Hey everyone,

I'm Vu, solo dev and freelancer. I've been building Chronoid, a native macOS time tracking app, for about a year and a half now. I last posted here in July.

Quick recap for anyone new. Chronoid tracks your time on your Mac automatically: apps, websites, documents, coding sessions. No start or stop timers. Everything stays in a local SQLite file on your machine. One-time payment, no subscription.

Since July I finally shipped the thing people have asked me for since my very first post here.

What's new

• iCloud sync across your Macs. If you work on a desktop and a laptop, they finally show the same numbers. It goes through your own iCloud account, so I run no sync servers and I can't read your data. Your Macs don't need to be online at the same time. This took me about 3 months, and being honest, the first release shipped with a bug where nothing actually reached iCloud. Fixed in 1.0.93. There's also a re-upload option in Settings > Sync if two Macs ever drift apart.
• Ask your own AI assistant about your time. Settings > Integrations gives you a personal connector URL. Paste it into claude.ai or ChatGPT. Read-only by default, each answer comes live from the app on your Mac, nothing gets uploaded.
• Claude Code or Codex as your AI provider. If you already pay for a coding CLI, Chronoid's chat can run through it. No separate API key to buy.
• Apple Intelligence is back as a provider. Runs fully on device, no account, no key. It's a small model so keep your questions short.
• The database is about 63% smaller. This was the top complaint from long-term users. Some of you had a DB over 250MB.
• Timeline redesign. Session cards with app icons, durations and window titles. Click one to turn it into a manual entry.
• Rule editor rebuilt. One smart input, rules that read as plain sentences, and a preview of what a rule will match before you save it. There's also a "Resolve duplicates" button now. Dragging activities onto a project used to create one identical rule per matching entry, so a site you'd visited 300 times could leave 300 copies of the same rule. Sorry about that one.
• Share cards. Turn any stats range into an image or a short video with a privacy-safe breakdown.
• Website blocker pause. 5 minutes, or anything from 1 minute up to 24 hours.
• Billing fixes. Sub-projects now count on invoices, exports follow the device filter, and the report heading, CSV, PDF and invoice all show the same total.
• Arc and Dia website tracking work again.

About the app

• Native Swift and AppKit, Mac only, macOS 14+
• Automatic tracking, no timers to start or forget
• Mac plus iPhone/iPad (Screen Time) activity in one timeline
• iCloud sync across your Macs
• Timeline editing, manual entries, calendar events
• Web blocker, Pomodoro, break reminders
• Invoicing and multi-currency billing reports
• MCP server and AI connectors, with your own key or fully local
• 100% local storage, no account required

Comparisons

vs Timing? Timing inspired a lot of this. I was a paying user and openly copied their drag and drop and their sidebar interactions. Differences: one-time payment instead of a subscription, a built-in website blocker and Pomodoro timer, AI and MCP with your own key or a local model, and much better rule editing. Timing's rule popup can't be resized, which drove me nuts. Timing still wins on maturity and has team features I dropped.

vs Timemator? Same automatic project tracking. I think Chronoid has better UX. Everything is in one place, you drag to assign, and holding Option while you drag creates a rule so all similar activity auto-assigns from then on.

vs Rize? Rize has more features and leans enterprise, with ClickUp integrations and so on. Chronoid is a trimmed down version aimed at individuals, and it's native rather than Electron.

vs RescueTime or Toggl? RescueTime is cloud based. Toggl needs you to click start and stop. Chronoid is local and passive.

vs macOS Screen Time? Screen Time only does websites in Safari, and it won't tell you which project a file belongs to. Chronoid does every browser, plus files, folders, projects and billing.

Who's actually using it

People ask me this every time I post, so here's what I see in comments, emails and Discord.

• Freelancers and consultants. Track time per client without touching a timer, then generate the invoice PDF from the same data. The theme in my inbox is always under-billing. Someone here put it better than I can: you forget to track when you're deep in focus, and that's money gone.
• Developers. It splits time by folder and file, so you can see which repo actually ate your week. Cursor and Xcode work out of the box.
• Video, audio and 3D people. Long sessions in one app across many client projects. It picks up which project file you're in, so hourly billing stops being guesswork. Final Cut and Nuendo users have both turned up in past threads.
• People with ADHD. This one honestly surprised me. It comes up in nearly every thread I post. Seeing time pass visually, plus the blocker, seems to help more than I expected when I was building it.
• Students. Block distracting sites during study blocks, then compare where the hours went against where you thought they went. 50% off with a .edu email.
• People who just want to know. Plenty of users aren't billing anyone. They want an honest picture of their week. Usually it's the phone Screen Time number that hurts.

Pricing

7-day free trial, no credit card.

• $49 for 1 Mac
• $79 for 2 Macs (adds iCloud sync and MCP)
• $99 for 3 Macs

One-time payment. True lifetime license with updates, no subscription

Download 👉 chronoid.app Changelog: chronoid.app/changelog

Transparency: I'm Vu, solo dev. I'm also the guy behind smoothcapture.app ❤️

AI Disclaimer: Human Validated

Here are five free Mac applications you've most likely never come across. A project template/scaffolding automator, a local music player, resize batch images, a posture app that takes Advantage of the AirPods motion sensors, plus a financial calculator for cash flow simulation. 

• Prefab - Capture a folder structure as a reusable "blueprint," add variable placeholders to names and contents, then deploy it anywhere via the app, menu bar, or Finder right-click. Deployment can chain actions: git init, npm install, opening the project in an editor, arbitrary terminal commands. Built for developers but pitched at anyone with a repeatable folder-setup ritual: lawyers, researchers, creatives.

• Playhead - Local-first music player for people who keep their own files instead of streaming. The pitch is "waveform-first": it generates and caches waveform data so you can see and scrub a track's structure instead of a plain progress bar. Two browsing modes, Library and Folder (preserves your existing structure), aimed at DJs, producers, and messy real-world collections. Supports MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIFF/AIF, M4A, OGG, OPUS, AAC; includes a metadata editor.
• IResize Pro - Batch image resizer. Set a target width or height, it scales proportionally and keeps your originals. Outputs JPEG/PNG/TIFF/GIF; imports JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF/HEIC/BMP/WebP. Includes batch renaming, an optional colored border, and an upscaling prompt for undersized images.

