky notes, Shortcuts, a world map, and more.

• Build your own (Beta). Cannot find the widget you want? Write it yourself as one small JSON file. Say what it should show, a reading from your Mac, the time, or a number from any JSON endpoint, and it lands on your desktop like every other widget. Five templates to start from, a live preview while you type, and export so you can hand the file to a friend.

• Widgets that are live. The weather widget actually shows the rain, the snow and the clear sky it is reporting. There is a drifting starfield. And Now Playing quietly tints your widgets in the colour of whatever is playing, Spotify green, Apple Music red.

• Widget Stacks. Several widgets in one spot, rotating on their own, the way you would stack them on iOS, on your Mac's desktop.

• 20 themes plus a glass slider. so you can go from nearly invisible to heavy frost and recolour the lot to match your wallpaper.

• Built to be kind to your battery. A power saving mode animates only the widget you are actually looking at, so it costs virtually nothing when idle. Or turn it all the way up for buttery 60 fps on the days you do not care.

• Privacy first. No account, no sign in, no telemetry, none at all. Everything stays on your Mac, and the network is only touched when a widget genuinely needs it (the weather, for instance).

NEW IN THIS UPDATE: LOCK SCREEN WIDGETS

You can now place all of your widgets on your Mac's lock screen as well. Because it is an additional feature and was originally planned as a separate app, it is not included in Pro.

TRANSPARENCY

Name: Nico Sagolla
Company: Nico Sagolla
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nico-sagolla-6a8872350/
Email: [Nico.Sagolla@gmx.de](mailto:Nico.Sagolla@gmx.de)
Privacy Policy: https://bettermacwidgets.de/privacy
Terms of Service: https://bettermacwidgets.de/terms

An upvote ⬆️ and a comment would help a lot, that is how more people find it 🫶 Hope you enjoy BetterMacWidgets ❤️

Thank you and have Fun!

Version 1.1 of DiskScanPro now available from the Mac App Store.

• Problem: While developing Lumidex Studio, there was a chunk of testing on various RAW files from different camera manufacturers (Nikon, Canon, Sony et al), and SDKs to deal with for the USB tethered capture module - all of this testing takes a lot of disk space for said RAW files and SDKs. With my Mac only having 512GiB of disk, I was running low, very low. DiskScanPro was born as a means of scanning my drive for essential 'junk' littered about the place with a view to trashing the lot, primarily because an app I'd used years and years ago hasn't been maintained/updated for some time! In my first scan I junked over 140GiB of disk space to all manner of stuff I'd accumulated over the years. Interestingly, that huge chunk of drive space allocated in the yellow block (95GiB) is my Parallels VM running Win11, development work of a forthcoming photobooth app to rival the big players :)
• Comparison: Disk Inventory X - app mentioned above, very old in the tooth.
• Pricing:  £1.99 in the UK, priced the same amount in other geographic locations - Mac App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/diskscanpro/id6802771798?mt=12

The app offers tree-map, sunburst and file view, critically I implemented a SHA-256 hashing function to scan for 100% content-duplicate files, irrespective of filename/date/time attributes. Essential for weeding out files that simply shouldn't exist on your drive because of previous bad file management.

You can also save snapshots of scans, for easy comparison with future scans to see what was added/removed etc.

Any feedback gratefully received. And, hopefully my local karma levels in this group will now allow me to publicise my photography app mentioned above in full, even though it's NOT available via the Mac App Store (more on that later....)

I'm the developer of Hexel Editor.

Problem

Every time I needed to look at the raw bytes of a file on my Mac, I had two bad options. Either a hex editor that felt like it was ported from 2003, or a terminal window full of xxd output that I had to count columns in by hand.

Both leave you doing the same work in your head: what does this file actually look like structurally, and what value is sitting under my cursor right now. If I'm staring at offset 0x1F40 in a Mach-O binary, I want the app to tell me that's inside a load command, not make me go and look it up.

So Hexel Editor puts three things on screen at once, in a standard Xcode-style document window:

Navigator on the left with the parsed structure of the file. Built-in parsers for Mach-O, PE, ELF, PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, ZIP, gzip and PDF. Click a field and it jumps straight to those bytes.

Hex grid in the middle. Configurable bytes per row, hex or decimal offsets, optional ASCII column, colorized bytes, editable nibble by nibble or by typing into the ASCII column.

Data inspector on the right, live at the cursor. Int and UInt 8 through 64, Float32 and Float64, binary, hex, strings. Little endian and big endian, toggled instantly.

Other things it does that I use constantly:

Large files are memory mapped, so a multi GB binary opens as fast as a 2 KB one and stays responsive while you scroll.

Hex pattern search with ?? wildcards for don't-care bytes, text search in UTF-8, UTF-16 LE, UTF-16 BE and ASCII, and Go to Offset in hex, octal or decimal.

Checksums (CRC32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256), entropy, and a byte frequency histogram over a selection or the whole file.

Named, colored bookmarks and plain text notes on any byte range, exported as .hexel files so you can hand your findings to someone else alongside the binary.

Insert, overwrite and delete modes, a read-only mode for when you just want to look, unlimited undo and redo, and atomic saves that won't leave you with a half-written file.

Copy selections as raw bytes, a hex string, a C array or a Swift array literal.

Requires macOS 14.6 or later. No network access, no analytics, no telemetry, no accounts. It's sandboxed and only touches the files you open, and it's a 3 MB download.

Comparison

Hex Fiend: the default answer on macOS, free, open source and genuinely excellent, especially for enormous files. It can parse structure too, but through its binary template system, which means finding or writing a .tcl template first. Hexel Editor's parsers for the ten formats above are built in and run the moment you open the file, and the data inspector is always visible rather than a separate window. If you are happy writing templates, Hex Fiend is a great tool and I'd say so.

