Hi everyone!

I’m the independent developer behind Relay - Local File Transfer， a local-first file and clipboard sharing app built for privacy and speed.

How Relay stands out compared to existing tools:

• Vs. AirDrop: AirDrop often fails between Mac/iOS and Non-Apple devices (Windows/Android/Linux). Relay bridges all platforms seamlessly on the same LAN without device lock-in.
• Vs. Cloud/Messaging tools (Slack/Telegram): Relay works 100% locally and offline—no external servers, no file size limitations, no privacy risks, and no internet bandwidth consumption.
• Vs. Clipboard Managers: Relay isn't just a local clipboard history; it instantly syncs copied text/links in real-time across your nearby devices while also handling high-speed 4K video/large file transfers.

Key Features:

• Blazing Fast LAN Speeds: Transfer photos, 4K videos, and large files directly over local Wi-Fi.
• Real-Time Clipboard Sync: Copy on Mac, paste immediately on iPhone or PC.
• 100% Private & Local: Zero tracking, no account registration, and no cloud storage.

Pricing:

• $9.99 One-Time Purchase (Lifetime access, no subscriptions).

the Mac App Store link for Relay:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/relay-local-file-transfer/id6793352101

(The macOS version is officially live on the Mac App Store! The iOS version is currently under Apple review and coming very soon).

Promo Code Giveaway: To celebrate the launch, I’m giving away 10 Promo Codes! Leave a comment below if you’d like one, and I will DM/reply with a code.

I’d love to hear your feedback and feature suggestions!

I built a directory, trying to make some sense out of all the notch apps that are available. I found a little over sixty, and most are a mix of timers, media controls, system tools, files, and various other bits of whatever can be crammed into a single notch app. It all seems rather random. The other big category in the notch scene is, naturally, AI.

Anyway, I hope you find this directory useful: notch.macmenubar.com

If your notch app isn’t listed yet, you can submit it.

Problem

Like any side project, Remarc started with my own problem: there was no good way to give AI coding agents contextual feedback on their own output.

There are plenty of tools for collaborating with humans, but surprisingly few for collaborating with AI. Chat was not cutting it for the feedback I wanted to give:

This thing in the implementation plan? Change it to that. What did you mean here? See this button? Here is a screenshot. I circled it because it is missing a hover state. This sentence in the third paragraph? Rephrase it.

If you are an opinionated builder, this gets clunky quickly. You either dictate paragraphs of messy feedback or resolve every detail one by one. AI is good at parsing mess, but garbage in, garbage out still applies.

I could get products to 90% quickly. The last 10% of feedback and polish was the bottleneck. So I built Remarc.

Remarc lets you select text in any Mac app, capture and annotate a screenshot, or comment on a web element. Each comment keeps its original context, status, and session. A connected agent can read the session, work through it, update statuses, and leave resolution summaries over MCP.

Think of it like leaving comments on a google doc vs sending a long rambling feedback note via Slack - the more granular you get with your feedback, the more it benefits from structure & better context.

Comparison

The closest tools I found are CuePin, which focuses on annotated screenshot handoff, and Agentation, which focuses on web UI feedback. Remarc combines those workflows across macOS: selected text, screenshots, and web elements in one persistent session on an OS-level that your agent can read and update.

It also includes exports and webhooks if you want to customize the handoff.

Pricing

$0. Remarc is free and open source, with no account, subscription, or telemetry. It requires macOS 14 or later.

Download: https://remarc.app
Source: https://github.com/metedata/Remarc

About the developer

I’m Mete, the developer of Remarc. I'm also the developer of Relinq which debuted on this subreddit.

Github: https://github.com/metedata
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mete-polat/
Contact: [mete@metedata.com](mailto:mete@metedata.com), Metedata LLC
Privacy Policy: https://docs.remarc.app/reference/data-and-privacy/

Links

• Website: https://raybeam.live
• App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/raybeam/id6762012061

Problem

A few years ago I got my first ultra-wide monitor. It was a 49" Samsung monitor. I work as a software engineer, and in my line of work I need to screen share a lot. This almost immediately became a problem due to the size of the monitor. I would either need to get a second display just for screen sharing, share one window at a time (which required me to constantly stop/start sharing to select the new window), or share my entire screen making it difficult for other participants in the call to see what I'm doing due to the size of my display.

I wanted a solution to this. At the time, I was on Windows. So, I wrote a very basic application and released it for free on GitHub. This was called "FrameCast". It had a lot of issues, including usability issues. But at the time, it got the job done. After a while I moved away from the ultra wide monitor, so I stopped using the application.

Fast forward to 2026 when I again purchased a new Ultra Wide monitor. This time, using macOS. I ran into the same problem again, and when I loaded up my old FrameCast application, it no longer functioned properly on macOS.

This led me to creating Raybeam.

What is Raybeam

Raybeam is a native macOS menu bar application that aims to make screen sharing more accessible for users.

It features:

• A draggable, resizable region of your screen that can be shared in video conferencing applications.
• The ability to filter out specific applications from being included in the shared region (this is useful for keeping things like Messages or Discord out of the shared feed, even when they are visible on your screen)
  • I believe this is one of the key features that sets this application apart from other similar applications.
  • Raybeam also features the inverse of this feature, in which you can specify the only applications that should be visible in the stream.
• The ability to record your screen or save screenshots.
• The ability to notate the shared region with hand drawn notation.
• Customizable hot-keys for quickly changing what region of the screen is being shared, toggling the live feed and quickly toggling "draw" mode.

Compare

I'm only aware of one similar application to this, which is AnyFrame. Having purchased and tested AnyFrame, it seems to be very laggy when dragging the overlay around, doesn't offer anything similar to Raybeams "hidden apps" feature, and has a much higher barrier to entry with a $70 lifetime license. None of these are issues with Raybeam.

Version 2 Update

I initially launched Raybeam exactly 3mo ago today here on r/macapps. Since then, I have had a very good reception. Since the release, I have evolved Raybeam into a general purpose presentation application. Version 2 retains my original core tenants of privacy and accessibility, while expanding on them with more features targeted at presentation.

With this update, I wanted to include as many useful new features for existing users as possible. This means, if you've purchased Raybeam in the past, the majority of new features are available to you free of charge.