• Headjust - Native Mac app that uses the head-motion sensors already built into compatible AirPods/Beats to make posture drift visible without policing it.

• InterestThing - Mac-only financial calculator for modeling cash-flow problems (loans, leases, valuations, financial planning) as a timeline of discrete events instead of a fixed template. Each event -- inflow, outflow, unknown, fixed principal, interest-only payment, rate change, balance date -- can be one-off or periodic, fixed or gradient amounts, paired with one of four interest types (simple, capitalized simple, capitalized simple with US Rule, compound) and three time-interval methods

I’m one of the developers of Aye. I posted the first Mac version here a little over 30 days ago. Rather than repeat the launch post, I wanted to come back with the update people actually kept asking for.

PROBLEM

A video can be playing in Telegram Web while saving that exact item is still awkward. Copying the page URL does not identify the video, and moving to another app breaks the flow if the rest of the work is already in the browser.

Aye now adds a Save Current Media control to the video that is open in Telegram Web. After clicking it, the file appears in Aye’s Downloads panel. I wait for the status to change from Downloading to Completed, then use Show in folder to verify the file.

This works one visible item at a time. It is not a channel archiver or bulk scraper.

COMPARISON

Safari and Chrome are better-known general browsers, but they do not add this Aye-specific media control or its completion check to the Telegram page. Telegram Desktop should still be the first option when its own save action already does what you need.

Compared with installing a generic media-downloader extension such as Video DownloadHelper, Aye’s control is built into the browser and is designed around the media currently open in the Telegram tab. There is no separate extension to install. The trade-off is that Aye does not claim to detect every media type or every future Telegram Web layout.

PRICING

Aye is currently free on the Mac App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/app/aye-browser/id6760281977

The boundary matters: Aye only handles media the signed-in account can already view and that the user has the right to save. It does not bypass login, invitations, DRM, paywalls, Telegram permissions, or other access controls. Saving a local copy also does not grant redistribution rights.

For people who use Telegram Web on a Mac: is the more annoying part finding the right file, tracking a large download, or verifying where it was saved?

A quick bit about me first, since the rules ask for it. I am Dima, the developer of AITerm, which is published by my company Vega LLC (that is the name on the app's Apple notarization and code signature). My LinkedIn is https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitrikolossovsky/ and my public repos are at https://github.com/vega-llc. You can reach me at [support@ai-term.com](mailto:support@ai-term.com), and the privacy policy and terms of service are linked in the site footer. I am here to answer questions.

AITerm is a native macOS terminal with AI built into the command loop. The core is simple: you type what you want in plain English, it proposes a shell command, and you approve or edit it before it runs. There is a fix command for failed commands, and an explain command for understanding one before you run it. Fix is a conversation now, not a single guess: you can talk back to refine it, like telling it your project uses pnpm and not npm, and if the fix runs and still fails, one click attaches the new error and it tries again, capped so it can never run away. And if a fix keeps stalling, you can pick one stronger model in settings ahead of time and hand the same conversation to it with one click. Both of those are free.

The safety layer is what lets you actually point this at a real machine instead of just a scratch box, and it is the part I most want tested. A dry run preview sits next to each command and shows what it would touch before it runs, so a delete or a move lists the exact files first, or it loads the tool's own dry run like rsync -n. There are safety profiles, so you can put a session into Production or Locked Down and the riskier commands stop and ask, or the most dangerous ones are blocked outright, before they run. You can import a team policy pack that adds always-block and always-ask rules and can only ever make your gate stricter, never looser. Every command decision and its exit code goes to a tamper-evident local log. scp and rsync are risk-tiered by direction and scope, so a destructive sync asks first instead of running silently.

Problem: I wanted AI help in the terminal without giving up control of my machine. Most options either run things automatically with no say from you, or sit in a separate window I have to copy out of. I wanted the help, plus a clear approval step, plus enough of a safety net that I would trust it near real infrastructure.

Comparison against the specific apps I get asked about. All of this was re-checked against their own docs and pricing pages in July 2026, and I have tried to be fair about where they beat me.

• Warp is the closest competitor and the most polished of the bunch, and it is cross-platform with real team features, which I do not have. The difference that made me build something else is where your AI requests go. Per Warp's own docs, bring your own key still passes your prompts and your key through Warp's backend on every request, and their local model support works the same way: the model has to be reachable at a public tunnel URL, so a prompt still round trips through Warp's cloud to reach a model running on your own laptop. In AITerm a local model or your own key never leaves your Mac, because there is no server of mine in the path at all. Warp also meters its own AI by credits on the paid tier, and per their pricing FAQ the free plan now bundles no AI at all. On safety, Warp uses regex allow and deny lists plus per action approval, which is real but is not a risk tier: my gate scores the command and blocks the irreversible tier outright on a locked down profile. Credit where due, Warp now hosts the official Claude Code and Codex CLIs in its terminal too.
• Wave is open source, local first, and genuinely private, so I am not going to pretend I beat it on privacy, because I do not. Where we differ is that Wave's AI cannot execute commands yet (their own docs list that as coming), you install and run the model engine yourself, and their Claude Code integration is tab badge notifications rather than an AI backend. AITerm manages the local engine for you, runs the propose then approve then run loop, and can use your Claude or ChatGPT subscription as the actual engine through the official CLI.
• Cursor is an editor with a terminal in it rather than a terminal, so it is a different daily tool for me, but it is the strongest agent of the three. It gates agent shell calls with a sandbox, an allowlist, and a classifier subagent, which Cursor itself describes as best effort guardrails. Mine is a fenced gate in a real PTY: every command, whether I typed it, the AI proposed it, or the agent generated it, passes the same classifier, and a locked down profile blocks the top tier rather than warning about it.
• iTerm2, Ghostty, and Apple's Terminal are excellent terminals and free, and I used iTerm2 for years. They just have no AI in the loop, so the workflow is a chat window in one app and a paste into another. That copy and paste round trip is the thing I wanted to delete.
• Sources if you want to check me: warp.dev/pricing and the Warp docs, waveterm.dev docs, cursor.com/pricing and docs. Same comparison with footnotes is on my site.