010 Editor: the power tool of the category, cross platform, with a full template and scripting language that goes far beyond what Hexel Editor does today. It is also $59.95 and its interface is the same on Windows, Linux and Mac rather than being a Mac app. Hexel Editor is narrower on purpose: no scripting, but a native macOS document app that gives you structure and decoded values with zero setup, for $6.99 instead of $59.95.

Honest limitations: closed source, no binary diff or compare yet, and no scripting or template language. Files outside the ten parsed formats open as plain bytes. Diff and a template language are the two things I'd build next.

Pricing

$6.99, one time, on the Mac App Store. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no upgrade pricing games.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hexel-editor/id6782320583

This has been an internal project for a while. I built it for my own work and kept using it for a long time without ever really thinking about putting it on the App Store, until a few people I showed it to talked me into it. So this is new territory for me and the feedback is the part I actually want: which formats you'd want parsers for, what's missing, what feels wrong. Happy to answer any questions.

I built Edgy, a fun little native macOS menu bar app that makes the edges of your screen glow, whatever your mood. No strips attached.

You can pick any color, animated scenes, sync the light with your music, or use Ambient mode to match whatever is on screen. Every display gets its own light, and it automatically curves around your notch.

Every control is also a Shortcuts action, so you can do things like red when Focus is on, green when a meeting app opens, amber when the battery is low, or a flash when the doorbell rings.

The app is small and notarized. Nothing is tracked or leaves your computer, except the license check, as covered in the privacy policy.

How it compares: Apple's Edge Light only works during video calls, with one color. Lumn ($9.99) is the closest, its light follows album art in Music or Spotify, which Edgy doesn't do, while Edgy syncs to any app and adds scenes, multiple displays and Shortcuts integration. LightBuddy ($4.99) is a ring light for calls. MacEdgeLight and RingLight are free and open source, if a plain border is all you want.

You can download it at getedgy.app and try every feature free for 72 hours. After that it's €4.99 once, launch price, for up to 3 Macs, updates included under these terms.

I'm Renato Costa, indie developer on weekends. You can find me on linkedin, more of my stuff at renato.works and reach me on X @renatoworks.

Hope you have as much fun with it as I do.

Enjoy the glow!

---

Edit: added linkedin, terms, and privacy policy.

I recently released GridTile, a native macOS window tiling app that lets you quickly position and resize windows using a keyboard-driven grid.

I originally built GridTile as a Hammerspoon Spoon. That version has around 10 stars and 2 forks, and seeing people use and contribute to it was the main reason I decided to take the project further and rebuild it as a proper native macOS application. The new version works standalone, without requiring Hammerspoon.

Problem

I wanted a simple way to position windows exactly where I wanted them without dragging and resizing them manually, or having to remember a large number of keyboard shortcuts for different layouts.

With GridTile, you bring up the grid, select the region you want, and the current window is moved and resized to fit it.

Comparison

Two of the well-known alternatives are Rectangle and Magnet, and both are great options.

They primarily provide predefined window positions and shortcuts. GridTile takes a different approach: the grid itself is the interface, so you can choose the exact region you want a window to occupy rather than relying only on predefined positions.

If you prefer a large collection of predefined window actions, Rectangle or Magnet may be a better fit. I built GridTile for people who prefer the grid-based approach.

Pricing

Free — $0

GridTile is fully open source and released under the MIT License.

Website: https://ujwalnk.github.io/GridTile
GitHub: https://github.com/ujwalnk/GridTile

Download: https://github.com/ujwalnk/GridTile/releases/latest

About the project

This is also a learning project for me. I'm relatively new to Swift/macOS development, and I used AI extensively while building the native version. I learned a lot through the process and have tried to understand, test, and improve the code rather than simply treating AI output as a finished product.

Developer Portfolio: https://ujwalnk.github.io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ujwalnk/

If you find GridTile useful, I'd really appreciate a ⭐ on GitHub. And if you have some free time, forks, issues, and PRs are very welcome. I'd love to keep learning and improving it with the community.

There's a demo video attached to the post. I'd love to hear what you think!

P.S. The hammerspoon version is still on my git, you can find it at https://github.com/ujwalnk/GridTile.Archive/

AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foldicon/id6801609658

Problem:

Open Finder/Desktop. It's the wall of the same folder, again and again. Work, photos, side projects, taxes same box. You don't see nothing. You see names.

Comparison:

Flairy : Is the closer comparison, and it’s a good one. But it has limited choices

Most other apps on the App Store share the same old idea; a color picker and an emoji stamped on the default folder. But nothing that feels personal or vibey Foldicon changes that.

What Foldicon Offers:

It has more than 200+ icons to choose from, more added in coming updates also you can make your own Foldicon's inside the app. Drop a photo of yourself, your dog, a moment, a painting. It gets redrawn as a folder icon in the same style as the rest of the set not a raw photo jammed into a folder shape.

Features:

• Drag and drop any folder or drop several at once 
• One-click apply, one-click revert 
• 200+ curated vibe icons across moodboards 
• Make your own Foldicon from a photo, redrawn in the same style as the library 
• iCloud sync for generated icons

Pricing:

The icon library is completely free, and it stays free. Future icons get added to the app for free as well.

One time purchase of PRO $4.99 to create as many custom foldicons as you want. No subscriptions. You only pay if you want to create your own custom Foldicon's

AI Disclaimer:

App was made using claude :) For the people who will come down just to type “AI slop”. Please add something else to it. Genuine critique is always welcome and it can actually help improve the app down the lane.

I think the antinote app is a non negotiable option nowadays and to be fair i can’t afford it so is there any free alternatives? If not i will try to save up until i get it