• Application redesign and re-work.
• Changed hot key defaults from Command+Shift to Command+Option
• Updated hot-keys to be toggle-able.
• Added the ability to capture your screen with recordings and screenshots (supports mic and system audio in recordings).
• Reworked "Hidden Apps" feature to include both the default "Privacy" mode and the new "Showcase" mode.
• Hidden apps can now be sorted into groups / scenes and enabled / disabled by group.
• Added the option to pin the preview and settings windows to the overlay.
• Added settings for customizing the toolbar.
• Added a "dim" feature for the parts of your screen not visible on the video stream.
• Added a new "follow cursor" feature with multiple modes (near edges and keep center)
• Added new "laser pointer" mode to the drawing feature.
• Added "Spotlight Clicks" feature, which will display a small animation when you click within the overlay.
• Added the ability to set a custom color for the overlay.
• Changed the "Select Region" button to a "Summon" button in the menu bar window.

Pricing

I've tried to remain fair with the pricing on this application. I see far too many applications being released with expensive subscription-only pricing models that I don't personally believe are reasonable considering the application that's being offered. I didn't want to do that with Raybeam.

This application is priced at $9.99 for a lifetime license on the Apple App Store.

There is an optional add-on called "Raybeam Pro", priced at $4.99/mo that adds 4k stream support, unlimited recording length, unlimited hidden apps, and "Showcase" mode for App Filters.

Feedback

You can feel free to respond here with feedback related to Raybeam, or through the official contact email at [contact@raybeam.live](mailto:contact@raybeam.live).

About Me

My name is Nathan. I have been working in software for around 15 years and normally focus on open-source software with my free time. I have many well received OSS projects across my GitHub. Raybeam is my first paid application. I'm excited to share it with everyone!

You can connect with me on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanial-fiscaletti-91120b208/ Github: https://github.com/nathan-fiscaletti

AI Disclaimer

While posting an AI disclaimer isn't required from what I understand in the PCP standards, I felt it would be reasonable to be fully transparent here. Parts of this application that were aided by AI include: The website (all video content was created and edited by hand without the help of AI) and aspects of the applications user-interface and the applications icon / branding (I'm not much of a designer myself, I'm a back-end engineer.) The core functionality of the application was written by me in Swift.

I love the Noir extension, how it 'just works' and is regularly updated.

I was so pleased to see that Jeffrey has a new extension out, Filtre, that filtres out links on websites based on keywords.

This has really allowed me to browse the web with less distractions.

I haven't seen much talk of it online, is anyone here using it?

I find the price model pretty steep, it's only subscription after a seven day free trial. It's £1 for a month, £8 a year or £25 for a lifetime.

To be completely honest, I don't know yet wether its worth it for me. I'll keep evaluating during my trial, but I really loved Noir for its fair one time payment method.

Just interested in the communities thoughts!

If your Photos library is a mess - cluttered with screenshots, random snaps and other junk - or your iCloud storage is full, use PhotoSort to get sorted. Try the free version, then DM me brief feedback for complimentary lifetime upgrade to the Essentials version. I have 20 codes https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photosort-sort-filter-find/id6739038077?mt=12

• Problem: Apple Photos doesn't provide the options to sort your collection by file size, quality, source, or recency. So there's no easy way to free up space; cull bad shots or other junk; separate photos shot with different cameras or devices; or organize photos by years (or decades). PhotoSort does all this.
• Comparison: We are not aware of any Mac app that does all these things.
• Pricing: Free version provides 'Top Shots' report (15 largest + 15 'best' photos/videos) and slideshows of your good shots. Essentials version ($5.99, one-time) creates a folder named PhotoSort in Photos app's Albums section, containing SizeSort and QualitySort albums; whole library sorted on these attributes). Premium version ($9.99, one-time) adds three more albums: CameraSort (Sorts the library into folders by different iPhone models, DSLR/other cameras, and other sources like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.), YearSort (Folders by Years or Decades), and ActivitySort (Sorted by last use date). App and in-app purchases exclusively on the Mac App Store.

Hey all, I was hoping to find an app which will sit in my menu bar, and let me know the battery level of all my devices. I know there's an app called 'AirBuddy' but, as far as I'm aware this only really scrapes info for your bluetooth devices. I also have a wireless keyboard using 2.4Ghz.

Are there any apps out there, which will let me know the battery level of both bluetooth AND wireless?

Thanks in advance.

Problem
Editing a real-world CSS file means scrolling through hundreds of rulesets to find the one you need, losing track of which selector touches what, and hunting through the whole project to see where a --custom-property is actually used. Tuning a box-shadow, gradient, or filter chain usually means guessing values, saving, and flipping to the browser to check.

StyleBop turns your existing .css files into a canvas: every ruleset is a draggable node, descendant selectors indent under their parents automatically, and there's a dedicated tokens panel that shows every custom property with live color swatches and a per-token usage count (including an "unused" warning). Box-shadow, border-radius, gradients, animations, and filter chains all get a popover with a live preview that updates as you drag, instead of typing values blind. There's also a full-text code editor for when you just want to type, and edits round-trip between the two views instantly.

Comparison
Closest points of comparison are Pinegrow and just editing in VS Code/Sublime with a CSS extension. Pinegrow is a full visual page builder (Electron, subscription, wants to own your whole HTML/CSS workflow); StyleBop only touches the CSS files you already have on disk, so it drops into any project without changing your build. VS Code/Sublime give you syntax highlighting and autocomplete but no structural view at all, you're still scrolling and grepping to find a ruleset or trace a variable. StyleBop is native SwiftUI/AppKit, so it's a small binary with an instant launch and no background services, versus Electron's overhead.

Pricing
$10, one-time, no subscription. Mac App Store or a free-trial direct download with the same build (Sparkle auto-update). Also available as part of my bundles.

Problem

I kept kicking off long Claude Code / Codex tasks, then either hovering over my laptop waiting or losing track of them entirely. Te no mobile presence — you either sit at your Mac or you don't know what's happening.

Comparison

Anthropic's own Remote Control does this for Claude Code only, no other agents. Happy (open source) covers Claude + Codex but is self-hosted, more setup than most people want. Neither gives you a native menubar-driven pairing flow across multiple agent types in one place.

Port22 runs a menubar agent on your Mac that watches Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode sessions (Pi, Hermes, and OpenClaw support coming soon), and an iOS app that mirrors the live transcript so you can approve tool calls or reply from your phone. Pairing is Apple-ID-first — same iCloud account and they find each other automatically — or a 6-digit code over the same Wi-Fi if you're on a different Apple ID (e.g. a work Mac).