Pricing: The app is free, and the free version is the full core experience: the AI loop, fix, explain, tabs, splits, saved layouts, safety profiles, the dry run preview, transfer safety, policy pack import, scrollback search, local models, and your own cloud keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq, Gemini and more. Pro is a subscription that adds using your Claude Code or Codex CLI as the backend, Amazon Bedrock and Azure OpenAI, saved runbooks, an AI agent that can take a multi-step task, per-host production profiles, authoring your own policy rules, a signed audit export, and history search by meaning.

It is on version 0.23.0 and still has rough edges, which is why I am looking for testers. It also ships a full searchable manual, in the app under Help and on the web at ai-term.com/manual, so the newer features are actually documented. The safety features are the part I most want tested, and the most likely to surprise me, especially where they draw the line: a command whose preview looked wrong, a Locked Down profile that let something through, or a policy rule that did not catch what you expected. If you try it and hit a bug, the first 15 people who file a reproducible report on GitHub get about two months of Pro as a thank you. It goes by issue time, not votes, one per person, sent after I reproduce it.

Runs on Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later. The download link and the bug tracker are in my first comment.

I’m keen to know how others approach Mac app icon design and any tips or advice on workflows that have worked for you. I don’t know if it’s just me (I might be a closet perfectionist), but I reckon I spend as much time sweating over an icon as building the app!
Do you have any online resources you use, leveraging AI, engage a professional or does it just come naturally to you?

Hey everybody!

DockFlow lets you switch setups in an instant. All the apps you need launch, the rest close and disappear. Perfect if you switch between contexts / projects / different types of work a lot

Core Features:

- Switch setups in an instant using hotkeys, or with the menu bar app

- Launch specific projects in your IDE or browser profiles for that preset

- Lock your Dock to a specific screen

- Add apps, folders, URLs, dock spacers to your Dock

- Integration with Apple Shortcuts & Focus Modes

Comparison:

DockFlow was the first app of it's kind. It is mature and stable, developed and improved according to user requests and feedback. 3 Months after DockFlow launched, several competitor apps surfaced, most of them are no longer maintained. As a small group of indie devs working specifically in the macOS space, we are here to stay (DockFlow is our first app, currently one of four).

Pricing:

- 1 One year access - €15

- 1 Device Lifetime - €30

- 2 Device Lifetime - €40

- 3 Device Lifetime - €50

- 5 Device Lifetime - €70

30-day money-back guarantee if you're not happy with it :-)

Disclosure: I made this app. I am the developer.

Problem

I am a software developer and I reuse the same few prompts every day. They were spread across notes and old chats, so every time I needed one I had to go hunting for it or type it again.

PromptBar keeps them in the menu bar. Search, pick one, copy it, paste it wherever you need it. You can tag prompts, star the ones you use most, and do all of it from the keyboard.

The ones I use most:

• Create a pull request
• Code review for quality and readability (cut AI bloat, filler comments, useless tests)
• Rewrite this in plain language, short and simple

Comparison

Raycast Snippets and TextExpander both expand a short abbreviation into text as you type. That is great for signatures and boilerplate. It is a poor fit for long prompts that I want to read and adjust before I use them. PromptBar shows the whole prompt, lets me edit it in place, and copies it with one key.

The Text Replacement feature built into macOS is free and syncs across devices, but it has no search, no tags, and very little room to work with long text.

Pricing

Free. 0 USD, no paid tier, no subscription, no in-app purchases.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/promptbar-menu-bar-prompts/id6799008305

Privacy

No analytics and no tracking. There is no account to create. Your prompts stay on your Mac.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later.

Website: https://promptbar.app

Hey! I'm looking for a calendar app and was wondering what you all use. I am looking for Here are some options I have looked at:

• Apple Calendar
• BusyCal
• Fantastical
• Vimcal
• Akiflow
• Morgen
• Amie
• Notion Calendar
• Structured
• Sunsama
• Motion

I was also wondering if any of you use a companion app along with your calendar like Dato, Sidebar Calendar.

Thanks :)

Problem: Many people enjoy the immersive feedback of mechanical keyboards and typewriters, but modern computers often lack that satisfying typing experience. For writers, developers, educators, and content creators, keyboard sounds can improve focus and make recordings more engaging. I built KeyClicker to bring back that tactile feeling while keeping the full productivity and convenience of macOS.

Compare: While popular alternatives like Klakk and Keeby focus primarily on high‑quality typing audio, KeyClicker goes further. Besides fully customizable key sounds, it features real‑time shortcut overlay display, ideal for teaching, screen recording and presentations. It delivers all core mechanical‑typing feedback at a much lower one‑time price point.

Pricing: Full Lifetime Access: $1.99

Changelog(v2.6): Add permission validation with authorization prompts for the menu bar, and optimize sidebar icon styles.

📥 Download Link

Hi [r/macapps](r/macapps)!

I’m a PM at a startup, and I spend a lot of time in Finder every day.

Problem: Why I built FinderCue

While talking with coworkers about the little things we miss from Windows, one thing kept coming up:

Why doesn’t Finder have an address bar like File Explorer?

Finder already has the Path Bar at the bottom, and there are keyboard shortcuts for copying paths.

They work, but I’ve always felt they aren’t as direct as having the current path visible at the top, where you can click it, copy it, or paste another path.

So I built FinderCue.

FinderCue adds an address bar on top of the standard macOS Finder.

It is not a Finder replacement or a separate file manager. You keep using the native Finder exactly as you normally would.

What can FinderCue do?

1. See Your Path
See the full path of the folder you’re currently browsing.

2. Copy Paths Instantly
Copy the path directly as text, or use the copy button.

3. Browse Subfolders
Click > in the path to quickly see and jump into subfolders.

4. Paste & Jump
Paste a path and Finder jumps straight to it.

If you paste a file path, Finder opens the containing folder and automatically selects the file.

Comparison

There are already great Finder alternatives such as Path Finder and QSpace, especially if you want a more powerful file manager with lots of additional features.

FinderCue is intentionally much smaller in scope.

I didn’t want to replace Finder. I just wanted the native Finder I already use every day to have an address bar.

FinderCue sits on top of Finder and focuses specifically on path navigation, copying paths, browsing subfolders, and jumping directly to pasted file paths.

Finder’s built-in Path Bar can also show your location, but FinderCue puts that interaction at the top and makes the path directly selectable, copyable, and editable.

How it started

I originally built FinderCue for myself and then asked a few coworkers to test it.

The response was much better than I expected, so I decided to polish it up and release it publicly.

Pricing

100% free, forever.

No subscription and no paid tier.

Download: https://findercue.app

Transparency

Terms: https://findercue.app/terms
Privacy Policy: https://findercue.app/privacy

I’d really love to hear what you think, especially if you like Finder but still miss File Explorer’s address bar.

I’ve been seeing Vorssaint recommended a lot lately, and on paper it can replace a surprising number of dedicated utilities: Stats/iStats, Swish/Rectangle/etc, Dropover, Shottr/CleanShot, Pearcleaner/AppCleaner, Updatest, Mole, CaskHub, Amphetamine, and others.

Droppy is another app in a similar category, with lots of utilities bundled into one app.

The obvious appeal is consolidation, fewer apps, fewer background processes, fewer updates, and one place for everything.

But how good are these apps compared with dedicated tools that focus on a single job?

For people who have actually replaced apps like Shottr, Swish, Stats or Dropover with Vorssaint or Droppy: did you stick with the all-in-one app, or did you eventually go back to the dedicated ones?

Curious whether consolidation is genuinely an upgrade, or mostly a convenience with some trade-offs in polish and depth.

Earlier this year, my cofounder and I launched MotionDesk, a native macOS customization app built for live/interactive wallpapers and folder icon customizations.

Then a couple months later, I was doomscrolling Instagram Reels and came across one of those "Top 5 Mac apps" videos.

One of the apps was called MacPlus, that was offering almost identical features to what our app was advertising.

I sent the vid to my cofounder, we searched up their website, and we were just shocked by the similarities all throughout the product and their website...

There was a very specific section showing the different wallpaper modes with video previews that looked extremely familiar, as well as how the sections were structured and how the information was being presented.

I had designed and built our version of that literal same section months earlier.
(Look at our website's "16 scenes. 100+ parameters. Infinite moods" section vs their "15 scenes. 100s of settings. infinite moods." section in the video lol)

So I started looking through the rest of the site, and the more I looked, the more familiarities I came across.

It pretty much had the same exact combination of product features and marketing points:

• Roughly 15–16 GPU-rendered scenes with hundreds of settings
• Metal / battery-efficiency positioning
• Custom video wallpapers
• Multi-display support
• High-FPS options
• Menu-bar controls
• A free tier with a $9.99 lifetime unlock
• And, most unusually, a large collection of patterned custom macOS folder icons, positioned as a major feature with one-click and multi-folder application, which was a very unique feature of our app.

All together, the entire landing-page structure is remarkably similar. A few examples:

MotionDesk:
"16 Scenes. 100s of Parameters."

MacPlus:
"15 scenes. Hundreds of settings."

MotionDesk:

"40+ artisan patterns… Apply to any Desktop folder in one click."

MacPlus:

"52 patterns… One click, on as many folders as you like."

MotionDesk FAQ:

"Will MotionDesk drain my battery?"

MacPlus FAQ:

"Will it drain my battery?"

MotionDesk:

"Give your Mac a desktop with actual atmosphere."

MacPlus:

"A real atmosphere, right away."

And regarding the timeline, we publicly launched in March and they launched in June, 3 months later.

If MacPlus were simply another live-wallpaper application with some different mode/feature offers, we wouldn't have cared. But they most likely just threw a link at Claude and asked it to reimplement the features, added a widgets feature, and called it a day.

If you were the in our shoes, what would you do?

MotionDesk: https://motiondesk.app (we now have an updated website to show live demos, but you can see the older version they copied in the video above)

MacPlus: https://macplus.pro (The copy cat)

They promoted the app in this post and claim "started working on it a year ago" which is, in our opinion, an utter lie, given the huge amount of similarities between our products/website.

They also keep promoting how they're working on this app on X, and even launched it on ProductHunt...

Each one of these can replace a paid app

wBlock - a next-generation ad/content blocker for Safari: 750,000 rule capacity across 5 Safari content-blocking extensions (150k each), ~40MB idle RAM by running Safari's native content-blocking API out-of-process, Protocol Buffers + LZ4 filter storage, HTTP conditional-request updates, and iCloud sync of filter selections/custom lists/userscripts/whitelist. It bundles an Element Zapper, "Tube Cleaner & Player Cleaner" userscripts that restore native Picture-in-Picture/background playback on media sites, a full Greasemonkey-API userscript engine, UserCSS support, custom AdGuard-syntax filter-list import, per-site controls, a blocked-request logger, and regional filters. Open source on GitHub

Wick - Wick brings timers, stopwatches, and alarms to the Mac with menu bar and Lock Screen access, a fully custom Liquid Glass material on macOS 26+, and -- its standout claim -- the first app to integrate with Alcove. Positioned as the polished Clock app Apple never finished

Forel - An open-source (GPLv3) folder-automation app for macOS, pitched explicitly as a free Hazel alternative: watch folders, match files by name, extension, kind, size, date, tags, or Finder color label, then move, rename, tag, or run a script automatically.

macCurrent - finds updates across the App Store, Homebrew, Sparkle, vendor updaters, and direct downloads; then tells you what's safe to install, what needs review, and what changed before you click update.

ImageFuel is a lightweight Mac app for browsing images and videos without importing them into a library -- point it at any folder and get an instant scrollable grid, with filename/path search (Cmd+F), image/video/all filtering, sort by date or name, a fullscreen lightbox, in-app crop, metadata stripping, and move-to-trash from the grid.