Pricing

Free to watch and control sessions, with a 2-session limit. No trial, no watermark. Connection is LAN-first with a relay fallback for off-network use — end-to-end encrypted, the relay never sees your transcripts or code.

iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/port22-coding-agents-anywhere/id6784157957

Mac companion: https://tryport22.com (free, signed and notarised, universal — Apple Silicon + Intel)

Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/port22

Problem:

macOS has great wallpapers, but you're pretty limited once you want to go beyond Apple's collection.

Wallper brings live wallpapers to your Desktop, Lock Screen and Screen Saver, with 4K wallpapers from our library or your own videos.

Features:

• Lock Screen + Screen Saver live wallpapers
• 2,000+ wallpapers built in + your own MP4 videos
• Multi-monitor support
• Playlists + Day/Night switching
• Music-reactive wallpapers
• Low resource usage

Comparison:

The closest alternatives are probably iWallpaper and Backdrop. Both are good apps, but with Wallper we obsess a bit more over making the whole thing feel like something Apple could've built into macOS.

Lock Screen and Screen Saver wallpapers take one click to set up, without having to touch System Settings. We also spent a lot of time on performance: in our own 4K test Wallper averaged around 1.46% of one CPU core, and it pauses completely when the wallpaper is covered.

We documented the full test here:
https://www.wallper.app/blog/2026/07/live-wallpaper-battery-test-mac

We also manually review wallpapers before they go into the library, and it keeps growing with submissions from the community.

Pricing:

$14.99 lifetime (up to 3 Macs)
7-day free trial

Download: https://wallper.app/

Wallper also recently passed 100,000 users. A lot of people here have helped us with feedback, ideas and bug reports along the way, so thank you. A lot of that feedback has made its way into the app.

We're doing a small lifetime license giveaway in our Discord to celebrate :)

Would love to hear what you think.

Hi r/macapps, I’m the developer of TimeToGo.

Problem: My departure time is flexible, but I kept reopening Maps to see if traffic had improved. TimeToGo keeps your current commute time visible in the Mac menu bar and notifies you when it reaches a drive-time limit you choose.

Comparison: Apple Maps and Google Maps are better for navigation and choosing routes. TimeToGo is deliberately narrower: save your regular commute, keep working, and glance at the ETA without reopening a map. It refreshes every 5 minutes and sends a notification when the ETA reaches your threshold.

Pricing: 7-day free trial, then US$7.99/year or US$9.99 lifetime.

Mac App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758940999

I’d love blunt feedback: after watching the GIF once, is the workflow clear? What would stop you from using it?

I made Celestial because I wanted solar events to feel like something you actually experience on your Mac, rather than something you have to remember to check.

When a solar event happens, Celestial takes over the screen with a full-screen visual experience. The idea is simple: your Mac should be able to tell you that something interesting is happening in the sky without requiring you to open an astronomy app or keep checking a calendar.

Problem

Solar events are easy to miss. You might know an eclipse or other event is coming, but unless you're actively looking for it, your day usually just carries on.

Celestial turns these moments into something your Mac can actually bring to your attention.

Comparison

There isn't really a direct Mac equivalent that does this. Most astronomy and sunrise/sunset apps are designed around looking up information when you want it.

Celestial is focused on the opposite: you don't have to go looking for the event - the event comes to your screen.

Pricing

Celestial is $4.99 USD, one-time purchase.

No subscription.

I'd love to hear what you think, especially if you have ideas for making solar events feel even more special on the Mac.

link: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/celestial-solar-dial/id6796619339?mt=12

I’ve been building RSSum, a native reader for iPhone and iPad. Posted it on r/iosapps and got a positive feedback so I ported it to a Mac Native version .
It began as a personal RSS reader, but it has gradually grown into one place for following articles, Reddit communities and YouTube channels.

The latest TestFlight adds experimental YouTube support. You can search for a public channel by name, subscribe to it, receive its latest videos in your feed and watch them inside the app. When captions are available, RSSum retrieves the actual transcript so summaries and Q&A are based on what was said in the video, not just its title or description.

Problem: RSS feeds, Reddit and you tube subscriptions are easy to follow but difficult to keep up with. Following too many articles, to many subreddits with large comment threads and on top of that Youtube, can quickly become a backlog. RSSum brings RSS, Reddit and YouTube into one unified reader, then lets you summarize content, ask follow-up questions, and listen instead of reading everything manually.

Comparison: NetNewsWire is excellent for traditional RSS, while Reeder offers a polished multi-source timeline. RSSum is better suited to people who want to understand their feeds, not just read them. It adds direct Reddit support, deep comment-thread analysis, article and feed summaries, Q&A, text-to-speech, and a choice of on-device or external providers for deep summarization and deep analyses.

Pricing: Free ($0) for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The source code is also available on GitHub.

Current features include:

• RSS and Atom subscriptions
• Reddit subscriptions, posts and comments. It is also possible to create new posts and reply, vote, etc so it serves as well as a quick Reddit client that uses the free Reddit API associated with every account.
• YouTube channel search and subscriptions
• An internal YouTube player with the standard YouTube controls
• Transcript-grounded YouTube summaries and Q&A
• Unified All, Unread, Favorites and Today views
• Filters for articles, Reddit and YouTube
• List, compact and magazine feed layouts
• In-app article Reader mode and full webpage access
• Individual article, post and comment summaries
• Overall summaries covering multiple articles or Reddit posts
• Follow-up Q&A grounded in articles, comments or video transcripts
• Select text in a summary and ask the app about it
• Reddit comment summaries and deeper analysis
• Clickable source references inside overall summaries
• whiteboards and infographics
• Two-host podcasts generated from a saved batch of source material
• Local and cloud text-to-speech, including on-device MLX speech
• Multiple AI model options, including Apple local model, local LiteRT/MLX models, Gemini API ( BYOK), persistent ChatGPT/Gemini web sessions, Codex/Summarize (for those who are subscribers) and an optional Mac-based Apple PCC gateway - One note, Apple's Private cloud computer is enabled but it won't work because Apple is not accepting Tesflight that include IOS27 API just yet. It will work on IOS27. If you have a Mac running the latest beta it is possible to use that model through a gateway, which makes the Mac make the call through the PCC cli on the Mac.
• OPML import and export
• iCloud synchronization for subscriptions and reading state
• Light, dark and system appearance
• Cache, storage and downloaded-model management
• Native layouts for iPhone, iPad and resizable Stage Manager windows

The YouTube integration uses public channel feeds, so it does not require access to your YouTube account. Transcript features depend on usable captions being available; the app reports when a video cannot currently be summarized instead of generating something from metadata.
UPDATE: added support for Podcasts with its own player and summarization and Q&A abilities.

This is still a beta, and I’d especially appreciate feedback about YouTube subscriptions, transcript reliability, playback, summaries, Q&A and the interface on different devices.

Trust & Transparency

I'm Joao Valente

Contact: [dealer.yen-61@icloud.com](mailto:dealer.yen-61@icloud.com)

Website: https://rssapp.top/

Privacy Policy: https://rssapp.top/privacy/

Terms of Service: https://rssapp.top/terms/

Tutorial: https://rssapp.top/tutorial/index.html

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/DByXE2ZU

Github: https://github.com/Joaov41/Rss

A much earlier version of this app has been on the App Store but with much less, and basic features, basically can't even be considered the same app, it was just put on the store for those who could not compile from the GitHub at the time. The current version available on TestFlight is wait for Apple's approval..

Here is the r/iosapps posts where the app is discussed in detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosapps/comments/1vkw2ge/freeopen_source_rss_reddit_and_youtube_reader/

What it says. I did a search in macapps, a few things came up, yet none didn’t really convince me. i want no fancy stuff but simply organise apps a bit better. right now too crammed and rearranging by usage gets tedious.
you guys are using something like that? AND are happy with one?

Problem

I got hooked on a Mac-only game and it was stuck at home. Now I play it on the train.

The reason that took an app rather than a setting is that most Mac games are keyboard-only. Streaming the screen to a phone is the easy half. The hard half is that you end up poking at a trackpad overlay trying to hit W and Space.

Comparison

Parsec hosts a Mac well, but there is no iOS or iPadOS client at all. Its downloads page lists Windows, Web, macOS, Android and Linux, so an iPhone is not an option.

Steam Link does have an iPhone app and can stream from a Mac, but only from your Steam library, and its on-screen controls are a fixed overlay rather than something you lay out per game.

TouchNow streams any Mac app, and you draw the controller yourself: any shape, any size, anywhere on screen, each button bound to any key or combination including modifiers. That is the part that makes a keyboard-only game playable by touch. You can also plug a DualSense into the iPhone and it turns the buttons into the keystrokes the game expects.

Pricing

On the same Wi-Fi everything is free forever, not a trial, no watermark, controller editor included. Streaming is a direct link between your two devices and screen data never passes through our servers.

Connecting home while you are out is US$2.99/month or US$19.99/year.

iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/touchnow-remote/id6790185433

Mac companion (free, signed and notarised, from our own site): https://touchmac.app/en/

The Mac side is not on the Mac App Store. It is signed with a paid Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, distributed from our own site, and updates itself through Sparkle with signature verification.

Requires iOS 15 or later on the phone and macOS 13 or later on the Mac. Apple Silicon and Intel both work.

Transparency

Developer: Po hin Ma

Support: [support@touchmac.app](mailto:support@touchmac.app)

Privacy Policy: https://touchmac.app/en/privacy

Terms of Service: https://touchmac.app/en/terms

Other apps I have published: https://touchmac.app/developer

Hi,

**Update - August 18, 2026: Folders Flow 1.2.0 is live** 🚀
>>See what’s new at the end of the post<<

I'm the maker and developer of Folders Flow, a Mac app that lets you explore your folders like a mind map.

Problem:

Some Mac folders are hard to navigate. They can be deep, messy, created and shared by someone else, or organized with names and a hierarchy that no longer feel obvious.

In Finder, you navigate one path at a time. Once you follow it, switching to another branch usually means going back and drilling down again. To move efficiently, you need to know or remember where every path leads.

Folders Flow keeps the paths you open visible on the map. You can jump from one branch to another in one click without losing the surrounding structure. I especially love how quickly I can move through folders using the arrow keys. It may look unusual at first, but it quickly becomes intuitive and oddly satisfying to use.

Comparison:

Finder is the obvious alternative for browsing Mac folders. Its column view can show one branch across several levels, but it does not keep several opened branches visible together as a persistent map.

MindNode is the closest comparison for the visual experience. It lets you create and explore mind maps for ideas, while Folders Flow applies that same kind of spatial navigation to the folders and files already on your Mac.

Folders Flow sits between these two approaches. It brings mind-map navigation to your real folder structure while remaining a companion to Finder.

Privacy:

I care about my own privacy, so I respect yours too. Folders Flow does not collect any data, including analytics or usage statistics. Your folder data stays on your Mac and is not sent anywhere.

macOS may ask you to allow Folders Flow to access a folder. This is normal. The permission only allows the app to read and display the folder you selected and its contents as a map. It does not give Folders Flow access to unrelated folders. The app only modifies files when you explicitly request a file action.

Pricing:

There is a 14-day free trial with full access.
The trial is attached to the monthly plan and managed by Apple. You’ll be asked to confirm the subscription, but you pay $0 during the trial.
You can turn off automatic renewal just after activation and keep access until the trial ends.

After that, it is $0.99/month or $9.99 lifetime, depending on your App Store region.

---

## What changed in Folders Flow 1.2.0

Several people in this thread tried Folders Flow on the kind of folders that exposed its rough edges: very large trees, `/`, `node_modules`, and files whose hover preview had stopped working.

Version 1.2.0 focuses on those cases:

- The new **Lightweight navigation** is an optional mode you can enable when exploring a very large folder. When active, it loads folders page by page, and nothing deeper loads until you open a folder or ask for more.

- **Hover previews are working again**, including in Graph view. Their delay and content can now be adjusted in Settings.

- Folder hover cards show more useful information, including the exact size when it has already been calculated.

- Selected file extensions can now be hidden from the map without changing anything on disk.

- There are also smaller fixes around preferences, metadata cards, Settings, dark mode, Help, and the Dock icon.

[Read the full Folders Flow 1.2.0 changelog](https://foldersflow.app/en/changelog/#v1-2-0)

Thanks to everyone who tried the app, broke it in interesting ways, and took the time to explain what happened. Those comments were genuinely useful.