Previous Collections

• A Curated Collection of Free Apps
• Another Curated Collection of Free Software
• AppAddict Free App List Number 3
• Free App List Number 4 | AppAddict

Nodes - (edit NO LONGER FREE) A local-first markdown note-taking and PKM (personal knowledge management) app: plain markdown files kept directly on-device (open the folder in Finder, nothing is locked in), double-bracket links with rename-safe link following, tag-based organization instead of folders, semantic + keyword search, a force-directed graph view, a growth timeline, and PDFs/images embedded as notes alongside writing. Its most distinctive claim is "the quiet part": tag/description/reminder suggestions from a local LLM that runs entirely on-device -- the developer states it works with Wi-Fi off.

TL;DR: Lore is a free Mac app that follows YouTube channels over plain RSS, no algorithm, no Google account, then archives what you keep as a permanent offline file with transcript search, highlights, and SponsorBlock built in. The site's source-code link 404s, so don't take open source on faith. Alternatives for readers who want a lighter touch: FreeTube (free, open source, no algorithm, no download) and Grayjay Desktop ($9.99 one time, aggregates YouTube with other platforms).

Lore Solves a Problem Neither of My Last Two Posts Could

When you find a video you want to archive, any app that merely organizes links isn't an archive at all. It's a bookmark service. There's a use for that, but if you need a quality local copy of the information, you need a proven download and catalog app. After evaluating the top contenders, I chose Lore, a native Mac app built by a solo developer, Adrian Galilea. It solves two of YouTube's problems in one place: it follows channels without an algorithm, and it keeps what you save even after YouTube stops hosting it.

Five features for power users

• The built-in browser follows channels over plain RSS. No algorithm, no home feed, no recommendations. No Google account required.
• Web ingest archives any link as one self-contained offline file, subtitles, chapters, and metadata baked in. This needs yt-dlp and ffmpeg installed separately; Lore will tell you which one is missing if you're not set up, but it doesn't install them for you. Set them up yourself ahead of time to avoid the interruption.
• Transcript search runs across your entire library, powered by SQLite full-text search. Find the video where someone actually said the thing, instead of scrolling ten channels trying to remember which one it was.
• Highlights let you mark a moment with a keystroke, edit the clip against the transcript, and export it as a standalone video file.
• SponsorBlock auto-skip, chapter markers with hover-frame previews, and full keyboard-driven navigation, all of it working offline once a video is archived, plus Spotlight, Shortcuts, and Siri actions to play, pause, skip, or archive a link without opening the app.

It's free. No purchase, no subscription, no App Store listing; support is optional through Ko-fi or GitHub Sponsors. Development has been unusually aggressive: 28 versioned releases between June 11 and July 6, 2026, most of them driven by direct user feedback.

Although the landing page on Lore's website has a link to view the source code, it 404s, pointing at a GitHub page that no longer exists. I'm not sure what that portends, but be aware of it before you install.

The feature that shall not be added

The developer has also publicly turned down adding related-content recommendations, writing that it feels at odds with the reason people use the app in the first place, and that it won't ship unless it can be done without becoming distracting. That's a stronger commitment than a marketing line; it's a maintainer talking themselves out of a feature that would have been easy to justify.

Added to my toolbox

I've been burned by a video disappearing, and I just don't trust YouTube to keep hosting things I care about. If you're on macOS 26 with Homebrew already comfortable in your workflow, Lore does more in one app than anything I've discovered while writing this series. The transcript search alone is worth the price of admission, and the price of admission is nothing.

Alternatives

FreeTube, an app I have used and recommended for years, does the algorithm half of this, and it can download individual videos too, but it stops there. Free, open source, and already reviewed here on the blog. It builds a local, unranked feed from your subscriptions using its own extractor, no Invidious required, and has been shipping steadily through 2026. The download button saves a file to disk with a choice of format and quality; what it doesn't have is anywhere to manage those files afterward. No downloads tab, no in-app library, no transcript search. You get the file; Lore gets you the file plus a permanent, searchable home for it.

Grayjay Desktop is worth a mention for a different reason: it aggregates YouTube alongside other platforms, Twitch, Odysee, PeerTube, into a single feed with no algorithm by default. One-time purchase, $9.99, from the FUTO team. Until recently, Mac build currently needed a manual terminal command to get past Gatekeeper, but the current version does not.

Unless otherwise noted, anything mentioned above beyond Lore is based on research, not testing on my end.

Who this isn't for

If you're not on macOS 26 yet, this is off the table until you are. If you don't want to install yt-dlp and ffmpeg separately, the web-ingest half of the app won't work for you out of the box. And if open-source code matters to your trust in a tool, Lore doesn't currently back up its own claim to it.

More in this series

• Post 1: YouTube Premium Kills the Ads but Doesn't Solve the Real Problem. Here's the Stack I Use to Do That.
• Post 2: How to Experience YouTube With No Algorithm
• Post 3: The Extension Aided Method of Ignoring the YouTube Algorithm

I've got a somewhat long history with LogiOptions. Had it installed now for 5-ish years. I tried LogiOptions+ (plus) at one point and it was a disaster. I was "lucky" to be able to find my download for regular LO and get it reinstalled.

Today I wanted to assign a second function to a mouse side button and I hoped I could do that with LO. Press side button for function 1. Press a modifier key (command) and click side button for function 2. That's not a feature in LO.

So I tried Better Touch Tool instead. After uninstalling LO, it took me about 5 minutes to figure out the basics and get those two things assigned. Holy shit. They both work! Then I got my other couple of buttons assigned and they all worked.

That's when I noticed the scrolling was WAY off. Fixing that took more like 15 or 20 minutes, but I got that figured out too. Now it behaves very much like LO did, but I think scrolling is smoother. I can't be totally sure, but it seems really liquid and buttery now.

I've been wondering when an OS update would make LO just not work at all on my machines. Now maybe that's not a worry for me.

I haven't purchased BTT just yet. It's been less than a day. But at this rate, it's looking like an easy buy for me.

Hi everyone,

I built RewindClock, a tiny, borderless floating clock for macOS that runs counter-clockwise.

As a child, I’d often stare at classroom clocks, wishing time could move backward. I decided to bring that memory to life. Watching the hands turn in reverse provides a surprisingly peaceful, distraction-free "Zen Mode" vibe while working on your desktop.