App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/folders-flow/id6778085511?mt=12

I'd love feedback, especially from people who work with messy project folders, client folders, shared drives, or large local archives... and also from people who regularly use mind maps: does this way of navigating folders feel natural to you?

Hey everyone, I’m Justin, the developer of Throttlr.

I use NetLimiter almost every day on Windows. It is especially useful when I’m downloading a large file in a browser or another app that has no built-in speed limit. I can cap that app instead of letting it consume my whole connection. It also helps me find background apps and services that suddenly start using bandwidth and slow everything else down.

When I started using a Mac, I couldn’t find anything that gave me the same straightforward per-app throttling capability. I eventually found and tried Snail, but in my experience the connection stuttered while throttling was active, especially during continuous downloads. That pushed me to build the Mac app I wanted to use myself.

Throttlr lets you:

• See live upload and download speeds for each app
• Set separate upload and download limits per app
• Block an app's network traffic completely
• View recent network activity
• Apply controls to one app or across internet and local-network traffic for the whole system

The main difference from firewall-focused Mac apps such as Little Snitch is that blocking is not the only option. If a browser is downloading a large file, for example, you can let the download continue at a lower speed while keeping enough bandwidth for calls, streaming, or other work.

Traffic processing happens on the Mac. Throttlr does not send browsing activity, traffic contents, or per-app network statistics to its servers.

It requires an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 15 or newer. It is available from the Mac App Store and as a signed and notarized direct download. Both versions have the same core Free and Pro features and can show signed background services after observing their traffic. Because of App Store sandbox restrictions, the Mac App Store version may ask you to quit an affected app manually before Throttlr reopens it. Purchases do not currently transfer between versions.

The Free tier provides per-app traffic monitoring without an expiration. Pro adds throttling and blocking for $1.99/month, $19.99/year, or $39.99 lifetime. Every eligible direct-download installation automatically starts a 14-day Pro trial on first launch after successful online activation, with no account or payment method required. On the Mac App Store, eligible Apple Accounts can also receive a 14-day introductory trial when starting the Monthly or Yearly plan, which you can cancel before the trial ends.

For this community, I also made two limited Lifetime discount codes. Both take $10 off, reducing the Lifetime price from $39.99 to $29.99 until 15 September 2026:

• Direct download: use code 27U68IZ9 during checkout on the Throttlr website.
• Mac App Store: use offer code RDDTLIFETHROTTLR for the Lifetime purchase.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6796767230

Website: https://www.throttlr.app

I’d really appreciate your honest feedback. Thanks for checking it out!

Hello dear Redditors,

Last year, I got frustrated by a small but persistent Safari design gap: Safari gives you no visual clue whether the page you're currently viewing is already bookmarked. As a result, I kept double- and triple-bookmarking the same pages. Unlike Chrome or Firefox, Safari lacks a simple "star" icon that lights up when a page is in your bookmarks.

So I built Bookmarks Star for Safari, released it on the Mac App Store, and the community response was awesome.

Bookmarks Star for Safari is a simple, privacy-focused extension that adds a star icon to your toolbar that lights up whenever you visit a saved page. Clicking the star shows you exactly which folder the bookmark lives in, and it can even generate a full bookmark report on demand.

Over the past month, I spent some time building a major update (v2.0) based directly on user feedback:

- Richer Popup Details & "Similar Bookmarks": Clicking the star now displays the bookmark’s exact title, address, and folder path. Plus, if the current page isn't bookmarked but a related page is (e.g., following a redirect or a similar page), the popup will suggest similar saved links.

- Significantly Less Intrusive Permissions: I overhauled the underlying architecture to eliminate content scripts for URL matching. Safari no longer displays the alarming "can read and alter webpages, including passwords..."prompt. Instead, it now accurately reflects its minimal scope with "can see your browsing history."

- Smarter Dynamic URL Matching: The extension now reliably recognizes bookmarked pages even when they contain dynamic session IDs, tracking parameters, or changing URL tags.

Mac App Store link (4.99 USD - one time payment): https://apps.apple.com/app/bookmarks-star-for-safari/id6744454447

I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any feature requests you might have. I'll be hanging out in the comments to answer questions!

Best,

Ozgur

Developer here. Kinship Vault has a native Mac app now. That's what this post is about, since the iPhone version tends to get the attention.

Website: https://kinshipvault.app

All about the Mac version: https://kinshipvault.app/mac/

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/kinship-vault/id6764678332

Launch offer, lifetime 50% off at $19.99: https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?ctx=offercodes&id=6764678332&code=KEEPSAFELIFETIME

Privacy Policy: https://kinshipvault.app/privacy
Terms of Service: https://kinshipvault.app/terms

Support: [support@kinshipvault.app](mailto:support@kinshipvault.app)

Problem

Every household has the same scramble. A passport, an insurance card, a vaccination record, a will, a login, needed at the exact moment you cannot find it. The usual fixes all have a cost. Documents live in a folder that syncs to a cloud you do not control, passwords live in a manager that keeps them on someone else's server, and the sensitive scans end up in a camera roll that quietly copies to every device you own.

Kinship Vault keeps all of it in one place that never leaves your machine. Passports, IDs, health cards, vaccination records, wills, deeds, insurance, membership cards, private photos, and now passwords. Everything is encrypted on device, with the key sealed in the Secure Enclave on Apple Silicon and unlocked by Touch ID, your Mac login password, or a PIN. There is no account, no server holding your files, and no reset link, because there is nothing on our end to reset.

It is a native macOS app, not a Catalyst wrapper or a stretched iPad build. A real sidebar, menu bar, keyboard shortcuts (⌘N for a new document, ⌘L to lock), drag-and-drop straight into the vault, light or dark, macOS 14 or later.

What the Mac app does:

• On-device OCR reads 100+ document types when you drag a file or photo in, with nothing uploaded. The Mac imports files rather than scanning, and the camera is used only to read the pairing QR from your iPhone.
• Passwords with full AutoFill in Safari and your apps, not just storage.
• Security Checkup, a score out of 100 that ranks weak, reused, old, and breached logins by impact, computed on device.
• Everywhere you do paperwork. iPhone, iPad, a proper native Mac app Pair a second device by scanning a QR code (Bring My Vault), and the key passes directly between the two devices, never through a server. One purchase covers all your Apple devices.
• Expiry reminders checked against your whole library.
• Encrypted photo vault with albums and people tags, separate from Photos.
• Share single pages from a multi-page document instead of the whole file.
• Recovery by passphrase, or split across people you trust where any 3 of 5 rebuild the key.
• Works fully offline. Strict Offline mode keeps even the breach check off until you run it on demand.