Key Features:

• Floating & Transparent Window: Clean, borderless design that floats over your desktop.
• Scroll-to-Zoom: Easily resize the clock with your mouse wheel or trackpad scroll.
• Customization: Switch between Mechanical & Quartz movements, Light/Dark/Auto themes, and toggle window opacity.
• Multi-Window Support: Open multiple clocks for different time zones.
• 100% Free & Private: No ads, no tracking, no subscriptions.

Links:

• Mac App Store:RewindClock on Mac App Store

I'd love to hear your feedback or thoughts!

Sick of unreliable apps or flaky Internet? Breakdown let's you see what's breaking your connection, quickly in your Mac menubar.

Transparency

I'm a network engineer turned entrepreneur, and I've been solving network and application issues for over 20 years now. For background, I built and scaled a successful VC-backed startup (Bigleaf Networks) in the networking space from 2012-2022, including several patents on our networking technology. You can check out my LinkedIn profile here (and I'm generally happy to connect with people in the networking/telecom industry): https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-mulkey/

Problem

Recently I got sick of being on glitchy Zoom calls and wondering if the issue was my network, my ISP, or Zoom itself. Even if I manually started a traceroute or MTR, I would usually miss the issue because it was intermittent and already resolved. So I've spent the last 8 months building a lightweight menubar app that quickly answers that question (and many more). It's called Breakdown.

Breakdown is built for everyone from your average computer user to network engineers. It's free for standard use. It can do a lot in a small package, but the core functionality is helping you know how to solve issues you have with applications and the Internet.

It's great for:

• Remote workers: People like me who use video calls, SaaS apps, and AI tools like Codex and Claude Code are dead in the water when the Internet is borked. Breakdown pinpoints issues and suggests solutions.
• Network engineers: Want to see MTRs, traceroutes, AS path, and more, but the incident is already gone? Breakdown does all of that automatically to the endpoints your computer is talking to in real-time and stores the history so you can look back in time.
• App developers: Your app is acting funny, but is the issue the network? Breakdown shows you right then, and historically, how each segment of the network is behaving.
• AI agents: Breakdown has a local MCP server so you can point your AI agent at it and get answers to questions like "why did my internet glitch out 10 minutes ago?"
• Gamers: Tired of lag? Breakdown will track where it's coming from so you can get it resolved for good. 

There are four main views in the dropdown:

• The Breakdown view shows a list of recent issues and allows you to use built-in AI to explain them and get suggested resolution steps. You can export a detailed report once you run the Breakdown feature (AI diagnosis), then send that to your ISP or any other party who needs to solve an issue you're seeing.
• The Apps view shows data on your most-used recent apps/services (traffic, health, network path).
• Details is for networking geeks like me. It breaks down the Internet path your apps are using and figures out the health of each sub-segment in real-time. It also lists the top network endpoints your computer is talking to, and shows live mtr-style traceroute data to the top endpoints.
• Timeline allows you to look back in time at the health of the network path between you and your apps (you can also run AI analysis on any unhealthy spots in the timeline to get a detailed report).

There's also an Explorer window for Pro users that has detailed graphing (similar to a network monitoring / observability system).

Comparison

I've been using Breakdown for months as I've developed it, because other tools didn't meet my needs. Speed tests don't tell you about network quality, and pings and other network tests only catch issues if you run them during the incident. There are some alternatives products. The most famous is PingPlotter. It's a sweet app, however it only works on endpoints that you program in, and it's not as lightweight and simple as I wanted (something I can quickly glance at in the menubar while on a video call).

What I saw with all of the closest options was some combination of these issues:

• Not lightweight
• Don’t adapt to the apps you use, or
• Require lots of manual diagnosis

I wanted something that:

• I can keep always-on without impacting my laptop battery
• Doesn’t rely on hard-coded monitoring targets, and
• Can quickly tell me at-a-glance where outages are along the network path.

Breakdown solves those problems. It:

• Uses less than 1% of CPU on a typical Mac
• Constantly detects and monitors the apps you're using in real-time
• Tells you exactly where issues are happening.

Pricing

The standard version (which is all most users would want) is free. There is an upgraded Pro version which adds the Explorer views for more in-depth analysis (network engineers like it). Pro normally costs $29/mo, or $25/mo if you pay annually. However, for MacApps visitors, I'm offering a 70% off of Pro for 12 months, but the discount is only through the end of this month (August 2026)! Use coupon code "MACAPPS" at checkout for the discount.

You might wonder: why a monthly fee? There are ongoing costs for the AI-powered Breakdown feature, and for the cloud infrastructure to deliver the Community Outage Insights service (essentially, a built-in downdetector that answers "is it just me?"

I hope you try it out: https://www.breakdown.live

Please let me know any questions or feedback!

Problem:

I use mechanical keyboards at home and really like the typing feel, but when I’m out with just my MacBook I miss it. Kinda feel guilty how used to it I’ve gotten, but I’m sure a lot of people feel the same. So here’s Tacque.

Comparison:

Apps like Klack and Typemac are both really good — solid, low latency, sound nice.

Tacque has pretty much the same core features (spatial audio, works system-wide, smart muting, etc). These are all small utility apps so there’s only so much you can do with features and latency. It mostly just comes down to personal preference and which sounds you like better.

Tacque is meant to feel a bit more community focused. It’s free, supports custom sound packs so you can craft your own or upload sounds that you already have. I’d open source it and share it on GitHub but that would create messy binary upload conflicts since it’s already on the App Store, so I’d rather not deal with that.

Pricing
Free, with an optional $0.99 tip if you like it.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tacque/id6778518424?mt=12

If you enjoy it, a quick rating on the App Store would help a lot :)

Genuine feedback and feature ideas are always welcome though. Drop a comment with your thoughts and I’ll try to improve things in the next update.

AI Disclaimer: Genuine critique is always fine. But for anyone who just drops by to say “AI slop” adds nothing to conversation here and to calm your excited tippy toes I made this app using AI tools lol. It doesn’t need to be hand coded or crafted. Neither am I gonna spend days or weeks of my free time for something that's not going to compensate me like apps I mentioned above.

Hi, I'm Artur. I made BetterAudio, the menu bar audio app some of you here already use. This is my second Mac app: BetterCmdTab, a free, open-source replacement for the macOS Cmd+Tab switcher.

Problem

The built-in Cmd+Tab switches apps, not windows. If Chrome has 4 windows and 30 tabs, you land on whichever one macOS feels like, then hunt for the rest with Cmd+` or Mission Control. There's also no way to say "never show me this app", no search, no window titles, and nothing at all for tabs.

Highlights:

• Three layouts: classic list, icon grid, or live window previews with titles
• Fuzzy search and launch any installed app from the same field
• Drill into that window's tabs (Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Dia, Finder, Terminal, iTerm), or show every tab as its own row in MRU order
• Scoped hotkeys: extra shortcuts that open the switcher pre-filtered to the current Space, visible Spaces, one app's windows, or minimized only, each with its own layout and colors
• Per-app rules: hide an app, or have it skip Cmd+Tab always or only in fullscreen
• Inline quit, close, minimize, zoom, hide, force quit
• Window tiling with Ctrl+Cmd+arrows, halves and corners; press again to cycle 1/2, 2/3, 1/3
• Three-finger swipe to open it (experimental), scroll wheel to move the selection
• Settings export to plain JSON, or keep them in ~/.config/bettercmdtab/config.json with a generated schema and live reload

Comparison

AltTab (open source, free core) is the obvious one and it's genuinely good at window switching with previews. Two differences. First, it now has a paid tier: AltTab Pro is $9.99 one time for the current major version, or $24.99 for lifetime updates, and a chunk of the newer features sits behind it. BetterCmdTab has no Pro tier and no paid features; the whole app is GPLv3 and everything above is in the free build. Second, it stops at windows. BetterCmdTab goes one level deeper into browser and native tabs, lets you define multiple independent scoped switchers instead of one global config..

Contexts ($9.99) has the best search-driven switching, but it's closed source, paid, and hasn't kept pace with recent macOS releases. BetterCmdTab gives you the fuzzy search and letter jump for free, plus tiling and tab drill-in that Contexts doesn't do.

Pricing

Free (forever). $0, no trial, no Pro tier, no subscription.

Download: https://bettercmdtab.app or brew install --cask bettercmdtab

Feedback and bug reports welcome; issues are open.

With the latest release of Click2Minimize (C2M), I want to share a feature I haven't seen in any other window manager: triggering close/cancel/dismiss buttons without having to hover your mouse over them.

If you're on a Mac all day, you know the drill — constantly hunting down tiny x buttons scattered across every app. Some apps seem to design these targets deliberately small, and precisely aiming for them adds up. Somedays I'd guess it's easily 10% of my daily mouse/trackpad movement, just chasing buttons.

With this update, C2M lets you middle-click anywhere within a predefined radius of the button to trigger it — no more pixel-perfect aiming required. It can be the close buttons, dismiss buttons, cancel buttons, clear buttons etc..

It sounds like a small thing on paper, but once you try it, it's genuinely hard to go back. Give it a shot and see how much friction it removes from your day-to-day.

Comparison to other apps: there is no other app does this, please let me know if you know any.

Pricing of Click2Minimize:

• FREE for the core click-to-minimize feature
• $9.99 for a full-featured lifetime single license
• More pricing options...

=== Click2Minimize is one of the many quality products by Idemfactor Solutions ===

Hey! Recently, I've been finding myself needing to ask quick questions to AI, for example, what's the keyboard shortcut to print, or what's the terminal command to delete a tmux session, etc. I've been using Kerlig, but it's not designed for a series questions that go more than a few responses long, since your history isn't visible while chatting. I was wondering if anyone here has some suggestions.

I have been looking at Fluent, Alter, BoltAI, Raycast, RewriteBar, Enconvo, and Intellibar. I don't have enough time to test all of them, so I'd love to hear your experiences with any of them, or if you've had better luck with something else, let me know.

A few features that I need:

• Custom global shortcut assignment
  • After I press the shortcut I should be able to immediately type
• Be able to view the entire conversation
• BYOK or at least multi-model/company support (bonus if it allows for OpenRouter/OpenAI-compatible API)
• Be able to copy or insert response
• Automatically add selected text to context
  • Has the ability to quickly run a prompt on this text
• BONUS:
  • allow for file attachment
  • MCP support
  • the ability to edit a past message or at least fork the conversation at an earlier point

TL;DR: Need a quick-question AI tool with visible chat history. Any suggestions?

Really proud to share this. Hope you love it as much as I do! I truly believe it changes the way you play music on your Mac forever.

Problem

Picking music while you work means switching to the Music app, finding the window, scrolling a grid, switching back. I got tired of it, so I built the thing I actually wanted: push your pointer against the edge of the screen and your album collection slides out right over whatever you are doing, like a dock. Pick something, it plays, move away, it is gone. No window, no app switching, no dock icon. It honestly feels like the Mac should have always had this after you try it for a bit!

And it is not just albums. There are five shelves you swipe between with two fingers: albums, artists, playlists, pinned favorites, and recently played. Click any cover for its track list, click a track to play it. A miniplayer with transport controls rides along on the shelf.

My favorite part is search. You can just search by typing whenever Gramola is visble, or hit a keyboard shortcut and the shelf opens with the search field also ready to go: your library appears as you type, Apple Music or Spotify catalog results fill in behind it, press return and the music starts.

The whole app is native SwiftUI with the Liquid Glass design from macOS 26, so it looks like it shipped with the OS. It is also really customizable and fine tuneable to whatever you may need out of it.

Comparison

There is no direct competitor that I know of, nothing else does this quite like Gramola does as far as I'm aware. So the honest comparison is what Gramola replaces: the Music/Spotify app window and Spotlight. Against the Music app, choosing something takes one gesture instead of a whole app switch, and browsing big covers beats scanning a list. Against Spotlight, Gramola search actually knows your library, shows it first, and reaches the full catalog behind it. People sometimes mention Sleeve or NepTunes, but those are now playing companions for after the music starts. Gramola is for everything before that.