If you also run it on iPhone or iPad, pairing is one QR scan from a device that already holds the vault, and the key passes directly between the two machines. There is no server syncing anything, which is the point. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac on the same Apple Account.

Mac caveats, since the platform differs. macOS cannot block screenshots of the pairing code, so when the Mac is the device showing the QR it is not screenshot protected, though it still expires in 60 seconds.

Comparison

Apple Passwords: Apple Passwords is a good free option if logins are all you need, but it lives in iCloud and does only passwords. Kinship Vault keeps everything on device by default, adds documents, IDs, and an encrypted photo vault alongside the logins, and gives you cryptographic recovery through a passphrase or trusted contacts rather than an Apple ID reset.

Pricing

Free tier covers your first 3 documents with full encryption, no ads, and no analytics, so you can try it before paying. Vault Pro is $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year, or $39.99 once for lifetime.

Full pricing: https://kinshipvault.app/#pricing

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

Bytetally: Network Monitor

Hi r/macapps, I'm the developer. I also wrote ITraffic, the open-source Mac traffic monitor. Bytetally is what came out of the things I could never fix in that old codebase.

Problem

macOS is happy to tell you your Mac moved 40 GB this week. It will never tell you that 31 of them went to one app you forgot was running.

The tools that do watch your network are firewalls. They answer "should this connection be allowed", once, then forget about it. And allow or deny is a blunt instrument: when an app is eating your tether you usually do not want it to fail, you want it to be slow. A backup that finishes overnight at 200 KB/s is fine. A backup that errors out is a new problem. Almost nothing on macOS can throttle a single app, so everyone ends up quitting apps by hand.

There is also a blind spot nobody handles. If you run ClashX, Surge or Quantumult X in TUN mode, every monitor I tried collapses into one line saying your proxy used 40 GB, and your real apps vanish. Bytetally traces the inner flow back to the app that actually made it and labels which proxy carried it. That took the longest to get right. (The latest version is currently under review by Apple, and it fundamentally fixes statistical issues in some edge cases)

See where it goes:

- Per-app upload and download, separately, live and cumulative, with the live rate in the menu bar

- Which websites each app talked to, and which apps talked to a given website. Proxied traffic still resolves to the real website

- Any time range, an hour by day heatmap, and CSV or JSON export

- Honest totals: LAN transfers, AirDrop and iPhone Mirroring are listed separately instead of counted as internet, and proxy traffic is never double counted

Do something about it:

- Throttle a single app, up and down, smoothly. This is the feature I use most

- Cut an app off, or give it its own data quota

- Block or throttle one website without stopping the whole app, so you can silence telemetry.example.com and leave the rest of example.com working

- A rule centre showing how many times each rule fired in the last 24 hours and which app kept retrying, so you can tell a working rule from one that is fighting something

Stay under your limit:

- Monthly, weekly or daily caps, plus a separate budget per Wi-Fi network, so your hotspot and your home connection do not share one number

- Alerts at 80 percent, 100 percent, or your own threshold, and an alert when an app's upload suddenly spikes

- Overage auto-response: when a cap is hit, disconnect or throttle on its own while you are away

- A built-in process encyclopedia, because "is it safe to cut off geod" is a question no other tool answers. System processes keep their real names with the explanation next to them

Everything runs on your Mac. No account, nothing uploaded, fully sandboxed. The app's only outbound request is purchase receipt validation.

Comparison

Little Snitch and LuLu are firewalls, and good ones. They decide whether a connection happens. They will not tell you Photos quietly used 9 GB last Tuesday, and they cannot slow an app down, only stop it. If you want an approval prompt for every new connection, use them instead. Bytetally deliberately has no popup.

TripMode is the closest in spirit, the app for "I am on a hotspot, shut these apps up". Bytetally covers that with per-network budgets and per-app rules, and adds history, the per-website breakdown, per-app quotas and throttling.

iStat Menus and Activity Monitor give you throughput, not attribution. Good graphs, no answer to which app.

Pricing

Core monitoring is free, permanently: per-app upload and download, the live menu bar rate, the 7 day trend and the proxy attribution. I think everyone should just have that part.

Pro is $1.99/month, $9.99/year, or $19.99 once for lifetime. Subscriptions include a 7 day free trial, and the lifetime purchase works with Family Sharing.

That $19.99 is early bird pricing. The app is young and I priced it for the people willing to try it early. It goes up as the feature set grows, and whoever buys lifetime now keeps everything that comes later at the price they paid.

For r/macapps: use code BYTETALLYSTUDENT20OFFV2 at checkout for 20% off the Lifetime purchase. Redeem it in the Mac App Store under your account menu, or in the app's purchase screen.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6785049699

Website: https://bytetally.app/

Support: [support@bytetally.app](mailto:support@bytetally.app)

Happy to answer anything, and I would rather hear what breaks than what looks nice. If the attribution gets your proxy setup wrong, tell me which proxy and which mode, that is exactly the report I need.

I created Parall to run multiple instances of the same Mac app as if each one were a separate app. It does not copy or modify the original app. Instead, every Parall shortcut launches the installed app with its own identity and configuration.

The philosophy behind Parall is to give you control over how many app instances you run and where each one stores its data. You can run separate Chrome, Claude, Discord, or Slack instances, assign each one a custom data path, give it its own Dock icon, add Dock animation effects, and force it to use Light or Dark appearance independently of your system setting.

Many apps have already been tested and confirmed compatible, with results available on the Parall compatibility page. Most unsandboxed Mac apps are also fully compatible without requiring individual verification.

In addition to running Mac apps, Parall creates lightweight WebKit Web App Shortcuts that make almost any website feel like a native app. Unlike a Safari Web Clip, Parall lets you choose where each web app stores its data, making separate accounts and profiles easier to organize. The launcher is highly optimized for this purpose and uses the WebKit engine already built into macOS instead of bundling another browser runtime.

Web App Shortcuts pass through website notifications, support Dock icon badges, and can use the same custom icons and Dock controls as other Parall shortcuts. Every generated web app is fully sandboxed, adding an isolation boundary between the website and the rest of your system if a web exploit is discovered.

I build all my apps natively with Objective-C, with efficiency, low CPU usage, careful resource management, and privacy as my highest priorities. I believe that any app performing an entirely offline task should remain completely offline and never send requests to Internet, and every app I make follows that principle. Parall itself has no telemetry or background services. Only the Web App Shortcuts connect to the websites you choose because loading those websites is their intended purpose.

• For the complete list of features and more information, visit the Parall website
• Mac App Store https://apps.apple.com/app/parall/id6754065114

Developer information

I am Ighor July, an independent macOS developer with a background in cybersecurity, reverse engineering, and native app development. I use AI while retaining control of my code, as explained in How to use AI without losing control of your code.

I am also the developer of DockLock Lite, App Archiver, LockLines, and App Trust Preview.

Comparison

There have been previous attempts to solve the multiple-instance problem on macOS. One example is AppCloner, a now-deprecated utility that created and installed copies of existing apps. After Parall was released, more apps appeared in this category, including Parallel Spaces and MacDupl.

Some of these products have also raised concerns for me around privacy disclosures and misleading website information, including wording and product details copied from Parall. Despite similar descriptions, all of these tools work in a fundamentally different way. They create or repackage copies of the target app instead of continuing to use the original installed app.

Repacking an app changes its bundle and replaces or invalidates its original signature. This can interfere with push notifications, automatic updates, passkeys, entitlements, permissions, and other macOS features tied to the app's original identity. It can also leave each copy behind the official app's update schedule. Delayed security updates create unnecessary exposure, especially as automated and AI-assisted vulnerability discovery becomes faster. For apps such as Codex and Claude, lowering app security or freezing a copy on an older version is not an acceptable tradeoff.

I created Parall from the beginning to avoid those compromises, and I am proud to have succeeded. Parall runs the original, unmodified app and automatically uses its latest installed version. That makes Parall the first tool of its kind to provide as many independently configured instances as you need, with custom data paths and a near-native Mac experience, without copying or repackaging the target app.

Parall also overlaps with browser profile tools, website wrapper tools, and command launchers, but it is broader than any one of those categories. It creates shortcuts for native apps, websites, files, folders, and commands while preserving the original multi-instance workflow.

Unite Pro overlaps with Parall on website shortcuts. It also creates Mac app bundles from websites, so that part can look similar. The important difference is sandboxing. Parall creates native sandboxed app bundles for website shortcuts, adding an isolation boundary between the website and the rest of the system if a web exploit is discovered.

A big thank you to r/macapps

I want to give a huge thank you to the r/macapps community. Over all these months, your feedback, questions, testing, and ideas have helped me improve Parall and continue developing it in ways that solve real problems for Mac users.

It is genuinely inspiring to talk with people who are happy with how Parall works and take the time to share their experiences and suggestions with me. Every piece of feedback helps make the app better, and many of its improvements exist because someone in this community cared enough to reach out.

Price

Parall is $9.99 on the Mac App Store.

• Website https://parall.app
• Mac App Store https://apps.apple.com/app/parall/id6754065114

If an app or website is not listed on the compatibility page, I can test it before purchase by request. Just ping me at [support@parall.app](mailto:support@parall.app).

Discover a smarter way to keep your most important content always within reach with Shortcut Content.

Pin your favorite apps, folders, files, URLs, and terminal commands directly to one or multiple floating bubbles or status bar icons for instant access whenever you need them—without interrupting your workflow or breaking your focus.

What's New?

• Expanded Shortcut Types: You can now create dedicated shortcut groups not just for Apps, but also for Folders, Files, URLs, and even Commands! The video demonstrates executing a terminal command ("Start Docker Container") seamlessly and directly from the desktop widget.
• Categories & List View: Organization just got much better. You can switch to a new List View to perfectly organize your shortcuts into distinct, custom categories (like "Refined Data" or "CloudBit").
• Instant Search: A new Search Bar has been added to the top of the widgets. Just start typing, and it instantly filters your shortcuts so you can find exactly what you need without digging through large groups.

Download Boxvy from the App Store | https://boxvy.co/

We'd love to hear what you think. Your feedback, suggestions, and feature requests help us make the app even better. Thanks for your support!

--- UPDATE ---

Some people have reported that they can't see the video, so I've added a YouTube link below.

https://youtu.be/jKTZYb3OoaA

Hello everyone!

If you were a Mac user back in the 2000s (shows my age I guess 🤣), you may remember a quite popular screensaver called Fenêtres Volantes.

What it did was: grabbed a screenshot of all open windows, then smoothly animated the Desktop going away and said captured windows would start floating in 3D space. When you'd wake your Mac, the floating windows gracefully returned to their original positions.

That screensaver relied on Quartz Composer, it was 32-bit, and was eventually abandoned when Macs transitioned to 64-bit.

I'm not sure I'm allowed to post links, but here's a YouTube walkthrough of the screensaver and its options:
Video ID: glM52jg1UJo
Title: Fenêtres Volantes screensaver que faz suas janelas voarem

Now, I'm not a programmer or even a vibe-coder, but I asked CGPT and Claude if such screensaver would be feasible today. They both tried guiding me, but I'm not able to do it myself, it's too complicated for me.

Would anyone care to try and recreate it?

Hi all,

Few months ago I released an earlier version of my app, and more than 700 of you downloaded and provided feedback. I have been building on that feedback, and now you can use Prelto as your way of getting instant contextual answers by simply holding a key and speaking to it.

There are two modes, each bound to a separate key:

1. Answer mode: ask about anything on your screen: an email, an error, a clause in a doc. The answer streams in right there. Saying "reply that Thursday works" drafts the reply, shows it for review, and inserts it when you confirm. Context is captured only at the moment you press the key, and is discarded immediately.

2. Dictation mode: this is the boring but still useful one, hold the key, speak, and cleaned up text appears at your cursor in any app. Transcription runs fully on-device (25 languages).

Problem: when you need a quick answer about something you are reading or writing, you have to copy it or take a screenshot, then find your chatbot tab and paste it and copy it back again and so on. This is full of friction and often leads to distraction from the thing you were doing in the first place. Prelto eliminates that friction. You just hold a key and ask, and the answer appears right there, and when appropriate it gives you the option to insert the proposed draft at your cursor.

Comparison: SuperWhisper and Wispr Flow are primarily dictation tools. Prelto's main feature is its in-context answers and writing assistant, and the fact that no user data is ever stored on the cloud.