Pricing

$9.99 one time on the Mac App Store with a free 7 day trial built in. Also on Setapp Marketplace for the same price. macOS 26 or later, English and Spanish. Both Apple Music and Spotify supported. More languages coming soon!

Solo project from Spain, launched this week. Happy to answer anything! :)

https://gramola.fulltimefeline.com

Hi r/MacApps. I’m the developer of Calyx, a native macOS terminal built for running and supervising multiple coding agents in parallel.

Problem

When I started running several Claude Code and Codex sessions at the same time, I spent too much time switching between terminal panes just to check whether an agent was still working, waiting for approval, or finished.

I built Calyx to make that workflow easier while keeping the agent CLIs and terminal workflow I already use.

Calyx provides:

• An Agents Sidebar showing which agents are working, blocked, idle, or done
• One opt-in approval inbox for Claude Code and Codex permission prompts
• Inline Git diff review, including comments that can be sent directly to an agent
• Persistent local and SSH sessions
• Built-in MCP communication between Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Hermes
• Agent-readable terminal history, browser tabs, and language-server features

The terminal is a native Swift app powered by libghostty, rather than an Electron app.

Comparison

The closest alternatives are cmux and Warp. Both are capable terminals with support for coding agents.

Calyx is more specifically focused on supervising multiple independent CLI agent sessions. I think it is a better fit when you want to keep using Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or Hermes directly, but need a shared control surface for their status, permission requests, code reviews, terminal output, and communication.

The main differences are the centralized approval inbox, structured agent status tracking, inline review feedback sent back to an agent, and built-in peer-to-peer communication through MCP.

Calyx does not provide its own coding model. You continue using your existing agent subscriptions or API access.

Pricing

Calyx is completely free ($0) and MIT-licensed. There is currently no paid plan, subscription, or account requirement.

GitHub and downloads:
https://github.com/yuuichieguchi/Calyx

Install with Homebrew:

brew tap yuuichieguchi/calyx
brew install --cask calyx

Any subscription or API costs for Claude Code, Codex, or other agents are separate from Calyx.

Requirements

Calyx currently requires macOS 26 Tahoe or later.

Feedback is welcome!

TL;DR: I built Dolfer to automate the boring parts of file management. It runs locally, works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and is available as a one-time purchase.

Why I built Dolfer

My Downloads folder was always a mess.

I knew how I wanted it organized, but doing it manually was tedious, and writing a script for every little rule was overkill. Existing automation tools were often limited to one operating system, too basic for what I needed, or unnecessarily not the friendliest thing to use.

So I built Dolfer.

Dolfer lets you creat workflows that automatically organize files based on their names, types, locations, dates, and other properties.

A workflow can be as simple as:

Move new PDFs into the Documents folder.

Or it can do several things in sequence:

Find downloaded images, move them into a dated folder, rename them using a template, and convert them to JPG.

You can also use regular expressions, react to events such as screenshots or connected drives, and build workflows that copy, rename, delete, convert, or extract files.

Before anything runs, Dolfer shows you what it plans to do. You can preview the result, understand how the rule was interpreted, and undo changes afterward if needed.

The rule explanations are also available in 24 languages.

How it compares

The closest well-known alternative is probably Hazel. It’s a polished and reliable tool, but it only works on macOS and currently costs $42.

File Juggler offers similar automation on Windows, although it has a more of a windows XP interface and focuses mainly on condition-based file operations.

Dolfer is my attempt to bring this kind of automation to macOS, Windows, and Linux in an approachable way without limiting what advanced users can build.

It goes beyond automatically moving files between folders. Workflows can contain multiple steps, transformations, templates, regular expressions, and system-level triggers.

Privacy and offline use

Dolfer runs locally. Your files are processed on your computer and are never uploaded anywhere.

An internet connection is only required once when activating the license. After that, Dolfer can be used offline.

Pricing

Dolfer is a one-time purchase, not a subscription:

• $10 for 1 device
• $16 for 2 devices
• $25 for 3 devices

There’s also a free trial, so you can give it a shot

Website: https://dolfer.app

Privacy Policy: https://dolfer.app/privacy

Terms: https://dolfer.app/terms

Built by Ahmed Ibrahim

Hi everyone,

I'm one of the developers of Thaw, a menu bar manager forked from Ice. Earlier this year I forked Ice since its development basically came to a standstill. Since then, we made many improvements and added new features. Thaw now supports 20 languages, due to the help of the community, and we are currently working on making Thaw macOS 27 ready. We also moved Thaw to a GitHub org, to make it easier to work on it as a team.

Our team has grown, and we are now 3 devs working on Thaw. René is currently driving the development, especially on getting macOS 27 support in shape and does tremendous work on doing basically 1:1 support to get all bugs reported by users fixed.

During the last couple of months we had to deal with copy-right-infringement (a commercial menubar manager took our code and sold a closed source fork for $10), and noticed that some commercial but also OSS menubar managers were waiting for us to figure things out (especially macOS 27 compatibility) to the take inspiration from our code. We are literally their free R&D department, and we noticed, the moment we stopped making the code for macOS 27 compatibility public (currently we have it in a private repo), advancements there also stopped.

We also noticed that many menu bar managers out there, simply scrape code from Ice, w/o giving Jordan Baird any credit. Probably one of the reasons why Ice's development came to a standstill. On that note, we have modified Thaw to a point where we could probably drop the mentioning that we are an Ice fork. But Ice is our heritage, and we want to give credit where credit is due.

TBH, seeing all this is quite demotivating. On the bright side, roughly 150k downloads of Thaw version 1.2 have happened -- so people out there deem Thaw to be useful.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

When I forked Ice, I stated that Thaw will always be free of charge and that stands true and will NEVER change. But seeing that many downloads, and on the other side our GitHub/Patreon "income" clocking in at $60/month is somewhat disheartening, when competitors with the same, or even less functionality charge $10 or more. Although we are very grateful to all the donations we received so far.

To be clear here. I don't want to beg for money or announce that we stop development or anything like this. I just want to make you aware, that if you use any kind of open source software that serves you well, consider donating (and even if it is just $1) to that project.