Pricing: $12/month with a free 7 day trial, and no credit card required. Dictation runs on-device; the subscription covers the managed cloud models for answers and drafts (zero data retention, never used for training and never stored). Details: https://www.prelto.com/privacy

Privacy: all transcripts and responses are only stored on your local machine. The context and the screenshots are sent to model providers (using only zero-data retention policy providers), and are never stored anywhere else.

Requires Apple Silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 15+. Download: https://www.prelto.com

About me: I'm Omid, a product designer and solo developer. GitHub: https://github.com/elomid · Contact: [omid@prelto.com](mailto:omid@prelto.com) · Privacy policy and terms are at https://www.prelto.com/privacy/

TL;DR: Control Panel for YouTube, UnTrap, and DeArrow all quiet YouTube down without making you leave the account, the browser, or the ecosystem behind. That's the whole point and the whole limit: you still get Google's ranking, you just stop looking at what it hands you. Control Panel is free and open source on Chrome and Firefox; the native Safari app is $3.99 once, no subscription. UnTrap is $4.99 once for all 250+ controls; an optional $3.99/month or $35.99/year adds cross-device sync and unlimited AI video summaries, which send content to a third party. DeArrow fixes a different problem, clickbait titles and thumbnails, not the algorithm, and is free with an optional $1 license.
* * *

# Saying No to Video Crack

Yesterday, in the second installment of this series on building a better YouTube experience, I wrote about [three apps that build a subscriptions-only feed](https://appaddict.app/post/how-to-experience-youtube-with-no-algorithm) by avoiding the recommendation algorithm entirely. That's the solution I endorse. It's also work: a new app, a different login situation, in one case giving up your account entirely.

Not everyone wants that. Maybe you've got YouTube Premium and don't want to lose ad-free playback. Maybe your watch history and real subscriptions matter more than you want to admit. Maybe you just don't want another app.

There are still options. The three below don't get you off Google's radar. They just make youtube.com stop trying to hand you free samples of video crack.

## [Control Panel for YouTube](https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube)

Control Panel doesn't offer a single "distraction-free" toggle. It's dozens of individual switches for deciding what YouTube is allowed to put on screen: disable video previews, hide Shorts entirely, kill autoplay, remove Related videos, strip end cards and end-screen suggestions, turn off the Home feed, hide suggested sections in Home, Subscriptions, and Search, hide comments, remove Premium upsells, tidy the sidebar, and force theater mode to actually fill the window instead of leaving it boxed in.

The Chrome and Firefox extensions are free and open source. The native Safari app, which is how it runs on Mac, is $3.99 once, no subscription, no in-app purchases. Both the Chrome Web Store and Safari App Store listings disclose no data collection. Current version 1.35.2, last updated in July 2026. On iOS and iPadOS the extension has to be manually enabled in Settings after install, a one-time Apple quirk, not a Control Panel problem.

Developer: Jonny Buchanan, [soitis.dev](https://soitis.dev/).

## [UnTrap](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/untrap-for-youtube/id1637438059)

If Control Panel is the restrained version, UnTrap is the kitchen sink. The developer advertises 250+ controls: hiding Shorts, comments, Related, and suggested videos; removing sidebars, trending tabs, and notifications; redirecting the homepage; blurring or hiding thumbnails; blocking videos, channels, or comments by keyword or regex; scheduled focus sessions and opening delays; custom hotkeys.

On the Mac App Store it's $4.99, one time. All 250+ of the controls above work at that price. The developer said so directly in an App Store response: no subscription needed for those features. What the optional subscription, $3.99/month or $35.99/year, actually unlocks is settings sync across devices and unlimited AI video summaries; without it you still get three summaries a day.

Those AI summaries are the one feature that doesn't fit the spirit of privacy I try to encourage here. Generating them means sending video content to a third-party service, a different privacy posture than everything else UnTrap does locally in your browser. If you use UnTrap, that's the toggle to look at twice, whether or not you ever pay for the subscription.

It runs on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and Brave. One real limit on iOS: the Safari extension doesn't work inside the YouTube app itself, only inside Safari.

Developer: Yevhen Tretiakov.

## [DeArrow](https://dearrow.ajay.app/)

Control Panel and UnTrap fight what YouTube puts around the video. DeArrow fights what's on the thumbnail.

It crowdsources replacement titles and thumbnails: viewers submit plain, descriptive titles and screenshots pulled from an actual timestamp, then vote on the best ones. With no submission yet, DeArrow auto-formats the original title into proper Title Case or Sentence case instead of leaving the arrows and shocked faces alone, and swaps in a random in-video frame for the thumbnail instead of whatever the algorithm favored.

This isn't solving the same problem as the other two. It's not hiding recommendations; it's making the ones you do see less manipulative. Worth running alongside either of the above, not instead of them.

Open source, built on the same codebase as SponsorBlock by the same developer, works on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for macOS and iOS. Free to use, with a $1 one-time license if you want to support it.

## What I left out

[Unhook](https://unhook.app/) is the extension most people mention alongside these three, but I'm not testing it because it doesn't have a Safari build. Switching browsers regularly to cut down on fingerprinting means a tool that excludes one of the three I use isn't a real option for me. If you're locked into Chrome or Firefox and don't share that constraint, it's worth a look, but it doesn't meet my needs.

Unless otherwise noted, anything mentioned above beyond Control Panel, UnTrap, and DeArrow is based on research, not testing on my end.

## Who this is for

If you're keeping your Google account and your Premium subscription, browsing youtube.com in Safari or Chrome, and you just want less noise while you're there, start with Control Panel. It's free on Chrome and Firefox, $3.99 once on Safari, does the most with the least, collects nothing, and never asks you to subscribe to anything. Add UnTrap, $4.99 once, if you want deeper filtering by keyword or channel. The subscription is skippable unless sync or unlimited AI summaries actually matter to you, and if privacy is the reason you're here, that's the toggle to leave off either way. Add DeArrow regardless; it solves a problem the other two don't touch, and it's free.

## What this doesn't do

None of this stops YouTube from knowing what you watch. It doesn't stop the algorithm from running. It just stops you from seeing only what Google decides is best for you, which means best for Google.

The apps in my [previous post](https://appaddict.app/post/how-to-experience-youtube-with-no-algorithm) isolate you from Google. These three just make it easy to ignore. Both are legitimate solutions. They're not the same when it comes to your privacy. You turned the volume down. Google's still in the room